Pit of Darkness – 1961 | 76 mins | Crime | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Crime b-movie melodrama from low-budget producers Butcher’s about an amnesia victim trying to recover three missing weeks of his life. William Franklyn had one of his best film roles in this predictable little thriller based on the novel To Dusty Death by Hugh McCutcheon, and there’s able support from Moira Redmond, Nanette Newman and the criminally underused Nigel Green.

Safe designer Richard Logan (William Franklyn) awakes battered and bruised on a deserted Wapping bombsite; suffering from amnesia he discovers he has no recollection of the previous three weeks. Logan returns to work and receives a call from seductive-sounding Mavis, a woman purporting to be his lover, who asks him to meet her at their remote cottage love-nest. Logan arrives for the rendezvous and discovers the unoccupied cottage is bare – except for the ticking of a bomb intended for him.

There are further attempts on Logan’s life, and when a car attempts to run him down he traces the licence plate to Clifton Conrad (Leonard Sachs), the owner of The Blue Baboon club in Soho. Meanwhile, he discovers that during his missing three weeks a safe that his firm installed in a large country house has been meticulously opened, and that a rare diamond was stolen. When Logan checks the office files he learns the records of a number of robberies involving their safes have been removed. Soon after, he is kidnapped by a gang of safecrackers whilst his wife, Julie (Moira Redmond), is used to blackmail him.