Recoil (1953)

When "Jean" (Elizabeth Sellars) witnesses the killing of her jeweller father "Talbot" (Ian Fleming) she vows to bring him to justice. Meantime respected physician "Conway" (Edward Underdown) has just treated his badly beaten brother "Nicholas" (Kieron Moore). Family loyalty and all that, he agrees to say the two were playing chess together that evening - but we know that they weren't, we also know what he was doing - and so, unbeknown to him, does "Jean". When the two accidentally meet, she sets out to use all of her guile and wits to ensnare him. The thing with this is that the inevitability of the denouement isn't really helped by a poor script and some really mediocre acting efforts. Moore usually imposed a little more on the screen but here the whole ensemble - never helped by the one-gear Martin Benson - just seems to waddle along for an hour before an ending that just wasn't ever in doubt. There is an effort to broaden the scope of the story by involving the mother (Ethel O'Shea) who is well aware that one of her sons is a decent cove and the other, less so - but that doesn't really give us enough to raise this from the realms of pedestrian B-feature. Certainly, it's not a bad film and it's an easy enough watch - but it is not one you will recall for long.