Colonel March Investigates (1953)

American-financed but shot in London, COLONEL MARCH OF Scotland YARD was a short-lived 1950s-era TV series starring Boris Karloff as a detective in charge of Department 3 at Scotland Yard - a department commonly nicknamed 'The Department of Queer Complaints'. It's a period-era X-FILES, with Karloff investigating various supernaturally-tinged crimes.

This film version is an anthology of three episodes from the show, all of them featuring a typically imposing Karloff as the eyepatch-sporting hero. It's always great to see the genial Karloff playing the hero for a change, and his gruff charm adds immeasurably to the pleasure of this otherwise rather ordinary little anthology. My main disappointment with COLONEL MARCH INVESTIGATES is that the supernatural stuff is kept distinctly limited in favour of the more ordinary explanation.

The first story, HOT MONEY, is about a bank robbery in which the loot vanishes; it's short and snappy, and worth seeing for Joan Sims, impossibly young and playing a lawyer's secretary. The second story, DEATH IN THE DRESSING ROOM, has some fun in the form of exotic dance and the atmospheric nightclub scenes, and features the lovely Dana Wynter alongside an on-form Richard Wattis, cast against type. The third story, THE NEW INVISIBLE MAN, sounds great but is in fact the least, a simple tale with a simple twist. Still, these are great fun for the era, and it's worth seeing for Karloff alone.