Hue and Cry

Reminiscent of Emil and the Detectives as a gang of East End kids excitedly realise that their favourite blood-and-thunder comic is being used as a means of communication by crooks, and (since the police turn a deaf ear) set out in hot pursuit. One of Ealing's first postwar successes, it is given an enormous boost by locations around the bomb sites of London's East End and by Sim's sinister eccentricities as the author of the serial in question. Its charm, in these days of headlines about kids and video nasties, is of another world: capturing a blonde moll (White) and requiring information, the gang subject her to the most vicious tortures they can think of - tickling by feather (which doesn't work) and menace by white mouse (which does).