Well, we enjoyed the first Hornleigh enough to invest in this one (also on suspiciously anonymous, menu-lacking DVD) and it was even better. They really ramped up the comedy and there's some truly excellent dialogue and set pieces. I just wish it was (a) a better print, and (b) came with subtitles (of course, these are available if you watch it on YouTube). Thinking of setting up my own Criterion that specifically targets niche forgotten British movies. We'd need access to whatever AI process Peter Jackson used on the WWI footage in They shall not grow old, ideally. (Maybe we'd branch out into German silents, too, so we could do a really good Hands of Orlac, but I digress.)
Anyway, our film begins with our plucky pair, Hornleigh and Sim's Bingham, in civvies, staring glumly out of the window
of one of those notorious benighted British seaside hotels (this one grandly named "Balmoral") as it is lashed with rain. It becomes clear that they've been here for 12 days already, only one of which has been anything but miserable, and it was Bingham's idea to go there instead of abroad, as Hornleigh wanted. (Why they have to go on holiday together is not revealed - have they no family or other friends?) Anyway, as the Ludo board is already taken they resort to playing snooker,
when somebody walks into the hotel with a dog. He is "Captain Fraser," supposedly ex-Royal Navy (he has the anchor tattoo to prove it) who has been out taking the sea air. He horns in on their snooker game and is proceeding to demolish them (he is clearly a bit of a shark) when he gets a phone call which makes him suddenly nervous and he demurs and leaves. Hornleigh bets that he's never even sniffed the sea because, in re-arranging the yellow and green balls he revealed that he didn't know his port from his starboard. However, that's the last they see of Fraser alive* because the next they hear (after supper) is the police coming to the hotel to report that his car fell off a cliff and he was roasted inside. Hornleigh and Bingham get dragooned to identify the body, and they do, while attempting to keep their identities secret (Bingham in particular is keen not to interrupt their holiday), even going so far to claim to be undertakers when Hornleigh lets slip that they have seen innumerable dead bodies. However, the ruse doesn't last long, in part because Hornleigh cannot stop himself taking over the the questioning of a couple who witnessed the car going over the cliff (and heard a car which had been idling nearby before the car went over the cliff and drove off immediately afterwards). This couple present the first laugh-out-loud moment because you think they're a courting couple, and the woman keeps asking that their involvement be kept secret because "his family doesn't approve" until it's revealed at the end that the family is not parents but "his wife and 4 children". That wouldn't have made it past the American censors! In general, this film is well-stocked with very solid minor actors - nary a weak link among them, and all capable of delivering a punchline. Anyway, once the local cops find out that it's Hornleigh, whose fame precedes him, they do rope him and the reluctant Bingham in, and the investigation is off (in part because Hornleigh argues convincingly that it's neither suicide nor accident ("Fraser" let his dog out of the car, for one thing). The film then bounces around from a small-town reading-of-the-will (where we first see his "cousin," played by Linden Travers,
whom we've just seen in The Lady Vanishes, complain that she was cut out of the will in favor of his old nursemaid) attended by Hornleigh disguised as an "old navy friend" of Fraser's, to London (where Bingham follows Travers' character to a house and is astonished to see Fraser alive and well* walking his dog (and whistling "Loch Lomond," as he had done at the snooker game) into the same house. Bingham breaks in and is exploring when the phone rings. He answers it and there follows the best scene in the film: unbeknownst to him, the person on the other end is Hornleigh, who found this number written by the old nursemaid and is investigating. Both affect ludicrous fake voices - first Bingham pretends to be a butler, then adopts what appears to be an American accent (because he's pretending to be a gangster!), while Hornleigh talks posh. Both finally confess to being hoodlums, one called Spider (I can't remember which) and come away convinced until Hornleigh works it out when Bingham calls him back at the station with the same phone, and Hornleigh unleashes one of his usual anti-Scottish insult barrages. Anyway, after getting off the phone Bingham is startled to discover an inert Fraser in one of the chairs in the room he's been in this whole time. Fraser has been violently struck on the head and in fact, staggers up, mumbles "Chelsea Bridge and..." and collapses dead. Finally. Anyway, Bingham is spooked and waits outside for Hornleigh and co to arrive with the wagon, by which point (predictably) the body has vanished (although Bingham is believed because (a) they find the dog, and (b) Fraser also gave him an ornate ring with a family crest. After assigning Bingham to watch Chelsea Bridge (in case that's where Fraser's corpse is to be disposed of) overnight (to no avail) Hornleigh drags the exhausted Bingham up to the country estate associated with the crest, where they find an estate sale in process because the local bigwig died a couple of weeks ago. Hornleigh works out that it must have been that corpse that they identified (by the tattoo) as Fraser after the car wreck, and aims to prove it by exhuming the coffin. They break into the crypt and discover... Fraser's body! Anyway, we're now into the final stretch which is all set in London and involves shenanigans in a hospital (where Bingham, who closely resembles one of the gang, has to play a terminal case, and Hornleigh again puts on his posh voice to play his attendant doctor)
and a gang who use said hospital in some kind of insurance scheme where they identify fatal cases that resemble one member of the gang and perform some kind of switcheroo that eluded me (is it the gang member that's insured? Presumably, given the will-reading. So does the gang member have to change identities? Or are they already fake? Too clever by half.) Anyway, the leader of the gang communicates by Ham radio (his contact with the gang is one of the more recognizable faces - an early role for Peter Bull, whom you'll recognize from Dr. Strangelove, and who has a great biography on Imdb) so his identity is secret. Great stuff! On to the third Hornleigh.
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