Classic British Thrillers (The Phantom Light/Red Ensign/The Upturned Glass/MPI Home Video DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film:

 

The Phantom Light: B

Red Ensign: B-

The Upturned Glass: C+

 

 

MPI has always been a great company releasing some of the lesser known, yet truly great films onto the DVD format.  This Classic British Thrillers set contains three great films that should get some attention and this set is just the ticket.

 

Let’s begin with the 1935 film The Phantom Light, which is directed by Michael Powell and demonstrates his knack for filmmaking even though he would go on to make more important films with Emeric Pressburger like The Red Shoes and The Black Narcissus in the late 1940’s.  Although we are even bigger fans of Powell’s 1960 film Peeping Tom, which serves as a great comparison piece to an even more well-known classic called Psycho, both released in the same year.  

 

In The Phantom Light two lighthouse keepers off the coast of Wales go missing and soon there are freight ships wrecking into the rocks, Gordon Hacker and Binnie Hale play the two detectives set to solve the mystery and their chemistry is as funny as it is complicated. 

 

Red Ensign is a 1934 film is another film from Powell and also demonstrates his abilities in this film about a man who is set on designing a new fleet that is so revolutionary that he will do anything to get it on the market and save his company from going under.  The company is in decline and while he can’t get approved funding, he decides to fund the project himself, but how far will he go to get his project accomplished?  Hmm.

 

The weakest link in this set is the final film from 1947 called The Upturned Glass that has a doctor falling in love with a young patient’s mother, who is thankful for the doctor’s ability to save her daughters eyesight.  Her husband however has been missing, but reappears into the picture with the doctor involved, but then the woman falls to her death, now the doctor must find the killer! 

 

Since the final film is the weakest I can only wonder why MPI didn’t just decide to make this a Michael Powell set of three films and market this that way instead.  Using this leverage could have been more beneficial and would have given the set more handles to work with from a marketing perspective.  Instead we get less exposure and while 2 of the 3 films are hits, it’s a shame that most people will be unaware to make the connection to Michael Powell. 

 

All three films are in average shape due to age and presented in fairly healthy transfers that are full-frame B&W with 2.0 mono audio tracks that have survived fairly well, but demonstrate age and are in need of some serious restoration overall, but being lesser known titles put them at the bottom of the priority list.  All things considered this is a gem of a set with little to complain about, especially fans of Powell’s body of work.

 

 

-   Nate Goss