If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Its World War II and those Nazi night raids are driving the British country folk balmy. When a postman is injured and rushed into surgery, he looks suspiciously at one of the doctors and one of the nurses taking on his case whom he recognizes. The next thing you know, he's gone onto that great post office in the sky and the entire staff is under suspicion for deliberately causing his death. One of the nurses (Judy Campbell) is extremely jealous of colleague Rosamund John and doctor Leo Genn (whom she discovers kissing), and at a hospital function, she denounces the postman's killer without mentioning a name, only hinting about hidden evidence that will unleash their identity. She too ends up dead, leading to a showdown with the five suspects and Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim), a know-it-all detective who is in for a few surprises of his own. The Inspector is the film's narrator and reveals enough clues to get the intrigue started.Tension builds at the party during a dance to "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" which later becomes as dramatic a theme music as Alfred Hitchcock used with "The Merry Widow Waltz" in "Shadow of a Doubt" and "The Strawberry Blonde" in "Strangers on a Train". The film can be rather slow in spots, but as the surprises explode, the film just gets more and more amusing. It is astonishing to note that the film seems technically advanced beyond its release year as some British films tended to seem compared to the studio controlled product in Hollywood. Director Sidney Gilliat doesn't give us a slower paced narrative for no reason; Every detail is explored. The film's photography is outstanding. Other than Trevor Howard, Alastair Sim and Leo Genn, the cast may not be familiar to a lot of American viewers, but everybody is fine and each of them have great moments to shine. Stick with the film and you'll be greatly amused by the twists and turns in the plot that you don't see coming. Sim, best known to American audiences for perhaps the most popular version of "A Christmas Carol", plays a role I thought might be a continuing character in other films, but I was mistaken. He seemed very comfortable in the part for this to have been a regular role for him. He has a great final surprise and his response to it is ingenious.

This movie has everything going for it: good cast, good cinematography, good story, but Alastair Sim (who plays the inspector) is a wildly overrated actor and really ruins this movie. The odd way in which he portrays the inspector breaks the mood of the film and is a major distraction. Perhaps not surprising: Alastair Sim was an odd character in life too (see Wikipedia), so perhaps to be expected, but it's a shame: Trevor Howard and the rest of the cast do a great job. This could have been a mystery treat with a better actor cast in Sim's role.See it if you're a fan of Brit mysteries, otherwise, don't waste your time.

This film is filled with little absurdities and improbable plot elements, the most salient being the willingness of Nurse Linley at the end to submit to an operation when she knows that she is in mortal danger.But 'Green for Danger' is tremendously entertaining and goes a long way to rehabilitating the tired whodunit genre so familiar to aficionados of 30s movies. Alastair Sim is a bit mannered, but his teasing and irony spice up many a scene. The atmosphere is threatening and engrossing: dark shadows, V-1 bombs flying overhead, the knowledge that there is a murderer in our midst, and above all the disquieting ambiance of the operating room -- helpless patients wheeled about on gurneys, bright lights, lots of masked people hovering over the patient, the focus on the dials and canister used in the anesthesiology of the period. Not to mention the attractive (Sally Gray) and capable (Trevor Howard) cast.The result is that the viewer cares about what happens and is greatly amused keeping up with the clues and speculating about the guilty party. In my opinion a lot more fun than the 30s Hollywood product. Strongly recommended.

Green for Danger (1946)With such a tightly interwoven plot and great cast, directed with precision, and filmed in a German Expressionist style to beat the band, it's amazing this doesn't have a larger reputation. It does start a little ambiguously, with some fast talking, but even here, with V1 rockets dropping and high stakes life and death operating room dramas (and love affairs) in the works, it's pretty amazing stuff.Alastair Sims is the narrator, and he arrives in person after the first third, changing the tenor of the movie, and adding exactly the right humor and cleverness to the soap opera dramatics of the rest of the nurses and doctors in this British enclave. We are told in the first minutes that three murders will happen, and then, one by one, they do. But we never anticipate exactly who or how, and as a classic British whodunit, this is among the best.Director Sidney Gilliat is better known (if known is the word at all here in America) as a producer (with Frank Launder) and a writer (including for several famous films directed by other directors like Alfred Hitchcock). But his feel for the movies, and for directing at the highest level, is shown here handily, especially in his keeping the logic of the complicated plot clear even as it swirls visually, and with lots of actors each with important roles. It's quite a treat to watch, and you could probably watch it twice in a row and enjoy it more the second time.Of course, what most mysteries have against them as great literature, or great movies, is their built in avoidance of depth of feeling, or of meaning. But not everything is Shakespeare, and as riveting, moving entertainment, it's hard to get any better.