Mark of the Phoenix

Julia Arnall - Petra
Sheldon Lawrence - Chuck Martin
Anton Diffring - Inspector Schell
Eric Pohlmann - Duser
George Margo - Emilson
Michael Peake - Koos
Martin Miller - Brunet

This low-budget Butchers second-feature Cold War thriller was made in 1957 and spent a year shelved awaiting a suitable main feature. The corkscrew plot involving international crooks takes many twists and turns but the results are barely satisfactory espionage story ends up a confusing mess. The ensemble cast led by American Sheldon Lawrence is typical of British B-movies of the period, with the sole exception being Anton Diffring, the German-born actor who built an entire career portraying horror film villains and PoW camp Nazi’s, here playing a genial police-officer against type.

When a Belgian metallurgist invents an alloy that can withstand nuclear radiation, he's murdered by an international gang of thieves. A quantity of the alloy is taken to a Brussels’s jeweller and made into a cigarette case. Inspector Schell (Anton Diffring) is put on the case to investigate. The cigarette case is planted in the hotel room of American jewel thief Chuck Martin (Sheldon Lawrence); who the crooks hope will unknowingly smuggle the case through customs into East Germany.

Martin unwittingly tries to sell the case back to the gang's leader, Maurice Duser (Eric Pohlmann), nearly getting himself killed in the process. He escapes death but the crooked jeweller the fashioned the cigarette case is not so lucky. Martin realises the case is of significant value and demands $100,000 for its return; a courier working for the crooks agrees providing he delivers the case to Berlin. Just as Martin passes through airport customs he is met by Duster’s girlfriend who attempts to persuade him to hand the case over to the authorities. Then Duster appears, demanding return of the case at gunpoint.