COVER GIRL KILLER

Spencer Teakle and Felicity Young

COVER GIRL KILLER (1959). Writer/Director: Terry Bishop.

John (Spencer Teakle) has inherited a pin up magazine called Wow. He discovers that several of the women who appeared on the cover have been murdered, and are found wearing the same outfits and in similar poses as on those covers. Detective-Inspector Brunner (Victor Brooks) importunes June (Felicity Young) to pose for the cover so that he can trap the killer (Harry H. Corbett), a scheme that doesn't thrill John, who is in love with June. But the killer, who goes about wearing a wig and weird spectacles, is more clever than the police may realize and June could be in serious danger.

Harry H. Corbett in disguise

Cover Girl Killer may sound like a good bet for thriller fans, but this British production doesn't have the lurid intensity of, say, Horrors of the Black Museum, or the American film The Hypnotic Eye. About an hour long, it looks like a cheap TV production and although it does manage to hold your interest, has minimal suspense and excitement. Besides the fact that there is little flair to the direction, this is due to an overly sparse musical score (attributed to William Davies) that might have added a small degree of tension. There have been better half hour TV shows on the same theme than this. Everyone in this British film drinks coffee instead of tea!

Verdict: Some coffee jitters might have helped this movie. **. 

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM

Michael Gough

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959). Director: Arthur Crabtree.

Crime writer Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough) taunts Scotland Yard for failing to solve the murders of several women in extremely grisly incidents. The latest victim had needles shot into her eyes and brain when she looked into a doctored pair of binoculars. Bancroft thinks the murders may be tied into Scotland Yard's "black museum" of criminal artifacts, although he has his own black museum that in his opinion puts the Yard's to shame. 

June Cunningham

Bancroft has a handsome assistant, Rick (Graham Curnow), who does whatever his employer tells him. Bancroft is also keeping a buxom lady named Joan (June Cunningham), but in a scene that plays like something out of Of Human Bondage, she bitchily taunts the lame author when he refuses to give her any more money. Joan is later beheaded by a man with a grimacing, disfigured face. And there are more murders to come ...  

Michael Gough and Beatrice Varley 

Horrors of the Black Museum is a delightfully lurid and ghoulish horror flick with the usual zesty, adroit, if over-the-top performance from Gough at his best. Cunningham is also vivid and gets to do a sexy dance number in a pub. Curnow, Geoffrey Keen as Superintendent Graham and  Gerald Andersen as the ill-fated Dr. Ballan are also effective, while Shirley Anne Field makes an attractive fiancee, Angela, for Rick. Beatrice Varley also makes her mark as Aggie, the owner of an antique and notions store that stocks many items of interest to Bancroft. 

Graham Curnow 

Horrors of the Black Museum is a riot of deadly guillotines placed on top of beds, dead bodies boiled in acid, murder by ice tongs, and other tasteless tidbits that will delight the horror fanatic. One imagines that the first sadistic killing involving the binoculars might have turned a few stomachs back in the day. This is one of a trio of films Gough did for producer Herman Cohen, Konga and Black Zoo being the other two. 

Verdict: All this and CinemaScope, too! ***.