THE ECHO MURDERS
UK, 1945, 75 minutes, Black and white.
David Farrar, Denis Price.
Directed by John Holloway.
The Echo Murders is a Sexton Blake thriller. He was a hero of many popular and mystery stories, who featured in films from 1915 and, especially, in the 1930s. David Farrar plays the investigator and was soon to become up a British Star with such films as Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room, Gone to Earth.
This is a brief, small-budget film. It has a World War II fifth column theme and was released at the end of the war.
There is a great deal of plot in the short running time. The focus is on a tin mine in Cornwall and various people who want to take possession of it, threaten the owner who himself his covering up for a murder he committed 20 years earlier and his bringing up of the daughter of the victim. He relies on his manager for the running of the mine.
However, there are quite a number of suspicious characters and quite a number of killings, a number seeming to be accidents on the Cornwall cliffs. There is the sinister assistant to the owner of the mine who threatens blackmail but he too is killed off. There is a local doctor who asserts that the deaths were accidents and his later revealed as the mastermind. There is also a suspicious a local who goes walking in the middle of the night and witnesses murders. As well there is the local constabulary.
The owner of the mine sends a message to Sexton Blake who comes to investigate the proceedings, is threatened when he discovers the headquarters of the fifth column in caves in the cliffs. With the consent of the government authorities, his disguises himself, echoes of Sherlock Holmes, to investigate further.
David Farrar also appeared as Sexton Blake in the earlier film Meeting Sexton Blake. Dennis Price appears as the manager of the mine who is arrested one suspicious of murder. He is released and helps in the final confrontation with the villains.
The film has its moments, is more like an episode in a television series in later decades, and is of historical interest as a small British movie from the industry during World War II.
