Tower of Terror | |
---|---|
Directed by | Lawrence Huntington |
Written by | John Reinhardt (story) John Argyle |
Produced by | John Argyle |
Starring | Wilfrid Lawson Michael Rennie Movita Morland Graham |
Cinematography | Ronald Anscombe Walter J. Harvey Bryan Langley |
Edited by | Flora Newton |
Music by | Charles Williams |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Pathé Pictures Monogram Pictures (US) |
Release date |
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Running time | 78 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Tower of Terror is a 1941 British wartime thriller film directed by Lawrence Huntington and starring Wilfrid Lawson, Michael Rennie and Movita. [1] It was made at Welwyn Studios with location shooting on Flat Holm off the Welsh coast. [2]
The film makes no attempt at either German or even German accents and all German characters speak with an educated English accent.
Anthony Hale is a British secret agent in Germany who takes a job as assistant to lighthouse keeper Wolfe Kristan under the assumed name of Albers. He plans to return to Britain with some valuable papers. The plan is for him to be picked up by a British boat. He meets and befriends Marie, who has escaped from a concentration camp and pretends to be the keeper's niece. She had tried to evade capture by the local police by jumping into the sea but was rescued and taken to the lighthouse by the deranged Kristan, who sees in her the image of Marthe, his wife whom he killed 16 years earlier and buried in the basement of the lighthouse. Kristan has a hook instead of a right hand giving him a sinister appearance. This disability increases his need for an assistant.
Kritan tries to kill Albers by hoisting him up the side of the lighthouse on the pretence of a high-level task but then releases the winch, hoping Albers will fall to his death. This does not work.
After several violent encounters with Kristan, Hale and Marie manage to make their way down to the beach where they board the British boat. The lighthouse is destroyed by gunfire from a German destroyer whose captain had been alerted by Hale's signal to his rescue vessel. Kristan, prostrate with grief over his wife's opened grave, is killed during the bombardment.
The New York Times reviewer called it a "dire little melodrama...A penny dreadful thriller about a mad lighthouse keeper on the German-occupied coast, it cannot overcome the lack of a preposterous story preposterously acted, or a sound track which gives the impression that every one is speaking with a gag over the mouth. Even Wilfrid Lawson, that excellent actor, gives a ludicrously overwrought portrait of insanity as the keeper...Not good". [3] In Beacons in the Dark, film historian Robyn Ludwig critiques the film for its "deranged lighthouse keeper... a threatening presence, with bulging eyes, unkempt moustache and mutilated arm with a sharp metal prosthetic in place of a right hand." [4]
Ronald Howard was an English actor and writer. He appeared as Sherlock Holmes in a weekly television series of the same name in 1954. He was the son of the actor Leslie Howard.
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Wilfrid Lawson was an English character actor of screen and stage.
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The Seventh Survivor is a 1942 British spy war film directed by Leslie S. Hiscott and starring Austin Trevor, Linden Travers and John Stuart. It was produced by British National Films and Shaftesbury Films. Shot in 1941, it was released in January the following year. The film was made at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith as a second feature. It was one of several British films of the time that take place predominantly on lighthouses including Tower of Terror and Sabotage at Sea.
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The Needles Lighthouse is an active 19th century lighthouse on the outermost of the chalk rocks at The Needles on the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom, near sea level. Designed by James Walker, for Trinity House at a cost of £20,000, it was completed in 1859 from granite blocks. It stands 33.25 metres (109.1 ft) high and is a circular tower with straight sides. It replaced an earlier light tower on top of a cliff overhanging Scratchell's Bay, which was first lit on 29 September 1786.
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