|
The Tiger (Tod Slaughter) is terrorizing the neighbourhood, strangling
his victims to death and then robbing them blind. Hawkshaw the Detective
(Robert Adair) is hot on his trail, he only has one problem: He hasn't got
the faintest idea what the Tiger might look like ... Hawkshaw has one
problem though: He has no idea what the Tiger might look like. The Tiger
has one weakness though - he's in love with singer May Edwards (Marjorie
Taylor), but she fails to pay any attention to him since she's engaged to
Bob Brierley (John Warwick). So the Tiger plants forged bank notes on Bob,
then has him reported to the police to have him thrown into the slammer.
And then the Tiger decides to mend his ways, but not because he wants to
become a honest citizen, just because he doesn't want to risk his own hide
anymore - and so he becomes a benevolent squire who helps criminals on
parole (or ticket of leave men, if you may) find their way back into
society - only to exploit their talents for his own ulterior
motives. As the benevolent squire he becomes quite friendly with May, and
he even helps Bob get a job at Gibson's (Peter Gawthorne) bank when he's
released on parole - but then he sees to it that Bob is fired from that
job as well as four others in order to crush his spirits and lead him into
a life of crime. When the Tiger thinks he has convinced Bob to go rogue,
he approaches him with a proposition, to help him break into Gibson's
bank. Bob wills in ... or so it seems, actually, he only helps Hawkshaw
set up a trap for the Tiger. It all ends with the Tiger breaking his neck
trying to escape from Hawkshaw and his men and Bob's honour being
restored. The play of the same name by Tom Taylor this film was
based on is said to have been one of the inspirations for Sherlock
Holmes and did focus on the character of Hawkshaw the
Detective - but for this adaptation, the play was remodelled to focus on
its star, famed British screen villain Tod Slaughter, and thus the baddie
of the piece, the Tiger, becomes the center of attention. However, this
is one of the lesser Tod Slaughter films, basically because he's more at
home at horror thrillers than crime movies, and his sadistic madmen with a
taste for the macabre are much more memorable than the plain old arch
criminal from this here film. On top of that, the plot of this film is a
bit too simplistic and straight forward to create too much interest away
from Slaughter, so it all leads to an a tad boring movie.
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
