Hide and Seek [DVD]

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Ian Carmichael – one of British cinema’s most accomplished character actors and immortalised in the television role of P. Ian Carmichael, Janet Munro and Curd Jürgens star in Cy Endfield’s thriller about a Cambridge professor who becomes involved in an dangerous game of cat and mouse while trying to track down an old friend. The difference being that there is no case of mistaken identity and being an astrophysicist, Carmichael does not need to rely on dumb luck to get himself out of a situation.

Maggie tells Garrett to meet her at the train station, where she convinces him to board the train with her. Unknown to them, Garrett has rigged the alarm on his wristwatch to cause the boat to explode, killing the three henchmen.David Garrett is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, working on tracking Russian rocket launches. Sadly, the decidedly naff title did summarise and embody the film only too well, both as regards final product and as a description of the plot. Garrett starts to walk down the road and comes across a policeman on a bicycle who goes back to the cliff with him.

There are some good shots at Watford Junction in this thriller, taken on the now disused former platform 12. When they approach the car they find the driver is Richter, who forces them into the car at gunpoint and they drive towards an isolated cliff top. When Melnicker notices two individuals enter the hall he is distracted and excuses himself for the lunch break. The shot was used in 'Escapade', 'Beat Girl' and 'Left, Right and Centre' while the water troughs can also be seen in 'One Wild Oat' and 'Train of Events'.The next few hours involve Garrett being treated as a guest, while he waits for the submarine to arrive. Ian Carmichael, overdoing both comic and dramatic effects, makes an unprepossessing hero; most of the minor roles are dully overacted; and even Hugh Griffith, gleefully hamming it up as a modern Noah fleeing the nuclear deluge, fails to make his scenes seem anything other than tiresome irrelevancies designed to bolster a faltering plot. Maggie deliberately reads the road sign incorrectly and makes them walk in the opposite direction to where they should be going. Starting in sixties London, Carmichael has some encounters which seem random with strange characters. At that time I hadn’t seen many Endfield films, although I had a certain interest in the Blacklisted filmmakers.

Curt Jurgens pops up for the finale in a trial run for his Bond villain role and Janet Munro is quite lovely. Alongside him is the lively Janet Munro, and the two make enjoyable company as the plot carries off rather well. As David is driven away, he looks back to see two agents (Monty Warren and Cyril Cross) speaking with Melnicker. Garrett arrives at the Ministry of Defence for a meeting, and while in the bathroom a box of chess pieces is dropped off to him that his driver believes he mistakenly left in the car. The customary paraphernalia of sinister men in raincoats, thugs in dark glasses, and stern old ladies on trains, is here manipulated flatly and without effect; intriguing possibilities (like the black knight) are started up, then made nothing of; and the dénouement, after a lengthy but unconvincing disquisition from Curt Jurgens explaining how his whole plot was arranged like a chess game, is crammed into about forty seconds flat.British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Too many mysterious happenings with too little explanation sink this comedy-thriller from the start. There are shades of Alfred Hitchcock’s man on the run tales here (especially The 39 Steps, which the basic structure loosely resembles), sharing a similar sense of wry humour that runs throughout the story, an ever-so-slightly winking sensibility enhanced by the amount of comedy actors making up the supporting cast.

In reality, of course, this is much lighter and at best a comedy thriller in the genre of 'The 39 Steps'; the similarities continue when we are presented with a buttoned-up emotionally repressed academic (Carmichael) paired with a free-spirited, slightly wacky and alluringly beautiful spirit (Janet Munro). At the meeting, the Major tells Garrett that he must stop socialising with Melnicker since he is a known communist. At least the denouement explains everything even if i wasn't exactly sure what was going on beforehand.Ian Carmichael made a wonderful career from playing well-meaning, naive and gullible young gentlemen, so my interest was piqued when I saw that Hide and Seek was billed as a 'thriller'. We are aware that there are films on the site that were added when the criteria for the inclusion of locations was very different from today and, as a result, there may be scenes missing from some productions. The story concerns a chemist (Ian Carmichael) who falls for a girl (Janet Munro), but she traps him to a seaside hideaway where he is to be shanghaied and sold to a foreign power. Having jumped from the train when the two agents were encountered, David and Maggie say goodbye to Wilkins (Hugh Griffith) after spending the night on his narrow-boat. They find the life jackets have been attached to trousers, and that Garrett and Maggie faked the attempt for the island.