BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Spikeopath The October man is directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Eric Ambler. It stars John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman, Kay Walsh, Joyce Carey, Catherine Lacey, Adrianne Allen and Felix Aylmer. Music is by William Alwyn and cinematography by Erwin Hillier.Following a bus crash that killed a friends child that he was treating to a day out, Jim Ackland (Mills) suffers a brain injury. During his recuperation it's revealed to him that he is prone to amnesia, and even though he's suicidal over the child's death, he's released back into society. Setting up lodgings at a hotel and back to work as an industrial chemist, Jim is functioning well. That is until he financially helps one of the young lady residents of the hotel and becomes the chief suspect when she winds up murdered in a park. Jim has no recollection of committing the crime, but he was in the park…Pulsing with moody atmospherics, this Brit noir – psychological - thriller showcases the best of John Mills and the higher end of the British noir splinter. It's a post war London that's cloaked in shadowy streets, of parks harbouring spectral mists punctured by bulbous lamps, a train station a foreboding but visually stunning presence. Jim Ackland is suicidal and nursing amnesia, yet the hotel where he lives, itself a relic of a London that time forgot, is full of human beings from different ends of the evolutionary scale. It's not a good place for Jim to be, a cuckoos nest of spiteful, suspicious, vengeful, lonely people, Jim in fact, in spite of his problems, appears to be the only sane one there!There is no great "whodunit" to be solved here, some critics have bizarrely complained that the murderer is too obvious! Bizarre because the makers don't try and hide who it is, the film is firmly interested in the human condition, in how members of society react post a heinous crime, and of course how the afflicted antagonist fights his corner when confronted by hostility and his own mental confusion. Roy Ward Baker, for what was his first direction assignment, is more than up for the job of crafting a noir thriller. He has a good eye for the visual traits that often marry up with human feelings or behaviour, of course having someone of Hillier's class on cinematography duty naturally helps him through his debut production.Splendid entertainment. 8/10

blanche-2 John Mills is the "October Man" in this small 1947 British film costarring Joan Greenwood.Mills plays Jim Ackland, a man involved in a tragic train accident that killed the child of a friend (actually played by Juliet Mills) he was returning to town. He suffers a fractured skull and is hospitalized for a year, as he has developed some brain damage. He blames himself for the accident and is haunted by it. It's actually not clear if he has actual brain damage - he acts perfectly normal and is totally functional - or has developed psychological problems. He leaves the hospital, takes a room at a boarding house and gets a job. His neighbor in the house is a pretty young woman (Joan Greenwood) who apparently is always having money trouble and possibly traded either downright sex or nookies for money with another resident of the house, Mr. Peachy (Edward Chapman). Meanwhile, she's seeing a married man. So one could say her life is complicated. Attempting to break the ties that bind with Mr. not-so-Peachy, she puts the touch on Jim for 30 pounds, and he writes her a check. The next day she's found dead in the Commons, the crumpled check nearby. Suspicion falls on Jim because of the check, the fact that he wasn't home that night she was killed and because of idle gossip started by Mr. Peachey. Meanwhile, Jim has fallen in love with his coworker's sister; though his old terrors return, he realizes that he needs to keep fighting and clear himself of the murder.This is a good movie with a superb performance by John Mills and real British atmosphere which lends itself to the story and bumps up the suspense. As someone correctly stated, it is sort of a film noir but really more psychological in nature, which was all the rage after World War II. Very entertaining.

MartinHafer The film begins with John Mills on a bus, trying to entertain a friend's daughter. Suddenly, as the bus nears a train, it loses control and slams into a wall--killing the girl and leaving Mills with a skull injury so severe he was hospitalized for a year. During that time, he became very depressed and tried to kill himself. However, now that the year has passed, he's discharged and the staff is concerned about his ability to make it on the outside.At first, Mills is very tentative around others and tends to keep to himself at the boarding house while working at a local chemical plant. However, over time he seemed to be coming out of his depression and began dating his boss' sister. Life certainly looks good for him when out of the blue, one of the fellow lodgers at the boarding house is murdered. Due to many coincidences he is accused of the crime. With his head injury and past emotional instability he's a natural suspect though he didn't have any reason for killing her.Much of the rest of the film concerns Mills trying in vain to prove his innocence. The problem is that the police think it's an open and shut case and they refuse to take him seriously--leaving him no choice but to go on the run to prove his innocence.There are many excellent twists and turns (particularly when he discovers who the murder is) and the acting is excellent (particularly that of John Mills). Because it didn't take cheap or easy ways out in the plot and kept me guessing, it really impressed me and is a film I'd heartily recommend.By the way, the little girl at the beginning of the film was Mills' real-life daughter, Juliet! Also, note the cinematography as Mills is on the railway bridge--it's quite a beautiful and impressive scene (especially the first time).

MIKE WILSON A wonderful old black and white British film, that has John Mills suffering from a head injury sustained in a bus crash, is the suspect in a murder mystery, when a girl that he has helped out with some money, has been found dead. Good performances from the whole cast and the audience is kept in suspense up to the final scenes as to weather the murderer will escape.