Nice restaurant. Don’t get the cod, though.
Calling Paul Temple (1948) is one of those light-hearted British murder mysteries. Temple is a former Scotland Yard inspector, who has married Stevey and moved into detective fiction writing. They’re attending a high-class restaurant with an old colleague of Temple’s, Chief Inspector Forbes, when the restaurant’s singer, having written a note to the Chief Inspector claiming to have knowledge about the ‘Rex’ murders, collapses and dies on stage. She’s founds to have poison in her exotic lipstick. ‘Rex’ is inscribed in her makeup room.
This launches Paul and Stevey into the mystery of why 4 women have been murdered, with the word ‘Rex’ involved in each. We move from the Egyptian Dr. Kohima, to his assistant Mrs Trevellyan, and onwards to half the population of Canterbury, dodging bombs and bullets, and indulging in a casual bit of racism in the form of the surprise return of their stereotyped Burmese servant, Rikki.
Sadly, this all becomes a little too opaque and contrived. The condition of the film didn’t help, as the audio track had been damaged in this print. Paul and Stevey have some chemistry going on, but it’s not really enough to hold it all together, and to tell the truth, in the end I wasn’t really clear who really was the criminal. Nor did I care.
A sad thing to have to say.
