Excellent but underrated film

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Whoever is responsible for the story that told by this film simply didn't know of a reasonable way to pull it together, and so just let it fall apart.After an unexplained separation of six years, an American flies to the UK to meet the woman whom he loves, an actress of some fame. As he and the other passengers walk from the plane to a terminal building, a man whom he stops by chance is felled by a sniper's bullet. The sniper walked with the assistance of a crutch. It is discovered that the woman whom the American has come to see had been both sexually involved and engaged in smuggling with the man identified as the victim of the sniper; apparently she was motivated to do these things because of her longing for the American. Further, her lover had subsequently blackmailed her, and now his presumptive widow, a singer, was blackmailing her. On the way, we discover that someone with an administrative rôle at the singer's theater uses a crutch. When the actress attempts to pay the singer, the actress and the audience learn that the presumptive dead man is still alive, and being assisted by his wife. The fellow with the crutch makes an appearance and is greatly injured by the blackmailer. The police, who have been going about the business of trying to solve the murder and trying to run the actress to ground show-up. A search for the blackmailer is begun; he has for no very good reason disguised himself as the fellow with the crutch, and when the police begin looking for a man with a crutch, it does not occur to him to chuck the thing aside; instead, he retreats to a balcony. When he is spotted, the America dashes after him, instead of allowing the surrounding police to do their job. A struggle ensues, with the American finding himself to be pushed off the balcony.Were the film to break at this point, the audience would be left with many questions. Answering even just some of them in a satisfactory manner would be quite a challenge.Well, the American awakes, because it was all a dream. That was the best answer that the writers had for us. (Formally, the ending has the disembarked American and the actress happily running each towards the other, perhaps to assure us that he hasn't dreamt exactly the future he were about to enter.) If, up to that point of awakening, the story had been, in some interesting way, dream-like, then that ending might be sensible or at least forgivable. But the story had been a haphazard construction of implausibilities, and the ending was simply a cheat.

THE LIMPING MAN is a dull vehicle for Hollywood exile Lloyd Bridges, shot in Britain on a low budget. The film certainly has an arresting opening with characters disembarking from a plane at which point one of the passengers is taken out by a lurking sniper. The rest of the film charts a police investigation into the murder while at the same time the film's protagonist, Bridges, learns that his old flame is mixed up in a sinister conspiracy plot.This film is a perfect example of wasted potential. The opening makes for arresting viewing but after about 20 minutes the pace falls flat and the story just limps along lifelessly with little in the way of energy to see it through. It doesn't help that the cast feels lacklustre, with Bridges on autopilot and Moira Lister failing to show the audience why Bridges would bother making the effort of a Transatlantic crossing for her. Only Leslie Phillips is fun in a typical womaniser role. Watch out for a youthful Lionel Blair as a dancer and Jean Marsh in a debut cameo. THE LIMPING MAN also has one of the worst twist endings in all of cinema, yes, no joke, it really is a case of "it was all a dream" and just as awful as that sounds.

When in the middle of this film, Lloyd Bridges asks about a certain clue, "What do you make of it?", you may, like me, expect the flamboyant Johnny from "Airplane!" to jump in and say, "A hat, a broach, a pterodactyl!". Yes, like Peter Graves, Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen, the Bridges patriarch started off in dramatic roles, yet found his niche in spoofing his own image through comedy. It is difficult to separated him from these roles even though he originally played either heavies or action heroes before changing his image by stating, "Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!" Here, he's all serious, an American visiting England who was at the airport when a sniper shot a mystery man who turns out to be the other man in a triangle with Bridges' estranged girlfriend (Moira Lister). Bridges learns the truth and details about his girlfriend's secret life that leads him into all sorts of intrigue.American stars in British film noir and thrillers added a smooth touch to the stiff upper lip pretense of the English in all sorts of parts, good and evil, and the results could be very mixed at times. The Hammer Noir was decidedly mixed, and this ranks among them as an acceptable, if unremarkable, thriller with moments of tension and other sequences sometimes dull and slowly paced. Bridges stands out like a sore thumb among the rest of the cast, and if it wasn't for some crafty dark photography, this might well have fallen below the mark.So try to put aside your desire to quote him from "Airplane!" or the "Hot Shots" movies and instead, take a trip into the dives of London, Music Halls and pups and let Bridges remind you of what a serious actor he used to be before a diving suit and the Zucker Brothers changed his image forever.

Yeah, i know it's a bad pun, but the only fitting description for this bland offering. The entire pace is snail-like, every scene is d-r-a-g-g-e-d out until every semblance of life or any possible tension are completely eradicated and everyone talks as if they graduated from Oxford, don't you know. Even Lloyd Bridges, usually a natural for a crime movie, is completely wasted here. And the ending.....i don't even want to talk about it! Too painful.....Hard to believe that Cy Enfield, who made the bleak and chilling film noir Try And Catch Me, was involved with this dreary excuse for a thriller. Only recommended to insomniacs.