From my favorite movies..

A Brilliant Conflict

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

THE LOST HOURS is a fairly interesting and watchable small-time British thriller. This one has been noticeably modelled on the American film noir genre, and there's even an imported lead (Mark Stevens) to help make it feel like an American flick.The storyline is a straightforward mystery about a pilot who's slipped a Mickey Finn one night and wakes up in the morning accused of murder and with no memory of the night's events. Luckily he has a few people willing to help him keep one step ahead of the police, and a gradual uncovering of the mystery follows.Alongside Stevens, the film features the hard-working John Bentley, who gets to do something a little other than his stock hero type role. He's not very convincing in the part, though. Far better is the smouldering Dianne Foster, the femme fatale type, who really brings her rather racy screen moments to life with some heavily suggestive dialogue. There are cameos for the ubiquitous likes of Thora Hird, Ballard Berkeley, Duncan Lamont, and Sam Kydd. Altogether it's a familiar kind of picture, derivative but involving all the same.

This uses about every cliché in the book.Obviously there is a parachuted in fading American actor to partner Jean Kent.He of course served in the RAF in the war.He is drugged by accident and wakes in a strange hotel to find that he is the prime suspect for a murder.We then have all the usual devices used in these type of films including gang members who phone Stevens to tell him that they must speak to him,only not over the phone.Then of course he is found murdered.There is the obligatory car chase along a very deserted A4 ending up with an aborted attempt to fly out of the country.Whilst the film is reasonably well made everything is just so predictable.

I've recently managed to get hold of a copy of The Lost Hours and found it quite good.At an RAF reunion, an American pilot drinks a spiked drink and wakes up the following morning with blood on his suit. There was a fight at the party which has killed one of the men and the pilot becomes the chief suspect due to the blood on his suit. He's actually been set up. More murders then take place and as always with these movies, the killer is the least person you would expect...Despite the low budget, The Lost Hours is quite atmospheric at times, especially the night scenes.The cast includes Mark Stevens, Jean Kent (The Haunted Strangler) and John Bentley. The supporting cast includes well known British stars like Duncan Lamont (Frankenstein Created Woman, Quatermass and the Pit), a young Thora Hird (Last Of the Summer Wine) and Sam Kydd (Island of Terror).The Lost Hours is worth watching if you are lucky to catch it.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

Having a booze-up with a bunch of his old fly-buddies, former Royal Air Force pilot Mark Stevens, an American, gets into an altercation with one of them who goes out of his way to be insulting. They patch things up, and get on with their drinking. Next morning (or rather afternoon), Stevens wakes up in a strange hotel room only to read the headlines that the other guy has been murdered. But he can't remember a thing, having been slipped a Mickey the night before.This is Cornell Woolrich territory, though he didn't have a thing to do with it. With Scotland Yard on his tail, Stevens races against time to retrace his vanished footsteps and find the real killer. Staunchly by his side is a fiancée Jean Kent; her opposite number is temptress Dianne Foster, available wife of another of the carousers. In his investigations, Stevens finds that some of the wartime heroes have, in the post-war years, taken to less heroic pursuits, running a phony import-export racket his inopportune sleuthing threatens to expose....The Lost Hours (a.k.a. The Big Frame) is little more than a British crime programmer, but it's briskly done and keeps you awake. And despite the London landscape and the recurrent `I say, see here, old boy's that strew the dialog, its themes and story line place it neatly in `The American Style' of film noir.