This film was on Talking Pictures yesterday shown under the US title of ‘Bombay Waterfront’

BELOW – Under it’s AmericaN Title ‘Bombay Waterfront’

This is the fourth and final adaptation of the Paul Temple radio plays, PAUL TEMPLE RETURNS and here we find him living up the high life in New York, where he now makes a living from his work as a crime writer.

However, he is called back to England which has been rocked by the Marquis murders. A fiend is murdering people and signing the name to his handiwork.

Paul Temple has been warned by the Marquis not to get involved at the same time he is asked to gather information on one of the victims, a New York City police officer.

It’s a typical Edgar Wallace storyline. The main character and his associate Steve are mush as we remember them, but the supporting cast is also good here, and maybe the film has a little bigger budget. Certainly there are some strong moments in the murder scenes and an exciting rooftop climax.

Included in the cast, with a bigger role than I expected was Man in Black himself, Valentine Dyall. Also we had Christopher Lee appearing sinister as one of the main suspects, a professor with a collection of Egyptian artifacts – this was a few years before ‘The Mummy’ when he was by then a household name

Robert Urquhart is yet another suspect.

Patricia Dainton plays Steve and is very good – a leading role for her in what was to be quite a short film career. Nevertheless she is back on screen now on Talking Pictures, often introducing some of her films.

John Bentley played both Paul Temple and ‘The Toff’ in films made in the early fifties. He seemed to be much in demand at that time before fading from sight and re-emerging in the famous TV show ‘Crossroads’ where he was in around 350 episodes

Before that though in 1958 / 59 he had made ‘African Patrol’ a Television Series where he played Chief Inspector Paul Derek who investigates crime in and around Nairobi. An article on this later though