Wanted for Murder – 1946 | 101 mins | Thriller, Mystery | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Relatively obscure chilling Hitchcockian thriller part-inspired by the case of hung serial killer Neville Smith, co-written by Emeric Pressburger and directed in by Lawrence Huntington. Making excellent use of bustling daytime locations and fogbound London nights, the tightly wound story culminates with a thrilling race against time in Hyde Park. Eric Portman excels in the complex role of an outwardly respectable sociopath leading a double-life and Roland Culver is faultless as the unassuming detective assigned to capture him.

Set in post-war London, record shop assistant Anne Fielding (Dulcie Gray) meets genial bus conductor Jack Williams (Derek Farr) on the London Underground, because she’s delayed by the train for a meeting with her cultured beau Victor Colebrooke (Eric Portman) at the fairground on Hampstead Heath; the two of them take a liking to each other and strike up a friendship while she’s trying to locate Victor. She finally discovers him and they leave at nigh on the same moment that a young woman is found strangled in the park – the latest in a series of grisly murders in London by a serial killer dubbed "The Strangler".

The police investigate anyone who might have been with the victim – that includes Jack, who was seen leaving in a temper late in the evening, and Victor, whose handkerchief was found in the vicinity of the victim’s body. Victor is tormented by the memory of his late father, dubbed The Happy Hangman, a Victorian executioner whose statue exhibits in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds. The killer strikes again in Regents Park and a bizarre game of cat-and-mouse ensues as the killer taunts the police with prophetic postcards and Scotland Yard Inspector Conway (Roland Culver) and his assistant Sullivan (Stanley Holloway) endeavour to pressure the murderer into showing his hand, which inadvertently puts Anne in deadly peril. It all comes down to a race against time as the police cordon off Hyde Park in the hope of catching the killer before he strikes once more.