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Five Days (Paid to Kill) (1954)
Topic Started: Mar 22 2012, 10:17 PM (276 Views)
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Apparently, director Montgomery Tully was called in whenever Hammer came up with a film about an American in England whose life and/or freedom was on a tight deadline. After Dan Duryea had 36 Hours, though, 120 hours for Dane Clark in Five Days doesn't seem so bad.

Clark is an unsuccessful businessman who calculates that he’s worth more dead to his wife than he is while he's breathin', and calls upon an old rough-house pal of his to do him in. The pal’s not too keen on it, so Clark beats him up, but good, so that the guy’ll get mad enough to do it (it's a crazy idea, but it works). Well, one thing leads to another, and a big business deal comes through and Dane is saved. Um, only the hitman doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. Or has he? Somebody’s sure tryin’ hard to bump off Mr. Clark, and he’d better figure out who it is before his widow-to-be can collect on that insurance policy.

Another minor winner from Hammer and another good performance from Dane Clark. Clearly, not a lot goin' on here, originality-wise, but the studio was getting quite efficient at churning these things out. There’s some good, noirish photography going on on the dark streets of London, the supporting cast is appealing enough, and the inevitable policeman that shows up is suitably, hilarious droll (“You must admit there's been an explosion,” he says matter-of-factly after Clark's office has just been turned into smithereens). The women in the film (wife Thea Gregory, secretary Cecile Chevreau) are lovely. Interestingly, the finale of the film, a showdown in a greenhouse, is a precursor to the stylish horror that the studio would be known for a few years later (minus the monsters, of course).

Paid to Kill (the US title) is matched with a later Hammer noir, The Glass Tomb, on Vol. 5 of the VCI Hammer Noir set. The soundtrack to the film, by the way, is rather scratchy, not anything I've noticed with any of the other Hammer/Lippert films on DVD.
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