Locked in her cell, a murderer reflects on the events that have led her to death row.
This Brit noir classic is a unique career achievement for Diana Dors as Mary Hilton, a woman awaiting execution for murder. The unhappily married Mary meets London nightclub piano player Jim (Michael Craig) when he comes into her store to buy perfume for his society girlfriend Lucy (Mercia Shaw). Things soon go awry when Mary confronts Lucy. The events leading up to Mary’s crime are intercut with her jail ordeal, attended by female “matrons” in the brightly lit cell, whose lights can never be dimmed because of suicide-watch surveillance. Interestingly, this screenplay was written one year before the last woman (Ruth Ellis) was executed in Britain, yet the film was released a year after the execution. The film was screened that year for members of parliament and probably influenced a bill to abolish the death penalty, eventually passed in 1965.
UK 1956 J. Lee Thompson 99m
