Suspect

Tony Britton - Bob Marriott
Virginia Maskell - Lucy Byrne
Peter Cushing - Professor Sewell
Ian Bannen - Alan Andrews
Raymond Huntley - Sir George Gatling
Thorley Walters - Prince
Donald Pleasence - Brown
Spike Milligan - Arthur

Filmed by the Boultings on a limited budget at the British Lion studio at Shepperton in seventeen days, Suspect is a chopped-down version of the novel A Sort of Traitors, written by Nigel Balchin and originally published in 1949. Balcin himself also worked on the screenplay for the film with some additional script development by Jeffrey Dell and Roy Boulting. At a running time of 81 minutes, the film is on the lengthy side for the requirements of a second or supporting feature. It remains remarkably close to Balchin's original novel in terms of sequence, characters, narrative and plot. The film is not a work of science fiction, but emerges as a rather odd and hybrid mix of romance plus suspense and espionage thriller set amidst the white coats, test tubes and Petri dishes of the laboratory.

It is this setting and its life which dominate the first phases of the film, when we are introduced to the dedicated team of British scientists at work on important medical research under the leadership of Professor Sewell (Peter Cushing) in the Franklin-Evans Wing of the Haughton Research Laboratory, somewhere in, or near, London. This setting forms the backdrop for the two principal narratives which unfold, both, in fact, intertwined around themes and questions of personal and public obligation, of moral responsibility and duty under pressure. One foregrounds the relationship and potential romance between two of the junior scientists - Lucy Byrne (Virginia Maskell) and Bob Marriott (Tony Britton), the ideal possibility and predictability of this relationship is complicated, during the early phases of the film, as we learn more about Lucy's personal life outside the lab, in particular her situation with regard to Alan Andrews (Ian Bannen), to whom she was once engaged to be married. Andrews is revealed as an embittered and increasingly vindictive and vengeful character, seeking to extract any form of retribution for his disability. The heavy irony of Bob Marriott's question to Lucy in an early scene in the lab - "What's wrong with holding hands?" - is revealed when we do encounter Andrews. He returned from war service in Korea having lost both arms, the result, as it transpires later in the film, of what would now euphemistically be referred to as "friendly fire". To add further insult to injury, we also learn that Andrews was a promising concert pianist before his wartime service, when he first met Lucy and they had become engaged.

This triangular story, with an unconventional "twist" which unfolds between Lucy, Bob and Alan, is mapped against the broader institutional dilemmas and pressures facing the laboratory and the results of Professor Sewell's research. At an early stage, the film's action introduces the fact that Sewell's team and their painstaking work have achieved a major breakthrough in the battle against world epidemics. However, at the triumphal point of publishing their findings, Sewell and his team are officially prevented from disclosing their results by the government. The expedient interests and the intervention of the British state, in the form of the Ministry, and its concerns to control not only the ability to stop, but also the ability of other powers to start, epidemic or germ warfare on a world-wide scale, directly contradict the humanitarian significance of their research. The official face and the hypocrisy of the Ministry are well represented by the urbane minister Sir George Gatling (Raymond Huntley), the less than public face is represented by the shadowy and eccentric Mr Prince (Thorley Walters), operating as a self-confessed "small cog in the security machine", charged with surveillance of the team and the task of enforcing the ban on publication by monitoring the activities of Dr Shole (Kenneth Griffith), Sewell's second-in-command.

It is Bob Marriott who emerges as a key link and agent in both of these narratives. The early stages of the film index his growing affection for Lucy, and his subsequent entrapment by the embittered and scheming Alan Andrews begins with an invitation to the Four Feathers public house. This allows both his naivety and self-righteous outrage at the political gagging of the scientific work to bring him into contact with the shadowy Brown (Donald Pleasence), who professes to have links with the so-called Organisation for International Scientific Exchange. The fact that this transpires, by the end of the film, to be a thinly veiled front for subversive and acquisitive "foreign powers", in the shape of Dr Heller (Andre Charise), does not really come as a surprise. Bob Marriott's pursuit of Lucy and of disclosure in the name of "pure science", lead him into the web devised by the treacherous but tragic Andrews and the self-interested go-between, Brown. Before the film ends, Andrews commits suicide believing he has "scuppered" Marriott completely professionally, by betraying his treasonable tendencies to the security services, and as a result personally, by blighting his relationship and promise of a life with Lucy.

The activities of the "secret services" are, however, validated by the end of the film. Despite early scenes which hint at the unwarranted, undemocratic, even un-British nature of their procedures - Dr Shole (Kenneth Griffith) is a particular recipient of the door stepping attentions of Mr Prince and his assistant Slater (Sam Kydd) - these semi-official forces of law and order do apprehend a genuine foreign agent at work photographing what he takes to be British scientific secrets in the final phase of the film.

Fuelled by idealism and exploited by the connivance of Andrews, Marriott is shown to be prepared to "leak" the research results to what he erroneously believes is a benign agency. He is saved from this treasonable course by Lucy and Professor Sewell, and then redeems his misguided idealism by working with the semi-official Mr Prince to expose and apprehend the threatening foreign power. Andrews' suicide "frees" Lucy for Marriott at the end of the film. In the final scene, order is restored in the closed world of the laboratory - even if in a moment of comic inversion, Arthur (Spike Milligan) has been caged by the monkey. Having resolved the enigma of Bob-Lucy-Alan, the film implies that all is well. There is also a sense that Marriott has been pulled back from his moment of near madness when he contemplated treason. In this way, the film prefers a conclusion that suggests that the state does know best, and that romantic love and principles can survive both the pressures of the laboratory and those of the modern emergent Cold War.