Wordiezett So much average

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

trimmerb1234 There are some surprisingly long well-informed reviews of this seemingly rather undistinguished 1959 British B. Those who might have seen it at that time are now all senior citizens. But for a few, perhaps a very few, such elderly gentlemen it evokes memories of their formative years like nothing else.If you had been a young person with an interest in photography you would have been aware of the publications safely tucked away on the top shelves of the newsagents shops - as appear in this film. Soho was then as now an exotic location well known for the fleshly pleasures including foreign foods. Indeed it was a basket of exotica quite unique in the entire UK. Oddly at the same time, it was the home of army surplus radio gear - all displayed on stalls outside the shops. It thus drew serious studious radio amateurs old and young to briefly share its busy notorious pavements with its more permanent and mostly female residents as well as passing rather furtive older gentlemen in raincoats and often bowler hats whose visit might only be slightly longer than that of the innocent old and young radio enthusiasts.By the standards on the 1950s, the above would be quite unsuitable for any kind of family publication or family conversation as it alludes to what was common knowledge but then a taboo topic in family contexts. Such were the dim and distant 1950s - made vivid again by this film whose makers clearly knew their market.Did I see it at the time? I'm not sure - it would have been at least an A possibly an X certificate. Yet Felicity Young seems oddly very familiar. Why was she so memorable? Not just because she was very good looking. I think because she was a classy ostensibly "nice" girl who did - remove her clothes, not all of course. In a world then firmly divided between nice girls who didn't and not nice girls who did, Felicity Young produced a thrilling confusion in a younger impressionable mind - apparently.It is a strange thing that less can be more. In such restricted times, very little could seem very much more.

naseby Dank, dark and wintry, smokey coffee bars and brylcreem (yet again)a portrayal of an intelligent sex killer in the 1950's (Corbett - simply labelled 'the man'). Spencer Teakle plays 'Johnny' the effeminate and strange chap who helps the police provide Corbett's nemesis in this thriller.A killer leaves ladies he's killed/killing in the pose from the cover of a glamour magazine called 'Wow!' which just happens to be owned by the strange Johnny (he could've been a candidate for a psycho methinks, a brilliant twist never mind). The killer gets more and more twisted in his vow to carry on his 'crusade' against sex and women who are involved in such a thing (that's right, he's one of them). This guy disguises himself in pebble glasses and a wig so bad that it looks like one of Frankie Howerd's rejects.Johnny's girlfriend, June, volunteers to be used as bait one time, that almost goes pear-shaped when 'the man' has set the police up with a chap resembling himself, cleverly, after posing as a film agent and 'recruiting' an 'actor' to dress up 'like him' and go to the very place for an audition of a weirdo - just so the police arrest the wrong man and put him off the scent. Another time, the crazed killer actually goes to the police in another guise or his normal one to give them a statement of who he thinks the man is.This is a neat little thriller, with a fairly even plot and Corbett as the interestingly intelligent yet ultimately twisted killer. Especially interesting as many say, to see Corbett playing a straight role, without too many of us thinking he's going to break into 'you dirty old man' at any minute. There are some strange touches, especially with the two police officers in the case wanting a brew-up wherever they go and their interaction with the stranger Teakle (I'm trying to work out if he was actually working as an actor - other roles may have to be seen if they can, of his). Definitely one I had to add to the collection.

fillherupjacko A weirdo approaches the stage door of the Casbah Club, in 1950s Soho, and is transfixed by a portrait of Miss Gloria Starke (Bernadette Milnes, who pops up in the opening scene of Cover Story, a Sweeney episode, fifteen years later - if you're interested, like).This is a film by Butchers Film Distributors (at least, I think it is – IMDb lists it as Jack Parsons Productions) and it's a film on a different level, theme wise, to almost every other second feature of its era. Cover Girl Killer is a film about a voyeur (in this most voyeuristic art form) who becomes a serial killer in order to "give man back his dignity, to free him from the prison of lustful images which foul his mind and pollute his sanity." The killer, played by Harry H Corbett, and billed only as The Man, feels imprisoned by society's values (which he finds morally abhorrent) and can only become "free" by killing girls who take off their clothes for Wow! Magazine. "I assure you, miss, your nudity means nothing to me", says Corbett, before dispatching one of them, Christina Gregg, who often popped up as the vulnerable type.I've always had a problem with Corbett in a straight roll (Harry not Ronnie); his acting is just ludicrously mannered – really bad, oo I can act, look at me, amateur dramatics. Here, fortuitously, he's playing such an oddball that he's actually quite effective. Of course, the killer doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. "The borderline between what we call insanity and a hyper sensitive intellect is not always very clear, inspector", he tells Inspector Brunner (Victor Brooks), after turning up in his office, pretending to be Mr. Fairchild, property developer. Why he does this is not clear. Maybe, it's an ego thing and he wants to pit his wits against the police. The most interesting scene is when the killer approaches Lennie Ross, (Theatre, Screen and TV agent, 3rd floor), for an actor to play the killer in the cover girl case. "Surely sex and horror are the new gods in this polluted world of so called entertainment?" (This line later featured in a UK number 1 smash for Frankie Goes To Hollywood, pop pickers.) Here, Cover Girl Killer really gets to the heart of the matter; reflecting on itself as we watch plans for a film version of the film we are actually watching.

didi-5 Despite only lasting an hour, this film about a serial killer who has a grudge against cover girls - a la The Lodger and Jack the Ripper - rarely flags and has an energy which lifts it above other B movies of the time. It also has Harry H Corbett, best known these days for Steptoe and Son, proving he could act in a serious role. He is genuinely creepy, chilling and calculating.In some respects this film also reminds me of Peeping Tom, also about a psychopathic murderer of high intelligence who kills by ritual. While that film was a straight A, 'Cover Girl Killer' does not pale in its company, and it proves its worth as a late night regular on TV.