What makes it different from others?

Waste of time

Excellent, a Must See

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

CLOUDBURST is one of the low budget thrillers that Hammer Films made in the 1950s before they became known for their horror efforts. It's also their first film shot at Bray Studios. The film is less focused on plot than most 1950s-era crime films and more interested in characterisation, with a real depth to the protagonists here. The unknown-to-me Robert Preston plays a codebreaker working in the post-war era who is expecting a baby with his wife Elizabeth Sellars (a real stalwart of the genre during this era). When sh'es run down and killed in the road by a murderous couple, he decides to exact his own brand of revenge, one which takes place outside of the law. The film is low budget in scope and feel, and Francis Searle's direction is merely pedestrian, but the script really sparkles and offers intriguing insight into the mindsets of those involved. Preston is excellent and the strong supporting cast includes dependables like Colin Tapley, George Woodbridge, and Noel Howlett.

The American actor Robert Preston (who because of his accent was excused in the story as someone who grew up Canada) stars in this British film which has a genuine noir story and atmosphere, similar to the Americans noirs of the time. It was written jointly by ex-spook Leo Marks and the director, Francis Searle. The next year, 1952, Searle is said to have directed a 30-minute film entitled BULLDOG DRUMMOND, starring Robert Beatty as Drummond. IMDb records no further information about it, and there is no record of its having been released or transmitted. This situation is a strange one, because Robert Beatty starred as Bulldog Drummond five years later in a 30-minute film entitled BULLDOG DRUMMOND AND THE LUDLOW AFFAIR (1957, see my review) directed by David MacDonald. (It was the 22nd of the 25 Drummond films, if one disregards the Searle film.) That 1957 film, which I have seen and reviewed, was a poor TV pilot film. Could the two 30 minute films have been confused with one another perhaps? Or could the 1952 attempt by Searle have been recut for the Rheingold Theatre series by the TV series director David MacDonald (who retired in 1963) and Searle's name taken off? This latter suggestion seems the most likely to me. In other words, the original would have failed as a pilot so that no Drummond series was commissioned, but the pilot was disguised as something new and stuck into another series as a one-off. The coincidence of the same duration and the same star and the same decade are too much. But that is enough about Searle. Returning to this film, it is very good and has an air of authenticity about it. Preston's wife is played by the weird Elizabeth Sellars, who speaks in a semi-articulate and languid manner as if she were slurring her speech through a wall of medication. She is bizarre but fascinating to look at, in the way that an animal which was not quite true to type might be, if studied closely in a zoo, while scientists speculated about what had gone wrong with its DNA. However, the weirdness of Sellars works very well with the story, and in any case she is killed off early on, so that she cannot become too irritating. Sellars was not always as weird as this, for she appeared in 62 films and generally managed to do very well and appear quite normal. She was, for instance, excellent in THE CHALK GARDEN (1964, see my review). In this story, Preston is madly in love with her and the film turns into a revenge tale where he determines to avenge her death by a hit-and-run driver. Her death is particularly poignant in that, the horrors of the War being finally behind them (the story is set in 1946), she is looking at a field which Preston wants to buy as part of their happy future. And then she is without warning run over by two criminals escaping a crime scene at speed. So what could be more noirish than that? The despair of the War, having been lifted momentarily, then turns into a lasting doom. This was why noir was noir. And it is rare to find the essence of noir so well expressed in a British film, as the English being far more stoical than the Americans (the makers of most noir), they tended to express their angst with less fervour and gloom, as they were so much more used to everything going wrong anyway, including their nearest and dearest being suddenly killed without warning in the bombing of London. This film is a notable addition to the list of good British films of the early fifties.

Poss Spoiler - This post-war-time black & white film from England stars Robert Preston (from films Music Man, Beau Geste) as Robert Graham, a married, WW II veteran. Placed in England in 1946, Cloudburst co-stars Elizabeth Sellars, Colin Tapley, Harold Lang, and Lyn Evans. We are shown right at the beginning that he speaks Japanese, French, Spanish, & Italian, and works in the secret Codes/Decryption office in England. All is well until a couple in a car kills someone close to him during a hit and run, then drives off. Determined to get revenge, he goes in search of them, and the chase is on. There WAS a British film also titled "Cloudburst" from 1922, but IMDb and Wikipedia have almost no information on that one. This 1951 film was from the play by Leo Marks, who really did work in the Coding/Encryption office during WW II. Screenplay and direction by Francis Searle. Interesting dilemma near the end, where two suspects who really ARE guilty of separates crimes deny knowing each other, to avoid prosecution. Will justice be done? The ending can be guessed, if one thinks about it, (but they didn't...) Entertaining story, no giant plot-holes. Also quite good quality sound and lighting, which wasn't always prevalent in British films back then.

This is a tightly-constructed mystery of the pre-Black Mask style, in which the solving of the crime -- here a potential serial killer -- must be tracked down, and the only clear clue is a bit of paper at the scene of the crime with a cypher code.The movie tries to add psychological drama by turning it from a "Whoodunnit" to a "Howcatchem" a style of mystery familiar to all fans of the old "Columbo" TV movie series, with the added punch that it is told from the viewpoint of the killer -- in this case, Robert Preston, who is an American who is somehow running a code-breaking division for the British government. Motivations are established early, but the whole thing is rendered a bit flat by the lack of details that surround the personnel. The result is a well-told story that is not, alas, particularly gripping.