They Can't Hang Me

7/26/2014

Soho Killing: Senior Civil Servant Is Charged. They Can’t Hang Me is directed by Val Guest and adapted to screenplay by Guest and Val Valentine from the novel written by Leonard Mosley. It stars Terence Morgan, Yolande Donlan, Andre Morell, Anthony Oliver and Reginald Beckwith. When Robert Pitt (Morell) is convicted of murder and sentenced to death by execution, he offers the state a bargain. Grant him a reprieve and he will reveal the name of the master spy known as Leonidas before he leaves the country with some atomic secrets. Thus it’s a race against time thriller as the coppers follow the various leads while Pitt grows ever more frantic in his cell. Ideally the police want to find Leonidas without Pitt’s help, he is after all a murderer and the state officials are reluctant

11/14/2022

André Morell is "Pitt" - in jail awaiting hanging for murdering a prostitute. At the last minute he contacts "Insp. Brown" (Terence Morgan) with information about master spy "Leonidas" who is about to take a top scientific secret behind the iron curtain - in return for his life! Together with his sidekick Anthony Oliver ("Insp. Newcombe") they set off to thwart this plan. It's a decent enough story that moves along a-pace. Yolande Donlan adds a bit of light relief as the fiancée who spends much of her time waiting around for her detective boyfriend and there are just enough red herrings to keep this intriguing, if a bit lightweight thriller, going for 75 minutes.