Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

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.

slaterspins One of the slowest moving B movies in recent memory - though just 61 minutes, it can seem an eternity, with cheesy sets, flat lighting, nearly non-existent cinematography (maybe an interesting shot or two at the 'climax', but I grasp at straws), long boring spates of dialogue where conversations are unnecessarily repeated and not much footage of the promised Cover Girls of the title. Nothing new here. Poor acting abounds, especially 'our hero', the aptly named Spencer Teakle, as the incredibly wooden and unlikely owner of the pin-up magazine WOW - though by way of explanation we are advised his Uncle gave him reins of the magazine to encourage a change in his nephew's square, non-sexy image. It didn't work. The plot is standard, even sub-standard. Cover girls are killed one by one by - you got it - a nut job who wants to 'free man from the lustful images that pollute his sanity', played by an unconvincing Harry H Corbett replete in a disguise that includes a Beatles wig (before the Beatles) and pebble glasses that look like the kind of joke glasses where the eyeball springs are ready to pop out at you at any minute. Wide eyed and obvious, he stands out as your typical unfriendly neighborhood pervert. Few chills or scary moments as Corbett has only two short interactions with the Cover Girls, neither one menacing. The first, in which he convinces a cover girl to pose nude, is a deadly dull scene (as there is no nudity or murder on screen - or even the suggestion of suspense)- just a quick cutaway when the killer apparently strikes. His last attack is somewhat better, in which (in the one interesting twist) Corbett convinces a theatrical agent to send an actor to Mr. Spencer Teacle's 'Kasbah' club where the police are waiting to entrap Corbett with model June who they 'talked into' appearing on the latest issue of WOW to attract the killer to come and kill her, promising her protection - right, heard that line before? The police naturally fall for this scam, leaving Cover girl/model/dancer/stripper/love interest/all around good girl, who's agreed to be the bait, in the clutches of the real killer. In an anti-climatic and quick scene (after suffering through endless exposition throughout the rest of the movie) Corbett attacks the heroine of the film and as the police close in on him and he holds them at bay with a gun, the quick-witted (for the first time in the movie) Teacle unties the rope to a catwalk where the killer is holding June, Teacle yelling "Hang on, June", and, thinking on her feet, she does, while Corbett conveniently falls to his death and Teacle and his 'dancer' friend walk away arm in arm to apparent domestic bliss. This is really a mess.

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.