I usually enjoy low-budget British films from the 50s; they're short, don't dawdle, and show the way we were back then. This one, though, fails because of a serious lack of logic, which I'm surprised none of the other reviewers has mentioned..
A bank clerk is caught trying to get off a bus without paying. He gives the name and address as that of John Stockman, an unpleasant customer at the bank. Stockman is convicted after the conductor and ticket inspector identify him as the fare-dodger, despite the fact that he looks nothing like the clerk. Would they really be that stupid?
Our hero, a reporter, is fired because he didn't investigate if Stockman had an alibi (turns out Stockman has been bankrolling his struggling paper.) Yet he wrote a perfectly fair summary of the open and shut case, in which Stockman never put forward an alibi.
The owner of the paper, Lord Fenchurch, is blackmailed because he'd been keeping a mistress. Her spiv boyfriend waits with a thug (Freddie Mills) for the second payment to be made, in order to grab the money. How did he know where to wait, since the affair was over and the mistress had no idea where the first payment had been handed over?
Pity the script had so many holes, as the performances were good (particularly cherishable character actors like Kenneth Griffith and Joan Hickson), while the tragic Susan Shaw was at the peak of her loveliness.
Review of Chain of Events
