CHARLES SAUNDERS & GUIDO COEN'S 'DANGEROUS AFTERNOON'

Joanna Dunham and Jackie Noble in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON Year: 1961 Rates: ***

Another nifty crime programmer from the team of director Charles Saunders and producer Guido Coen, the makers of JUNGLE STREET GIRLS only the girls here are women... really old ones in a boarding house and all are ex-crooks, run by a crippled Ruth Denning with crafty expressions like she knows and has seen everything... 

Contrasting to her naive artistic niece (actually daughter) played by quirky cute-as-a-button Joanna Dunham with equally attractive businessman husband Howard Pays (who co-starred in JUNGLE STREET with cameo Brian Weske)...

Joanna Dunham and Howard Pays in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON

But they do little but worry about what's off-screen at the boarding house; harboring the the primary plot-line too quickly set up through stagey (noticeably based on a play) exposition when Dunning's Miss Lefty Frost, which isn't her real name, is being blackmailed by a former partner-in-crime (Gwenda Wilson) who knows her real one...

Yet the scene-stealers are all the really old tenants, in particular Nora Nicholson, still an active pickpocket and shoplifter... yet there's hardly anything DANGEROUS while taking place in more than one AFTERNOON... but here's a potential platform for a progressed remake, especially with all the aged actresses out there now... and most of them, like the long gone gals here, very British. 

Joanna Dunham in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON

JUNGLE GIRLS actor Brian Weske dancing in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON

Joanna Dunham and Howard Pays in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON

Joanna Dunham and Nora Dunning in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON with Gwenda Wilson

Joanna Dunham and Nora Nicholson in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON

Joanna Dunham and Nora Nicholson in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON

Joanna Dunham and Nora Nicholson in DANGEROUS AFTERNOON