 |
|||
 |
Empty
|
 |
 |
 |
|||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
Hell Is A City
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Our DVD Price: £11.99 RRP: 
Availability This product should be despatched within 4 days. This product will be dispatched from Guernsey. Delivery times
Earn 55 Bonus Points when you buy this product. More info |
Film Description
Gritty police drama with Stanley Baker as the world-weary detective on the trail of an American gangster. Set in a grey Manchester, it's an abrasive piece given authenticity by the use of hand-held cameras and a number of the extras being played by the Manchester Police Force. A genuine British film noir.
Film Information
| Director | Val Guest | ||||
| Starring | Billie Whitelaw, Donald Pleasence, Stanley Baker, Maxine Audley, John Crawford
|
||||
| Genre | Classic Film
|
||||
| Country | UK | Language | ENGLISH | Year | 1959 |
DVD Extras
Trailer\Alternate Ending
Technical Details
| Certificate | PG | Length | 92 mins | Label | CCLUB | ||
| Cat No | CCD30140 | Format | DVD | Colour | |||
| Region | 2 | Aspect | 2.35 Anamorphic Wide Screen | ||||
1 Still
 |
Share your thoughts and opinions - write a review
Review by Julian Upton on 1st March 2005
Although French cinema was falling into the clutches of the auteur in the late fifties, nothing quite so exotic was happening in Britain, where, despite its own burgeoning New Wave, popular movies were still very much in the hands of the journeymen – those time-served technicians who were not afforded the indulgence of ‘art’ and were expected to bring in films on time with no fuss or flowery talk. Perhaps the best of these practitioners was Val Guest, whose Hell Is a City was just one of a number of bracing genre pieces he turned out at a staggering pace in the fifties and sixties.
Guest had begun his film career co-scripting Will Hay comedies in the thirties. After graduating to directing, he proved adept at pretty much everything from science-fiction (The Quatermass Xperiment) to showbiz musicals (Expresso Bongo) to Hammer horror (The Abominable Snowman).
It was for Hammer that Guest added another string to his bow with Hell Is a City. Coolly following the Stanley Baker’s Inspector Martineau around Manchester’s outer reaches in the hunt for safecracker-turned-killer, Hell is unique in its merging of an almost verite-style sense of urban location with heightened visuals that owe a clear debt to American thrillers of the forties. And Guest successfully steers his cast away from the staid conventions of the contemporary English crime drama. Baker’s Martineau is peculiarly un-British – rugged and pragmatic, but flawed and vulnerable. Billie Whitelaw brings customary depth to the obligatory tart-with-a-heart role. And, in an early appearance, Donald Pleasance oozes back-street sleaze as a crooked bookie.
For all its nods to provincial realism, Hell Is a City is laced with the time-honoured signifiers of noir. It stands today as a lively pulp portrait of a post-war town on the slide.
View more reviews by Julian Upton
Article - "(The Alternative!) Best British Films"
by James Oliver
Friday 12th October 2007
The Top 10 (in chronological order)
The Manxman
Went the Day Well?
It Happened Here
Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Blood on Satan’s Claw
The Offence
House of Whipcord
The Shout
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End
Britannia Hospital
Hand-picked recommendations of related films
|
Dir: Carol Reed "I never knew the old Vienna before the war...", so begins the narration to one of the most justly famed British... More > |
|
The Quatermass Xperiment (Guest, 1955) Dir: Val Guest A missile is launched by Professor Quatermass and his team but when it lands back in England two crew members ha... More > |
|
Dir: Elia Kazan Cited by Kazan as a personal favourite, this deliciously dark film is an influential film noir classic shot enti... More > |
Recommendations from fellow customers
by Mike Leigh
More films directed by Val Guest
More films starring Donald Pleasence
by John Sturges
by Gary Sherman
All Quiet On The Western Front (1978)
by Delbert Mann
More films starring Billie Whitelaw
by T V
More films starring Stanley Baker
| Special Offers | ||||||||||||||||
|
More Great Offers
|
| BestSellers | ||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Recommended by MovieMail | ||||||||||
|
A curated collection of the best DVDs
Latest Additions
|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
| Just Released |
|
Raiders Of The Lost Ark Local Hero San Demetrio London All That Heaven Allows Skins (Series 2) |
| Coming Soon |
|
Dan Cruickshanks Adventures in Architecture A Cottage on Dartmoor Radio On Around the World in 80 Treasures Tokyo Joe |
|
||
| Home | Film Catalogue | New Releases | Special Offers | Top 30 | ||
|
||
| Film Collections | Film Media | News | Your Account | Help | Become a MovieMail affiliate | ||
|
||
For questions or assistance, call us on (+44) 0844 776 0900 or email on enquiries@moviemail-online.co.uk © 2004-2007 MovieMail, Ltd., All Rights Reserved. Find out more about MovieMail |
||
|
Night Of The Eagle
Vera Drake
The Wages Of Fear
Where The Sidewalk Ends
The Leopard
