The Long Dark Hall is proof positive that our friends across the pond in the United Kingdom can be just as crassly exploitive as American film makers can be. I'm sure the casting of Mr.&Mrs. Rex Harrison in a film about the death of a woman that Rex was involved with and the fact that Lilli Palmer played his dutiful and loyal wife in this same film was no coincidence. The scandal about the death of Carole Landis was still fresh in people's minds on both sides of the Atlantic.
Harrison plays a mild mannered husband and father who has gotten himself involved with a beautiful showgirl played by Patricia Cutts a woman of dissolute morals and habits. When she later is murdered, some stupidity on Harrison's part and some sloppy investigation on the part of Scotland Yard gets Harrison arrested.
The case is all circumstantial but a bad performance by Harrison on the witness stand seals his fate.
The Long Dark Hall pulled itself up a couple of notches in the ratings department from me with an ending that literally was out of left field. I have to say I didn't see that coming. The film also plays better on this side of the pond than others because a good knowledge of British history of the period would help you see what was coming. My knowledge is good, but not that good.
Nevertheless the film was clearly made to take advantage of the notoriety that Harrison got with the Landis death even though that one was a suicide.
Harrison plays a mild mannered husband and father who has gotten himself involved with a beautiful showgirl played by Patricia Cutts a woman of dissolute morals and habits. When she later is murdered, some stupidity on Harrison's part and some sloppy investigation on the part of Scotland Yard gets Harrison arrested.
The case is all circumstantial but a bad performance by Harrison on the witness stand seals his fate.
The Long Dark Hall pulled itself up a couple of notches in the ratings department from me with an ending that literally was out of left field. I have to say I didn't see that coming. The film also plays better on this side of the pond than others because a good knowledge of British history of the period would help you see what was coming. My knowledge is good, but not that good.
Nevertheless the film was clearly made to take advantage of the notoriety that Harrison got with the Landis death even though that one was a suicide.