Cover Girl Killer (1959)

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.

Serial killer thrillers have become quite popular in Hollywood over recent years, especially since the success of "The Silence of the Lambs", but "Cover Girl Killer" is a rare British example of the genre from the late fifties. A maniac is targeting the models who have posed for the front cover of a men's magazine called "Wow!" The magazine's publisher and his girlfriend (herself a model) join forces with the police to help track down the killer.A film made on this theme twenty, or maybe even ten, years later, to say nothing of one on the subject today, would doubtless be ultra-violent with plenty of nudity, and possibly sex scenes as well. In 1959, however, they did things differently. Although it deals with murder, the film is reassuringly old-fashioned and traditional in the same way as an Agatha Christie mystery is reassuringly old-fashioned and traditional. The investigating detective is played as the typical Englishman from so many films around this period, tweedy, pipe-smoking and normally seen brewing himself a cup of tea. "Wow!" magazine is much tamer than the "Playboy" type of girlie mag, with no nudity or even toplessness; pictures of girls in bikinis is about as far as it gets. The girls themselves are all pretty, sweet and wholesome rather than raunchy or seductive. Even the publisher is not some Hugh Hefner or Bob Guccione figure but a mild-mannered Canadian archaeologist who has inherited the magazine from an eccentric uncle. Even the killer is a traditional figure, a deranged Jack the Ripper type who is on a mission to cleanse Britain of what he sees as a tide of filth and obscenity. (We never learn his true name, although he uses various false ones; in the cast list he is referred to simply as "The Man"). When we first see him he is wearing thick pebble glasses, a badly-fitting wig and a raincoat, making him look like the standard cartoon image of the Dirty Old Man. (Ironically, "You dirty old man!" was to become the catch-phrase of the actor who plays him, Harry H Corbett, when he later starred in the television comedy series "Steptoe and Son"). This image proves to be a disguise; the killer is rather more subtle and intelligent than the police had originally assumed. Just because he's a psychopath doesn't mean he's stupid.Corbett's portrayal of this obsessive maniac makes for the best contribution to the film. He started off as a serious actor, even starring in productions of Shakespeare, but was unlucky in two ways. He was unlucky in that he shared a name with Harry Corbett, the popular children's entertainer of "Sooty Bear" fame. Although he did not have a middle name, he was forced to add a bogus middle initial in an attempt to avoid confusion, not always successfully. (According to one, possibly apocryphal, story, this confusion was responsible for the Sooty Bear man being made an Officer of the British Empire, an honour which should have gone to his namesake). He was also unlucky in that the success of "Steptoe" led to his being typecast as a comic actor and made it impossible for him to re-establish himself in the sort of serious drama he preferred. In the later part of his career he was rarely offered parts in anything but comedies. As I said, the film has a very dated feel, yet it is skilfully made and succeeds in generating a certain amount of tension. When it turns up on television (as it occasionally does) it is worth watching, if only as an example of a very different style of film-making to anything we might be used to today. 6/10

Although done so much better in "Peeping Tom"(1960), "Cover Girl Killer" was an early attempt to delve into the sleazy adult entertainment world with sex magazines, strippers plying their trade and the unusual casting of Harry H. Corbett, an actor known more for his comedy roles. With his pebble glasses, odd isn't the word for his look but it showed that British films wanted to at least tackle some unsavoury contemporary themes and on the strength of this film, Corbett was given a few off-beat roles before he hit pay-dirt with "Steptoe and Son".The glasses were just part of his disguise as a nerdy photographer who lured buxom models to duplicate their cover poses from "Wow" magazine without being in the least suspicious. Meanwhile the flaky young magazine owner decides to boost his flagging sales (somehow no models want to be "Wow" cover girls now!!) by running a series on the "Cover Girl Killer". Lovely Christina Gregg played one of the victims - Miss Torquay. Gregg was beautiful in the Jean Simmons mode and really refined her acting technique from this early role as a shrill talking girl new to the modelling game. It's such a pity she didn't have a bigger career. Her part, small as it is, does further the narrative. All the other murders are done with a lethal injection of morphine but she starts to panic when the killer begins a tirade of "you are frightened to be alone with me but you parade your body before the world" etc, so she is strangled.Like all those "my brain is bigger than the whole of Scotland Yard" criminals, he visits the police - as a concerned landlord who is convinced he has let one of his flats to the notorious killer. With models prepared to be on a "Wow" cover completely dried up, the police organize for June, the magazine owner's girlfriend to be the cover girl bait but "the man" is one jump ahead and hires a lookalike to be a decoy - while the police think they have their man, "the man" is free to strike again!!Butcher's Films were started during the Boer War and was the oldest company still in film production after the Second World War. It's most popular film was "The Monkey's Paw" and while during the 1950s it had gone into television, by the early 1960s it had all but ceased production.

Cover Girl Killer is one of the better low budget British crime dramas made in this period and I taped it when ITV screened it during the early hours some time ago.Young girls who appear on the front of Wow! magazine each month are found murdered. The prime suspect is a strange looking bloke with thick glasses and wears a wig as well. Police are assigned to investigate and he is caught at the end.The cast includes a pre Steptoe and Son Harry H Corbett as the killer and Felicity Young, Spencer Teakle and Charles Lloyd Pack.Cover Girl Killer is worth catching if you get the chance. Quite an obscure picture.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.