Wonderful character development!

just watch it!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

A travelling showman called Pel Pelham (John Ireland) calls on his close friend, the bookmaker Tony Lewis (Sidney James), to discover that he is being blackmailed by a former girlfriend who calls herself Dolores. As he is engaged to be married he does not want to bring the police in for fear his wife-to-be will call off their engagement. So Pel agrees to pay the girl a visit to try and get her off Tony's back. In return, Tony puts up the money for Pel's latest act. By chance, Dolores's address is the same apartment block where the star of Pel's show lives, Henri Sapolio (Eric Pohlmann), 'The World's Famous Starving Man', who locks himself in a glass tomb and fasts for seventy days. Pel calls on Dolores and recognises her as the daughter of a famous circus owner who gave him his first job. She has had an argument with her father and has run away to London where she is struggling to make a living so has resorted to blackmail. That night as Pel and Sapolio hold a celebration party with all their circus friends to mark the opening of their new act, someone calls on Dolores at her flat and kills her. Sapolio is a chief witness since he saw the figure of a man on the darkened stairway enter her flat. But, the Scotland Yard man, Inspector Lindley (Liam Redmond), considers everyone at the party a suspect. Meanwhile, Rorke (Sidney Tafler) tries his hand at blackmailing all the principal suspects. Two more deaths follow at the circus, Tony and Sapolio, before the killer can be unmasked. Pel and the inspector set a trap by announcing that Sapolio is not actually dead, but in a coma and invite the public to see him being cared for in his cage. But, how and when will the killer make his move and will they catch him in the act?Solid, workmanlike and unpretentious Hammer second feature that is very typical of the kind of stuff the studio was making before they shot to international stardom with the horror films and reinventing that genre in the process. Directed at a fair lick by veteran 'B' picture director Montgomery Tully who succeeds in generating some tension like when Rorke taunts the killer in a tube station and as the latter's mind drifts debating whether or not to push him under an approaching train, the noise from it drowns out Rorke's voice in a suspenseful moment. The killer's identity is known to us from the start so this is no mystery movie, but its attractive and unusual setting of a traveling circus act lifts this likeable little picture to heights well above the average British 'B'. There are many familiar faces in the cast including Eric Pohlmann, best known as the voice of the unseen Blofeld in the early James Bond movies, who provides the humour as the suffering circus performer who makes his living by starving himself for 70 days (really?!) in 'The Glass Cage' of the title. Sidney James is excellent as the straight talking, down to earth and streetwise businessman; Sidney Tafler is noteworthy in one of his many slimy villian roles and the imported American leading man John Ireland is also quite good as Pel Pelham. He is most effective in the scenes with his family like when his young son, Peter, pays more attention to his father's show than his school work longing to be the next Sapolio. Although he loves it that his son is proud of him, Pel wants his son to succeed through his academic work and not be an "outsider" like him in some nice believable insight into his home life. Honor Blackman also offers a pleasant performance as Pel's wife Jenny although, despite being billed second, gets very little to do and is only in a small handful of scenes. Liam Redmond deserves praise as Inspector Lindlay and there is a great little scene where he attempts to plug Pel for information. "Look Lindlay, you do your job and I'll do mine. If I did your job I'd be on the side of the underdog" he says annoyed that he is being asked to spy on his friends. "Sometimes that's a very dangerous dog", Lindley replies. Look out for Sam Kydd as a drunken circus doctor and Bernard Bresslaw's in there too in a small unaccredited appearance. The film benefits from Walter J Harvey's atmospheric camerawork, which takes in some nice London locations around Trafalgar Square and Westminster enhancing the period atmosphere and feeling for place.

THE GLASS CAGE is a brief and snappy murder thriller from those chaps at Hammer Films. It's a bit cheaper than most of their productions but it's nonetheless a solid addition to the sub-genre of murder mystery films with a circus or fairground setting. American import John Ireland plays a carnival proprietor whose latest act is to showcase Eric Pohlmann's starving man, who literally sits in a glass cage and doesn't eat for months while the crowds flock to see him. In a slightly artificial plot, a murderer is at work, bumping off peripheral characters left right and centre, with Ireland at the heart of it. This film is too short and low budget to do little more than join the basic dots, but the excellent cast sees it through nicely. Honor Blackman and Sid James appear early on and never do so again; Sam Kydd gets to do more than his usual cameo; Ferdy Mayne and Bernard Bresslaw are fellow 'exhibits'; Sydney Tafler and Geoffrey Keen a pair of hangers-on. Liam Redmond's drawling Irish detective is the highlight here.

Thanks to the enterprise of Kit Parker Films, much of Hammer's noir output in now available on excellent DVD transfers from VCI. Pick of the bunch is "The Glass Tomb" (1955), starring an appropriately glum John Ireland, and superbly photographed in a stunningly noirish manner by Jimmy Harvey (who once told me he was Lilian Harvey's brother). And most importantly of all, in my opinion, directed (at least in some scenes or maybe all of them) by Joseph Losey, who was actually working for Hammer at this time.Frankly, there's no way in the world that the stunningly noir lighting, set-ups and acting could have been supervised and/or directed by Montgomery Tully. But I'm not surprised Losey made no move to claim this movie, because the story, while decidedly macabre, is somewhat unbelievable. Nonetheless, the script does feature perennial minor villain, Sydney Tafler, in his best role ever; and it also offers some riveting opportunities for Geoffey Keen, Sid James and Liam Redmond. Even Sam Kydd has a good part, though it must be admitted that the lovely Honor Blackman is wasted in a nothing role.

John Ireland wanders through this B movie like a penniless child in a nightmare candy store! As a freak-show promoter, he is compelled to bankroll a corpulent carny who, billed as The Starving Man, draws crowds to watch him go foodless for 70 days! Instead of turning on the two like hungry lions, mobs of curious Brits pour continuously forth to goggle the decidedly ungaunt attraction while he shaves, sleeps, and so on. Somehow, two murders occur in the midst of the mess, and so the rub. One has to wonder if the whole production (the movie, not the sideshow) is a joke on the audience, since the film is peppered with crude carnality symbolism and (for the fifties) sly sexual innuendo and double entendre. If one has a taste for oh-so-awful flicks and fool-the-rubes humor, this might be worth a peek.