The Impersonator – 1960 | 64 mins | Thriller | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Excellent British B-thriller produced by Bryanston on a budget of £23.000 that is a cut above the majority of second features. An American angle and minor character actor John Crawford were incorporated to give the film some transatlantic box office appeal. This taut mystery provides an unsettling study of provisional insularity, but the failure of young Tommy to display any reaction to the loss of his mother gives the latter stages of the plot a lack of authenticity. Shaughnessy had originally conceived John Salew’s dame as a child-murderer, but the censor would only allow the victim to be a woman.

Set in the sleepy market town of Northbridge which plays host to a nearby US airbase, lonely American airman Jimmy Bradford (John Crawford) befriends local schoolteacher Ann Loring (Jane Griffiths). There a feeling of acrimony from the locals toward the GI’s stationed in England, so Bradford is tasked with taking a group of schoolchildren to watch a panto as part of a charm offensive. Meanwhile, the local women have recently been reporting cases of a prowler following them late at night through a nearby civic garden.

Jimmy finally gets round to inviting Ann out to dinner, but he arrives late to pick her up at Mrs Lloyds (Patricia Burke) cafe she has already gone. When Mrs Lloyd is discovered dead the following morning, Jimmy is the chief suspect and the locals become convinced of his guilt. Jimmy is quite unaware of this course of events and has taken Ann and Mrs Lloyd’s son, Tommy (John Dare), to watch Mother Goose at the theatre. During the panto Tommy is spooked by Mother Goose (John Salew) but fails to comprehend why. Later, its Tommy’s misleading testimony that leads the police in the wrong direction, but it soon becomes apparent that Jimmy wasn’t the only person to see Mrs Lloyd on the fateful night.