cult film freak: VAL GUEST DIRECTS STANLEY BAKER IN HAMMER'S 'HELL IS A CITY'

Poster Art of John Crawford & Lois Daine for HELL IS A CITY Year: 1960 Rates: *****

The second and final Hammer feature with Val Guest directing his YESTERDAY'S ENEMY leading man Stanley Baker, HELL IS A CITY is not only a Noir-like Police Procedural but an Escaped Convict Procedural as sinister John Crawford hops from various former colleagues and lovers while intense cop Baker, who'd originally put him away and is revenge-driven to nab him back, visits/questions the same people...

From a bookie's cheating wife (Billie Whitelaw ignoring rich husband Donald Pleasence who employed doomed Lois Daine); a flirty waitress; a stubborn salesman with a gorgeous deaf/dumb daughter (Sarah Branch); and featuring various locales run by a shady gang with deliciously pulpy nicknames like Clogger Roach...

Stanley Baker in HELL IS A CITY with Russell Napier

A gritty hybrid of action and thriller, CITY hits a slight wall only during the third act after Crawford's equally desperate and resilient and entirely scene-stealing menace vanishes for a bit, focusing more into Baker sweating-out the real accomplices aided by faithful young partner Geoffrey Frederick...

But overall the tightly-wound cadence, juxtaposing the tough good and rough bad guy — shifting smoothly from busy Manchester to the outlying Moors to a brawling rooftop climax — features raw violence even for 1960 after Film Noir had ended... yet this kind of stylistic crime thriller was just reigniting it with the British New Wave.