Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Lee Eisenberg Hammer Films, best known for horror movies, stepped into film noir with Val Guest's "Hell Is a City". Stanley Baker plays a police inspector who suspects that an escaped criminal will head for Manchester to collect some loot. The dreary look of the city is as much a character as any of the actors. The post-war British film industry wasn't generally known for these sorts of movies, but they did an excellent job here. The chase at the end of the movie is impressive but I thought that the most effective scene was the whole sequence where the criminal hides in the woman's house.I've liked every film noir that I've seen, but HIAC has to be one of the best. Baker's forceful performance as the hardened inspector is the epitome of acting. I recommend the movie.The rest of the cast includes Donald Pleasance (Dr. Loomis in the "Halloween" franchise), Billie Whitelaw (the nanny in "The Omen") and Joseph Tomelty (the father of Sting's ex-wife).

Alex Deleon HELL IS A CITY, 1959, Director Val Guest UNKNOWN Classic FILM NOIR From England is one of the best of the genre TEN STARS ********** VIewed in London at a special Hammer classics reissue press screening, 1996. Inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker), a hard-boiled detective stationed in Manchester England, suspects that a ruthless escaped criminal Don Starling (John Crawford) will come back to town to retrieve a cache of stolen jewels he hid there before his conviction. Martineau has problems at home where he and his wife Julia (Maxine Audley) constantly bicker about his role as a cop which monopolizes his time, and their childless marriage. Starling arrives in town as expected and immediately forms a gang to rob a bookmaker Gus Hawkins (Donald Pleasance), to raise enough cash for a clean getaway but what they grab turns out to be a large amount of money in marked bills to prevent their theft. Starling kills a young girl during the robbery and dumps the body by the side of the road out in the country but is spotted by Martineau who is hot on his trail following down one lead after another. On the run with Martineau in hot pursuit, now wanted for murder, Starling takes refuge at one point hiding in the attic of the bookmaker he robbed and threatening his philandering wife Chloe (Billie Whitelaw) he once had an affair with. When discovered by Pleasance Starling manages to knock him out with injuries that put him in the hospital. Martineau, following up another hunch, squeezes more information from Hawkins wife Chloe. At a large outdoor gambling game, where some of the tainted money changes hands, Martineau catches up with the accomplices in the robbery and is now just one step behind his quarry. Starling recovers the cache of stolen jewels from a crooked fence (Furnisher Steele) but has to hide upstairs when the police, tipped off, arrive on the scene. In an extremely harrowing sequence which becomes the unforgettable centerpiece of the film he holds the beautiful blonde daughter of the fence, Silver Steele, (Sarah Branch) hostage, but she is unable to scream for help because she is deaf and dumb. As he stalks her around the attic room piled high with furniture, in desperation she manages to knock out a window which draws the attention of the neighborhood. Martineau breaks in and pursues the vicious killer in a final showdown up on the rooftops above Manchester -- the most suspenseful Mother of all rooftop chases ever filmed. At the end Martineau chooses his job over his marriage. In a wistful coda at his favorite saloon he runs into Lucky Lusk (Vanda Godsell) the attractive barmaid he has been flirting with all along, and she offers herself to him full on, but he turns her open ended offer down on the grounds that he is still married. "Well, she says, in wry resignation, "If you ever have a kid name it for me".The Martineau hard boiled cop figure who doesn't mind bending the law to get his man is a predecessor of Dirty Harry by some twenty years and the mean streets of the city of Manchester are portrayed like another character hovering over the picture. A major city rarely seen in British films sits for a remarkable portrait. I had seen this movie years ago when it first came out but quickly disappeared. All I remembered was the white knuckle scene in the attic with the vicious killer relentlessly stalking the pathetically defenseless deaf and dumb girl -- every bit as harrowing and suspenseful now as it was back then. BRAVURA filmmaking beginning to end by Val Guest in a classic B/w mold. Unforgettable. The perfect thriller. Stanley Baker, usually seen in meaty supporting roles, never quite became a top star, but was nevertheless one of the best and most businesslike British actors of his time. K

ianlouisiana "Life on Mars"?This is more like life on Pluto.Mr Stanley Baker plays the type of cop who feels compelled to try it on with any female with a pulse. He can't walk past an open pub door and threatens to rape his wife in order to impregnate her against her will.Just another day at the office for one of Manchester's finest. "Hell is a city" is an over - rated pseudo Don Siegel opus.Possibly seeing itself as a herald of a new hard - hitting school of Britcop movies,it has a sub - sub Elmer Bernstein/Leith Stevens/Shorty Rogers soundtrack of generic Britjazz cobbled together by that clever musical chameleon Mr Stanley Black that places it exactly in its era. It borrows that hoary old Western plot about childhood companions turned deadly adversaries that ends with one of them dangling on the end of a rope.Full of British actors assuming the all - encompassing "Northern" accent that is both inaccurate and insulting to its Manchester setting, it deals the English language a further blow by having an American play a Manc villain,a piece of casting of breathtaking audacity and indifference to the audience's intelligence. Cardboard character follows cardboard character muttering "eee by gum" imprecations,Yorkshire and Lancashire dialects being freely mixed.Stanley Baker's Inspector Martineau is a despicable woman - hating psychopath.Novelist Maurice Procter who wrote the novel on which the movie was based was said to be "delighted" with the result.It all seems a bit rum to me.

BJJManchester A surprisingly tough,no-nonsense crime thriller for it's time,HELL IS A CITY (set in my hometown Manchester) has a fairly routine plot but has compensations with fast-moving direction by Val Guest,a decent script,a fine jazz score by Stanley Black,and most of all,first-class photography on actual Mancunian locations.This was something of a first for British crime thrillers for this period,which were mostly shot in dingy studio sets,but director Guest's decision to film many scenes outdoors,and in a provincial city as well(virtually all of this film's contemporaries were set in London,particularly Soho),is refreshing,fairly innovative and gives a sense of realism that is unusual but welcome,especially in this era(the late 50's -early 60's) of UK film-making.Unfortunately,there are some compromises that mitigate against the film;one is the casting of American John Crawford(who appeared in several other British thrillers around this period)as the murderous villain which strains credibility somewhat;Crawford makes no attempt to hide his American accent,which makes his role as a native(as the script makes clear) hard to take;there are rather obvious domestic scenes of strife with Inspector Stanley Baker and spouse that drag the pace down somewhat(it would have been better simply to concentrate on the basic story)and seem irrelevant,and Guest falters when he makes some obvious attempts to imitate Hollywood film-noirs;he is better when he sticks to straightforward,semi-documentary realism.The film features very few Mancunian actors (only John Comer,and Doris Speed,who very soon after began her stint as TV's most famous barmaid,Annie Walker,in CORONATION STREET);they are mostly from Yorkshire or Southern England,and Welshman Baker occasionally struggles with his Northern English accent. Never afraid to play unsympathetic,dislikable heroes,Baker is still good in the lead role,in his familiar virile,aggressive and uncompromising persona.This style of acting led the way out of the rather stuffy,RADA-accented manner that had held back British cinema for years into more a working-class,gritty and realistic era,and somewhat better films.HELL IS A CITY has it's faults,but is valuable today as an unexpected social document of Manchester of the time,and has much more than a touch of class than other contemporary routine crime dramas,thanks to the reasons stated above.Rating:6 and a half out of 10.