A wronged beauty commits suicide, and Dennis O’Keefe’s hero solicits a killing-for-hire to avenge her. Director Burt Balaban’s murder tale has a twisty surprise or two but not much else going for it. Star O’Keefe looks unhappy and Ann Sears is just a beautiful observer, which gives Anton Diffring’s sneering, slimy villain the opportunity to steal the picture outright. His fans will want to take note. It’s a minor oddity from 1950s England … hearing O’Keefe and Diffring voice the agenda for a perfect torment-slaying is pretty weird.

Lady of Vengeance
Blu-ray
MGM Amazon
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 73 min. / Mistress to Murder / Street Date February 18, 2025 / Available from Allied Vaughn / 19.95
Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Ann Sears, Anton Diffring, Patrick Barr, Vernon Greeves, Eileen Elton, Frederick Schiller, Jacqueline Curtis, George Mulcaster.
Cinematography: Ian D. Struthers
Art Director: Harry White
Wardrobes: Irma Birch
Film Editor: Eric Boyd-Perkins
Composer: Phil Cardew
Written by Irve Tunick
Produced by Burt Balaban, Bernard Donnenfeld
Directed by Burt Balaban

This marginal noir feature was produced in England by the American company Princess Production Corporation, a tiny independent that took several spins on the moviemaking roulette wheel. The main creative in charge was Burt Balaban, who produced and sometimes directed; the films had commercial ideas but usually fell short in the script department.

The four or five Princess pictures soon ended up as late night TV fodder: Patricia Neal in  Stranger from Venus, John Derek in  High Hell. Balaban later made a lasting impact at 20th Fox, helping Peter Falk get his career started with  Murder, Inc.. His  Mad Dog Coll was the feature debut of Gene Hackman.

Released by United Artists, 1957’s Lady of Vengeance shapes up as a mostly undistinguished programmer, bolstered by a notable performance or two. It’s a murder mystery with plotting that includes a couple of clever twists one would expect on a TV episode of  One Step Beyond or  Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The fact that they’re not always predictable doesn’t make them more exciting. The film’s pace is uneven, with signs that it may have been cut down from a longer rough cut assembly. It’s just interesting enough to engage. Like one of those Hitchcock TV shows, we stick around to find out how it will be resolved.

The film’s initial title Mistress to Murder strikes us as much more appealing. The show ends up as a very odd murder thriller; I should think its main appeal will be to fans of horror star Anton Diffring.

Publisher William T. Marshall (Dennis O’Keefe) imposes a hard-hitting American journalism style on the staff of his London newspaper. He is deeply affected when Scotland Yard Inspector Madden (Patrick Barr) brings the news that his 20-year-old ward Melissa Collins (Eileen Elton) is dead, by suicide. Marshall remembers how she rebelled against his house rules, and ran off with Larry Shaw (Vernon Greeves), a playboy band leader. Then a letter arrives, sent by Melissa before her death — it says she was grievously abused by her lover and asks Marshall to exact a terrible revenge for her.

Hiding his plans from his personal secretary Katie Whiteside (Ann Sears), Marshall approaches the millionaire philatelist Emile Karnak (Anton Diffring) with a proposal he can’t ignore. Marshall demonstrates that he has plenty of blackmail material on Karnak’s hidden life as a criminal mastermind. Karnak plans major heists, collects his money up front and takes no part in the actual robberies. Blackmail is the stick, but the carrot for Karnak is the opportunity to possess the most coveted postage stamp in the world. All Karnak must do is formulate another plan … not a heist, but a perfect murder for an unnamed victim. A simple killing is not enough: as per Melissa’s wish, the victim also needs to suffer.

Katie realizes that her boss is acting strangely, and gets back in touch with Inspector Madden. Marshall says he is making plans for a vacation, but Katie and Madden become concerned that Larry Shaw’s life might be in danger.

Lady of Vengeance has several checks in the plus column. The tricky premise generates interest on its own, despite its reliance on highly unlikely happenings: when Marshall needs something to tempt Karnak, he just happens to acquire the world’s most treasured rare stamp?  For some reason, audiences accept that kind of work-backward-from-the-climax storytelling logic. The film’s second and biggest asset is the third-billed Anton Diffring. The actor gets a chance to show off what he can do with a juicy role — we’d bet this performance is what brought him to the attention of Hammer Films.

The movie has issues with pace and timing. It also feels ‘editorially suspicious’ — some scenes appear to have been greatly shortened, and several scene transitions just feel wrong. Early on we get a one-shot ‘visit to the morgue’ that has almost no reason to be there. Later on comes a major dramatic juncture where some kind of transition buffer is needed. But two static dialogue scenes in different locations just join together with a dissolve.

The movie certainly plays, and the writing isn’t entirely bad. But the production is at the level of a Monogram movie. William Marshall is a big publishing magnate, yet Katie is practically his only employee. His fancy office and stately mansion are represented by a few cramped sets. A big international philatelic auction and Larry Shaw’s jazz nightclub are also under-produced. Perhaps Balaban and his writer thought the audience would fill in the details, but the result looks like TV work.

What really hurts is the movie’s failure to establish Eileen Elton’s Melissa Collins as someone who could inspire such a radical obsession for vengeance. A clumsy flashback shows the very inexpressive Melissa telling off her guardian and driving away with the randy bandleader. We have no idea whether Marshall is doing right by imposing such a tight leash on Melissa. Is she a real troublemaker, or just a mixed-up kid?

Expatriate American star Dennis O’Keefe plays the whole movie in an uncommunicative funk. We look for but find no sign that William Marshall is himself sexually fixated on Melissa. We see him ordering people about, and when Melissa dies his facial expression turns to stone. From then on Marshall might as well be a robot. He remains emotionally remote even when Katie makes a romantic overture, and his temper stays neutral as well. Even when blackmailing Karnak into planning a murder, he plays shut-off, not obsessed.

William Marshall commits himself to exacting Melissa’s vengeance from beyond the grave. It unwinds in a logical but mechanical manner. How will Marshall lure Larry Shaw to a lonely house on the beach?  The actual method of killing is left a secret, but we think we have that figured out, when Karnak admires a shotgun on the wall in Marshall’s study. We also wonder what’s up when we see Marshall supervising some construction in progress on his castle-like stone mansion, without explaining what it’s all for …

The story relies on withholding vital information from the audience. The final twists are a big surprise … except when they’re not. At the fade-out, everything edgy about the story becomes very conventional. Murder mystery fans will be impressed by Anton Diffring’s performance, but will see big problems with his ‘perfect’ crime. How is Marshall supposed to dispose of the body?  Marshall involved both his newspaper researchers and Katie in his blackmail setup, so his connection to the arrogant Karnak will be the first thing revealed by an investigation.

Favorite Dennis O’Keefe would seem simply to be miscast, Anton Diffring is a perfect pick and Vernon Greeves is just okay as the jerk ladykiller who plays the trombone. The villains are firmly established as non-British.  Diffring’s villain is given the odd name Karnak, and the philandering Shaw is an American already on a list for deportation, but we’re not told why. For bad behavior?

The movie begins with one of the film’s few exterior sequences, Melissa Collins’ Anna Karenina-style suicide at a railway station. Some of actress Eileen Elton’s earlier films cast her as a dancer. Unfortunately, she appears to have been dubbed with the most elegant, emotion-free voice artist that could be found. The extended flashback fails to make us feel for the ill-fated Melissa. To understand Marshall’s obsession the dead Melissa should be on our minds at all times, and she’s not.

↑  Lady of Vengeance is the first released feature for Ann Sears, who in the same year would hit her career high mark in David Lean’s  The Bridge on the River Kwai. Nobody forgets her one scene as a nurse entertaining William Holden on a beach. This part doesn’t do much at all for Sears. Another actress named Jacqueline Curtis has a few showcase moments with Larry Shaw; we can’t tell if the poster illustration of a woman lying on a bed is her, or a third Shaw conquest.

Patrick Barr is a regulation polite man from Scotland Yard, while Emile Karnak’s stamp expert and put-upon lackey is aptly played by Frederick Schiller. We of course are always looking for familiar faces in the cast. Anton Diffring’s Karnak seems a warm up for his superb madman in  Circus of Horrors, while Frederick Schiller makes a good impression in  The Trollenberg Terror. Vernon Greeves  ↓  has a fleeting moment of Hammer glory in the nighttime prologue for  Quatermass 2, as the very first victim of an alien invasion.

We’re also fans of the film’s editor — Eric Boyd-Perkins cut a number of Hammer Films including  Taste of Fear and  Cash on Demand, plus the classic  The Wicker Man. Perkins appears to have been something of an editorial Film Doctor, adding an expressive opening montage to Hammer’s  She, and doing his best to incorporate Cornel Wilde’s jarring flash-forwards in  No Blade of Grass. His crowning achievement may be the spectacular monster epic  Gorgo, that appears to have been a major save job accomplished via creative editing.

Boyd-Perkins had several years’ experience as an assistant and sound cutter, and Lady of Vengeance is his first dramatic feature. We’d readily believe that someone else did the final cut, lopping off parts of scenes and letting the pieces fall where they may. The major flashback is truly awkward — we almost became confused as to when exactly it ends. As pointed out at  Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, various stills posted online appear to be from scenes that were cut. I think that the movie is so obscure, some websites have misidentified scenes from other Dennis O’Keefe movies.

MGM Amazon’s Blu-ray of Lady of Vengeance is a very good HD encoding of what has become a rare item. The excellent image was made from fine pre-print materials held by United Artists. The B&W picture is well encoded, allowing us to see the difference in quality when the show cuts from a first unit scene, to a stock shot of a passing railroad train.

The emphatic music score is also well served; it makes itself known with a big sting when William Marshall learns of the death of his ward.

The MGM Amazon disc is in the same no-frills series as  The Naked Maja and  Outpost in Malaya. The only menu choice is a toggle between subtitles and no subtitles. The package and online listings say that the aspect ratio is 1:33, but the image on the disc is a proper 1:85.

That opening railroad scene proves when the movie was made. Part of a poster visible at the railway station advertises Hammer’s  X the Unknown, indicating the filming as taking place in the fall of 1956.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Lady of Vengeance
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good – Minus
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: none
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: April 8, 2025
(7311lady)

Visit CineSavant’s Main Column Page
Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: cinesavant@gmail.com

Text © Copyright 2025 Glenn Erickson