What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

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

Blistering performances.

This is a very tricky intrigue which no one can make head or tail of to begin with, as no one can understand why anyone would try to mask as a war casualty long after the war is over, leading to constantly denser fog of a mysterious intrigue involving buskers, who actually lead the perplexing events - they are the chief charm of the film, although there are many such, amazing characters above all, Laurence Naismith as the canon, Bernard Miles as the gang leader, Kenneth Griffith as Crutches, and some fabulous old ladies, Beatrice Varley as the unfathomable Lucy Cash for one. Donald Sinden is the leading male, but although a good reliable actor, he always plays himself and was never very versatile. Muriel Pavlow is better. But the intrigue is the main thing.The lurid photography adds a special flavour to the film, - as the kidnapped victim is dragged away his despair is reflected in the photography of all the neon signs that are passed, the camera's way of following the murderer gives him some mythic magic until he finally appears, and so on. This film is full of tricks, the action is very dense and concentrated and horribly exciting until the mystery is cleared, - and then follows a cliffhanger.Much underrated, this is a film that deserves some attention.

Up till the half way mark this is an absorbing thriller.Then we are finally introduced to Johnny Havoc.Here is a man who has just broken out of prison.His hair is neatly combed,clean shaved,with a suit and tie and nice clean raincoat.A bit unlikely.The performance of Tony Wright then completely unbalances the film.We then have a scene in the church between Wright and Naismith which is both silly and illogical.Why would anyone disclose to a homicidal maniac the location of the treasure was seeking and then still still waiting to be stabbed?The climax is to say the least ill conceived and gives one the feeling of anti-climax.Donald Sinden isn't able to say too much as his mouth is taped shut for much of the film. Incidentally the year this film was made the government passed the Clean Air Act and as a result the smogs shown in this film became a thing of the past.

I saw this gripping,atmospheric little picture on its initial British release half a century ago.I was eight years old,and it's one of a handful of British pictures from that era which haunted me for years. It's very rarely shown on British T.V.,so I never got to see it again until 1985. It had held up remarkably well, and I've watched the videotaped copy I made several times since. As far as I'm aware it was never made commercially available on video, and I'm hoping it might join the growing number of rare British thrillers from the fifties made available on DVD.Director Roy Baker is probably best known these days for the horror pictures he made for Hammer and Amicus in the seventies, all of which are markedly inferior to his earlier British work. His first picture, the moody psychological thriller "The October Man",(1948) starring John Mills,is exceptionally good, and "Tiger in the Smoke" has all the same virtues; a strong cast of seasoned character actors, a pungent sense of place, highly effective suspense and a sinister aura of moral decay. Early scenes involving a seedy gang of ex-commando street musicians are masterly.Muriel Pavlow was surely the most beautiful and talented of the Rank Organisation "charm school" actresses, and Tony Wright is chillingly effective as the psychotic Johnny Havoc, whose search for hidden treasure sets the plot in motion. The critic and theorist Raymond Durgnat wrote in 1969 that this was the most dreamlike British film outside of the horror genre. It deserves wider appreciation.

During the late 1940s and the 1950s the subject of juvenile gangs and delinquency took a hold in London. The culmination of this was the creation of the image of the "Teddy Boy", who was like our delinquents - a young adult with attitude problems. In the hands of some writers it became a subject of national malaise as in the play LOOK BACK IN ANGER, with the young upset at how they were being cheated of their futures by the so-called blunders of the previous two or three generations. But in the here and now it also led to the recognition of a criminal problem: The urban youth who had nothing to do but have sex and get into trouble. A series of youthful killers in the early 1950s culminated in the Derek Bentley - Christopher Craig case, where a constable was killed, and the the actual killer could not be tried (he was too young). His mentally challenged friend, who made the mistake of shouting, "Let him have it Chris", was hanged. We still are not sure if Bentley wanted Craig to shoot or to hand the gun over to the constable. Comically the figure of the Teddy Boy was spoofed as a clumsy idiot by Peter Sellers in THE LADYKILLERS. But the really less pleasant aspect of such a type was well played by Tony Wright as Jack Havoc in this film. He is the terror of every soul in the district of London he resides in, most of whom clam up when the police try to find out who is terrorizing them, and where he is. Nobody will reveal a fact - he claims that he has all the answers - he knows how to control the world. It is not brains or cunning: He has discovered the "Science of Luck". He believes if you believe in luck you will create it for yourself. It is not until his world blows up in his face, as it did in that of his older American contemporary Cody Jarrett in WHITE HEAT, that he realizes there is a limit to such luck.Bernard Miles as his older gang lieutenant (originally the boss until Jack took over) is wonderful as a seedy type who would like to break Jack's neck but knows if something goes wrong he will be lucky to be left a cripple only. Laurence Naismith plays the decent local church canon, whose one effort to help this psychotic ends in his near murder. Donald Sinden is the local decent common man who helps bring down the local monster.It's not shown too frequently (I saw it about 1983 or so). But it was a really good little thriller well worth the watching.