My Learned Friend (DVD)

Will Hay (Dandy Dick, The Goose Steps Out) plays a disbarred solicitor who, with the help of Claude (Claude Hulbert), embarks on a frantic chase in pursuit of a psychopathic murderer newly released from prison. The prisoner is working through a vengeance list with Claude's name near the top... Directed by Basil Dearden and Will Hay, My Learned Friend offers a fascinating insight into the direction Will Hay might have taken if ill health had not caused this Ealing picture to be his last. The tone is much darker than his previous films, and the humour, much of it revolving around a sequence of grisly murders, foreshadows the blackest of Ealing's post-war comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets.