INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH GOES TO IT/ MAIL TRAIN

UK, 1941, 87 minutes, Black-and-white.
Gordon Harker, Alastair Sim, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley, Percy Walsh.
Directed by Walter Forde.

Gordon Harker and Alastair Sim made quite an impact in 1939 with two Inspector Hornleigh films. Harker is from Scotland Yard, a bit full of himself at times, but expert disguises and going undercover. Alastair Sim is always entertaining, a master of facial expressions.

By the time of the release of this film, World War II had started and the screenplay, by Frank Launder and Val Guest, significant writers and directors of the 1940s and 50s, includes a story of the Fifth Column.

At the beginning of the film, the inspector is dictating his memoirs to Bingham who notes constantly that he is not included. There is also a rival Inspector. There is also an army job to which the inspector and Bingham are assigned. However, it is not a star job, the two having to become recruits, do the drills, but also investigate disappearances of stores.

After lots of marches and drills, the men are given a night out and Bingham teams up with one of the waitresses at the local café. He confides too much to her and the authorities find that information is being communicated beyond the camp. They have to investigate the source of the leaks, Bingham taking the waitress to the cinema and her reacting badly to his insinuations about the information – but he follows her to the local dentist who is significant for the fifth column.

Also involved are the dentist’s wife, played by Phyllis Calvert in an early role, as well as Raymond Huntley as the principal of the school – with the inspector pretending to be a classics professor and going on the staff. There is an amusing scene where he gets the boys in the class to pretend to be detectives and get a lot of information about the activities of the principal.

There is a murder and mystery when the dentist is found dead after the inspector and Bingham have been searching his premises and a man with a toothache comes in, Bingham eventually having to remove the teeth using laughing gas.

And, it becomes more complicated with information about an address for letters every day from the headmaster, an address the turns out to be false. The postmaster helps (in the opening of the film assures audiences this kind of thing does not happen with the post). The inspector disguises himself as a postal sorter, a fellow sorter is part of the fifth column and, in fact, so is the postal chief on the train who sends out the transmissions – something which has puzzled the authorities because there is no fixed place for the transmissions.

The three films of the inspector and Bingham were very enjoyable – but, sadly, this was the last.