Columbia’s noir boxsets are always a cause for excitement, offering a clutch of largely forgotten films which invariably feature at least a hidden gem or two. While it is perhaps more of a mixed bag than some of the previous sets, Columbia Noir #7: Made in Britain does indeed feature three films that warrant rediscovery, while the remaining films are bolstered by the usual clutch of excellent special features, including commentaries on every film.
A PRIZE OF GOLD
Director: Mark Robson
Screenplay: Robert Buckner, John Paxton
Based on the novel by: Max Catto
Producers: Phil C. Samuel
Starring: Richard Widmark, Mai Zetterling, Nigel Patrick
Year: 1955
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: 12
Duration: 100 mins
For a long stretch at the beginning, A Prize of Gold doesn’t feel much like a British film at all. With its Canadian-American director Mark Robson (Champion, Peyton Place), its screenplay by American writers Robert Buckner (Dodge City, Yankee Doodle Dandy) and John Paxton (Murder, My Sweet, The Wild One), its American star Richard Widmark and its glossy Technicolor presentation, A Prize of Gold feels very much like a product of Hollywood. In fact it was made by British production company Warwick Films, whose widescreen ambitions often exceeded the parochial scope of some of its contemporaries. The initial stretch of A Prize of Gold was filmed on location in West Berlin and follows Widmark’s WWII sergeant Joe Lawrence, whose misadventures lead him into the path of attractive refugee Maria (future pioneering director Mai Zetterling) who is attempting to raise funds to take a group of orphaned children to a new life in Brazil. When Joe’s pal Sergeant Roger Morris (an unconvincing Scottish George Cole) informs him of a stash of recently discovered gold bullion being transferred to England, Joe sees an opportunity to help the orphans and rescue Maria from having to sell herself to a sleazy rich investor.
Maria’s prostitution aside, this setup sounds a little too wholesome for a true noir, but there is more than a hint that Joe’s main motivation for the robbery is the fire in his loins rather than the purity of his heart. He tells Maria that he never cared enough to do anything for others until he met her. Though he is ultimately drawn as a good man whose Robin Hood aspirations engulf him in a nightmare scenario, A Prize of Gold does a fine job of tapping into the moral ambiguities that drive the noir genre. A frequently cited problem with this hidden gem is that it does not know what kind of film it wants to be, vacillating between wartime adventure, romance, melodrama, heist film and noir. In fact, I find this to be one of A Prize of Gold’s major strengths. The storytelling is rich and varied but always cohesive, with the first act setting up Joe’s motivations with a greater level of complexity than a film with a shorter runtime could manage. Perhaps viewers like me who have an equal love of brutal noir and soapy melodrama are rare but A Prize of Gold hit a real sweet spot on that rarely dusted-off Venn diagram. The swooning romantic moments set against the beautifully shot images of war-torn Berlin (courtesy of Oscar-winning cinematography Ted Moore) ultimately fuel the much harder-edged second half in which a team of British criminals is assembled to pull of the heist. This is the moment that A Prize of Gold starts to feel like both a noir and a distinctly British film, with meetings in down-to-Earth English pubs and suburban domiciles.
If the opening stretch of A Prize of Gold, with its romanticism and sentiment, seems aimed at an international audience, the eccentric criminal gang that Joe and Roger assemble brings a very British flavour to the remainder of the film. Particular good are Shakespearean actor Donald Wolfit as the retired criminal who gets reluctantly drawn into the plot to a greater extent than he intended, and Nigel Patrick who steals every scene as the cynical RAF pilot whose glib opportunism clashes with, and perhaps uncomfortably challenges, Joe’s compromised idealism. The coming-together of the gang, the attempted heist and its messy aftermath are where A Prize of Gold really excels, but these scenes are informed and improved by the careful emotional groundwork layered in during those opening forty minutes. A splendid way to open this boxset, A Prize of Gold deserves to be rescued from obscurity and placed alongside Robson’s other great wartime adventure, Von Ryan’s Express.
THE LAST MAN TO HANG
Director: Terence Fisher
Screenplay: Gerald Bullett, Ivor Montagu, Max Trell, Maurice Elvey
Based on the novel by: Gerald Bullett
Producers: John Gossage
Starring: Tom Conway, Elizabeth Sellars
Year: 1956
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: PG
Duration: 75 mins
If there’s one thing on which you can’t fault The Last Man to Hang, it’s ambition. In its slender 75 minute runtime it attempts to be a mixture of murder mystery, noir and courtroom drama, with a go-for-broke final twist and discussions on the topical political issue of capital punishment and its imminent abolition. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t come close to doing any of these ambitions justice, falling short in almost every respect. The structure of the film is interesting, beginning with the discovery of an apparent murder and the arrest of a suspect, before presenting short vignettes of the various jury members receiving their calls to duty. It’s a great idea but two questions were running through my head as I watched these scenes: will I remember all this information? and Will the film have enough time left to satisfyingly elaborate on the personalities it is setting up. The answer to the latter question is no, and to the former, it doesn’t matter because the jury members will not be used anywhere near enough to justify these extensive introductions.
Director Terence Fisher was about to have a major creative and commercial breakthrough with his Hammer Horror films The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula, but in the case of The Last Man to Hang he is visibly struggling with a small budget, unenthusiastic actors and an undisciplined and ultimately ludicrous screenplay. Many negative reviews complain about the silly final twist and, while it is certainly presented as a big reveal, for anyone paying enough attention the film actually gives us all the information required to fully expect the supposed revelation. Either way, this climactic flourish feels like a desperately inadequate band aid on an evermore festering wound. The Last Man to Hang has all the makings of a potentially intelligent film but it needed to pick its themes and direction more carefully and treat them with the focus they deserved. Instead, Fisher is lumbered with an overstuffed pot that keeps boiling over.
WICKED AS THEY COME
Director: Ken Hughes
Screenplay: Ken Hughes, Sigmund Miller, Robert Westerby
Based on the novel by: Bill S. Ballinger
Producers: Maxwell Setton
Starring: Arlene Dahl, Philip Carey, Herbert Marshall
Year: 1956
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: PG
Duration: 94 mins
Directed by Ken Hughes, who would later direct the superb The Small World of Sammy Lee and children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Wicked As They Come is an atypical noir in that it makes the femme fatale its lead character. A salacious tale of a manipulative woman who uses her considerable sex appeal to bilk various men out of their money, Wicked As They Come falls short of its trashily titillating potential by instead opting to examine the root cause of its anti-heroine’s behaviour. The conclusion is predictable and under-explored, providing a climactic moment of unconvincing hope when a straightforward tale of an arch-manipulator would doubtless have been more fun without this tenuous brush with pop psychology.
Of course, a straightforward film about the evil of a manipulative woman would run the risk of appearing misogynist, and while Wicked As They Come’s blunt title hardly does it any favours in that respect, its attempt to understand and explain the behaviour of Arlene Dahl’s Kathy at least betrays a more admirable intention. For all its implied condemnation of Kathy’s actions, the men here are hardly portrayed as innocent victims either. Far from taking an accepting attitude towards the sort of contemporary values that thought Fred Astaire the ideal romantic leading man for Audrey Hepburn, Wicked As They Come portrays its gallery of easily bewitched males as pathetic, predatory, juvenile, hypocritical and pompous. Of course, there’s that one all-important male saviour in the mix, but he is very much the exception in this parade of saps.
While Dahl’s coolly understated lead performance is enjoyable to watch, Wicked As They Come quickly becomes repetitive and one can’t help but wish for a campier approach that would just make the whole thing more fun. While the film is competently made, its 95 minute runtime overstays its welcome even with the ramping up of tension in the final stretch. While contemporary sexual mores are always interesting to explore, Wicked As They Come unfortunately fails to leaven them with much in the way of entertaining drama.
SPIN A DARK WEB
Director: Vernon Sewell
Screenplay: Ian Stuart Black
Based on the novel by: Robert Westerby
Producers: M. J. Frankovich, George Maynard
Starring: Faith Domergue, Lee Patterson
Year: 1956
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: 12
Duration: 77 mins
Although I had not previously heard of any of the films included in the Columbia Noir #7 set, I knew all but one of the directors. The one I hadn’t heard of was Vernon Sewell, although on the evidence of a small amount of research and the really rather good Spin a Dark Web, this was something of an oversight on my part. Working primarily in B-movies, Sewell seems to be a respected figure in cult cinema circles, and while the trashy horror films he made at the end of his career are his most famous, his most acclaimed works are in the crime genre. A couple of early 60s films, The Man in the Back Seat and Strongroom are frequently mentioned as his best, while Spin a Dark Web seems to be accepted as a solid piece of workmanlike entertainment. Often when the fancy takes me for noir, this is exactly the sort of film I’m hoping and expecting to discover and Spin a Dark Web has certainly piqued my interest to check out more of Sewell’s work.
Although the flashier title Spin a Dark Web was used for the American release (and is retained here), I much prefer the earthier original title Soho Incident, chiefly because it highlights one of the film’s major strengths. The location shooting in 50s Soho is terrific, giving a real sense of the era and locale which elevates the more claustrophobic sets of backrooms and boxing gyms. The story of Canadian veteran Jim Bankley unwittingly falling in with a gang of London crooks is fairly standard stuff but it is elevated by good characterisations in Ian Stuart Black’s modestly effective screenplay. Martin Benson’s mob boss Rico Francesi, for instance, is amusingly non-threatening, often too preoccupied with his love of spaghetti and meat sauce to keep a proper hold on his gang. This duty instead falls to his sister, Bella (Faith Domergue, fresh from her most famous role in sci-fi classic This Island Earth), who takes a liking to Jim to an extent that he finds himself neck deep in murder.
The cast of Spin a Dark Web are all game and fun to watch but it is Sewell’s handling of the material that stands out, allowing the slow establishment of Jim’s incorporation into the gang to increase the tension in the later scenes in which the action ramps up, peaking with a borderline swashbuckling moment in a warehouse. Spin a Dark Web does shoot itself in the foot by appending an entirely unnecessary epilogue which softens what could have been an appropriately brutal ending, but by this stage the film has done enough things right to forgive this climactic moment of stuffy British piety. If you’re looking for an undemanding but thoroughly enjoyable potboiler, you could do a lot worse than this.
THE LONG HAUL
Director: Ken Hughes
Screenplay: Ken Hughes
Based on the novel by: Mervyn Mills
Producers: Maxwell Setton
Starring: Victor Mature, Diana Dors, Patrick Allen
Year: 1957
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: PG
Duration: 88 mins
Being a huge fan of Ken Hughes’ later film The Small World of Sammy Lee, I was very excited to see two of his films included in this set. While Wicked As They Come unfortunately fell well short of my expectations, The Long Haul, which Hughes shot the following year, was exactly the kind of film I was hoping it would be. Based on the novel by Mervyn Mills, The Long Haul follows the story of ex-Army NCO and family man Harry Miller (Victor Mature) who, following his discharge, is persuaded by his English wife (Gene Anderson) to forsake his dreams of returning to the United States and instead settle in Liverpool where he can work as a lorry driver for her uncle’s firm. After only a short time on the job, Harry discovers massive corruption amongst his colleagues and thinks twice about his career choice. But when he meets Lynn (Diana Dors), the girlfriend of one of the crooks, Harry finds himself drawn not only into criminal activity but also marital infidelity.
While many of the British noirs I’ve seen are a little more reticent than their US counterparts in their depiction of sleazy behaviour and moral turpitude, The Long Haul is a much bleaker and less compromised vision of the corrupting influence of sex and money on an apparently virtuous person. While not free from consequences, the protagonist’s actions depicted in The Long Haul are done so with the kind of cold detachment that makes the best noirs so troubling. There’s a melodramatic bent to the twists and turns of the film’s plot that is beautifully woven between the scenes of cigar-chomping tyrants knocking seven bells out of their rivals and dreary rain-slicked streets glowing beneath the beams of lumbering haulage vehicles. Hughes has struck the perfect tone for this story and his cast members rise to the occasion admirably. There are a couple of big stars at the top of the bill, with Victor Mature giving an achingly wounded performance as the conflicted Harry and Diana Dors making the most of one of her best roles, all repressed passion and intense vulnerability. Gene Anderson is also excellent as Harry’s wife Connie, who proves to have ulterior motives of her own.
The Long Haul received a surprisingly muted critical response and it seems to have retained that reputation throughout the years. That’s how hidden gems like this turn up as buried treasure on noir boxsets. Hopefully its release here will help elevate The Long Haul’s reputation as one of the better noirs to come out of the UK.
FORTUNE IS A WOMAN
Director: Sidney Gilliat
Screenplay: Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder, Val Valentine
Based on the novel by: Winston Graham
Producers: Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder
Starring: Jack Hawkins, Arlene Dahl
Year: 1957
Country: UK
BBFC Certification: PG
Duration: 95 mins
Amongst the recognisable writer and director names in the Columbia Noir #7 boxset, I was perhaps most excited to see those of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. As a longterm fan of classic British cinema, Gilliat and Launder are names I have often encountered. While perhaps most famous for their screenplays for Hitchcock and Carol Reed, Gilliat and Launder have written, produced and directed numerous interesting films of their own, such as Green for Danger, London Belongs to Me, Waterloo Road, Only Two Can Play and the St. Trinian’s series. Fortune is a Woman, directed by Gilliat and written/produced by Gilliat and Launder, was a film I’d never heard of before but given their record for enjoyable, witty entertainment, I was looking forward to getting to this one.
In the event, Fortune is a Woman was a bit of a mixed bag. While it clearly displays the warm humour and eccentricity of Gilliat and Launder’s work, the plot about suspected insurance fraud is convoluted to the point of confusion and Jack Hawkins feels badly miscast in the lead role of insurance investigator Oliver Branwell. Arlene Dahl, for the second time in this boxset, gives a performance that exceeds the quality of the film from which it comes, as the suspected femme fatale. There are individual scenes and moments that are excellent but the puzzle pieces are never convincingly assembled, and at times they seem to come from completely different puzzles. The result is a film that feels like it should be more fun than it actually is, but which amuses enough to warrant at least one viewing. Perhaps a second viewing might help to untangle some of those narrative knots too.
Columbia Noir #7: Made in Britain is released on limited edition Blu-ray by Indicator on 15 December 2025. Special features are as follows:
-High Definition presentations of A Prize of Gold, The Last Man to Hang, Wicked as They Come, Spin a Dark Web, The Long Haul, and Fortune Is a Woman
-Two presentations of Fortune Is a Woman: with the original UK title sequence; and as She Played with Fire, with the US titles
-Original mono audio
-Audio commentary with film historians Thirza Wakefield and Melanie Williams on A Prize of Gold (2025)
-Audio commentary with writers Barry Forshaw and Kim Newman on The Last Man to Hang (2025)
-Audio commentary with academic and curator Eloise Ross on Spin a Dark Web (2025)
-Audio commentary with film historians Will Fowler and Vic Pratt on The Long Haul (2025)
-Audio commentary with film historians Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby on Fortune Is a Woman (2025)
-Golden Opportunity: archival interview with clapper worker Geoff Glover, who fondly recalls his work on his first ever film, A Prize of Gold
-The BEHP Interview with Bill Lewthwaite (2008): archival video recording, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring the editor of A Prize of Gold in conversation with Glyn Jones
-The BEHP Interview with Anthony Mendleson (1993): archival audio recording, featuring the Fortune Is a Woman costume designer in conversation with Linda Wood and Dave Robson
-The BEHP Interview with Maxwell Setton (1991): archival audio recording, featuring the producer of Wicked as They Come and The Long Haul in conversation with John Legard and Dave Robson
-The BEHP Interview with Vernon Sewell (1994): archival audio recording, featuring the Spin a Dark Web director in conversation with Roy Fowler
-The Guardian Lecture with Ivor Montagu (1977): archival audio recording of a lecture delivered by the Fortune Is a Woman screenwriter at the National Film Theatre, London on the subject of Lenin and cinema
-Film Fanfare No. 5 (1956): British Pathé newsreel presenting a lucky competition winner visiting the set of The Last Man to Hang and meeting its cast and crew
-Lies Lanckman on ‘A Prize of Gold’ (2025): in-depth appreciation by the academic and film historian
-A Test of Love (1937): a dramatised short film on the dangers of venereal diseases, which provided an early credit for Spin a Dark Web director Vernon Sewell
-This Little Ship (1953): Fortune Is a Woman star Jack Hawkins narrates this documentary about the UK’s first nuclear weapons test
-Original theatrical trailers for A Prize of Gold, Wicked as They Come, and The Long Haul
-US theatrical trailer for Spin a Dark Web
-Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials
-New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
-Limited edition exclusive 120-page book with new essays by Jonathan Bygraves, Andrew Spicer, Pamela Hutchinson, Robert Murphy, Chloe Walker, and Bethan Roberts; an archival on-set report for A Prize of Gold; extracts from The Last Man to Hang’s pressbook; collected archival interviews with Wicked as They Come director Ken Hughes; an American Cinematographer report on The Long Haul; a reprint of a Films and Filming article on Fortune Is a Woman filmmakers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder; new writing on A Test for Love and This Little Ship; and film credits
-World and UK premieres on Blu-ray
-Limited edition box set of 6,000 individually numbered units for the UK