Man from Tangier

It's hard to believe that films like this once made it onto the big screen, even as B-pictures. Actually, to call "The Man from Tangier" a B-picture is probably too kind, C-picture or D-picture might be more accurate.

The title was presumably intended to lure filmgoers with the promise of exotic thrills but only the first few minutes are set in Tangier (courtesy of some stock footage) and for the rest of the time we're back in grimy old London, more familiar Butchers Film territory. He-man hero Robert Hutton, via a ridiculous chain of coincidences, gets mixed up with foreign femme fatale Lisa Gastoni and her shady associates, whilst stoical Scotland Yard 'tec Ballard Berkeley mulls over the clues.

Lance Comfort made some interesting films during the immediate post-war boom in British cinema but the big break never materialised, leaving him becalmed in second-feature land. The anti-climactic ending to this effort (there's not even time for hero and heroine to say "I love you") suggests that, like the audience, he had lost all interest in the turgid tale of the Man from Tangier.