Inspector Hornleigh

In 1939, Fox amazingly went to all the trouble to send Eugene Forde to England to direct Inspector Hornleigh. Based on a totally boring BBC radio series by Hans Priwin, the movie had a Poverty Row budget that even Monogram would be ashamed of. Virtually nothing was spent on sets or effects, the extremely limited budget being roughly divided 50% on the cast, 30% on technicians and only 20% on studio overheads. The title character was played by Gordon Harker (who did a reasonable job, considering the wordy, almost actionless screenplay), while Alastair Sim was cast as his incompetent assistant, Sergeant Bingham. Although this movie has its fans, I was not impressed. Sims over-acts and over-reacts to a most irritating degree, while the minor characters make no inroads at all into the suffocatingly dialogue-bound screenplay in which a host of tedious, z-grade thespians propound no mystery worth penetrating. The only player who comes out of this melange of boundless talk with any credit is the lovely Miki Hood who not only manages to survive Philip Tannura's warts-and-all photography, but still contrives to look attractive and retain the viewer's interest even when mouthing the most inconsequential lines.