Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Hell is a City - DVD

I'm afraid I hadn't heard of this until it got mentioned on a recent edition of Radio 4's The Film Programme. Made in 1960, Hell of a City, was set and filmed in Manchester and stars Stanley Baker as Inspector Harry Martineau. It came out on DVD in 2005.


Synopsis from IMDB: Committed but seen-it-all police inspector Martineau rightly guesses that after a violent jailbreak a local criminal will head home to Manchester to pick up the spoils from his last job. Martineau is soon investigating a murder during a street robbery which seems to lead back to the same villain. Concentrating on the case and using his local contacts to try and track the gang down, he is aware he is not keeping his own personal life together as well as he might.

2 comments:

Maxine Clarke said...

I am pretty sure I have actually seen this, years ago! I think it was quite good. Maybe Martin Edwards has either seen it or will do so again, and review it on his blog?

Martin Edwards said...

Well guessed, Maxine! I have seen it, many moons ago, and I'd be glad to see it again (though another Stanley Baker film, Robbery, was even better, if memory serves.) The book on which the film was based was written by Maurice Procter, one of the first British police procedural novelists - he was an ex cop, and a very capable writer.