Seven Sinners

Crisply scripted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, this set out as a remake of The Wrecker, a 1929 melodrama about sabotage on the railways, but - evidently under their influence - metamorphosed into something rather different: a fast-moving, serio-comic thriller which kicks off with an American detective (Lowe) investigating a murder when a corpse turns up in his hotel room in Nice, then mysteriously vanishes, only to reappear subsequently amid the debris of a wrecked train (the plot allows for several crashes, using spectacular footage from The Wrecker, as it moves back and forth across the Channel). Clearly intending to ape Hitchcock in both plot and manner, the film creaks here and there, but is brisk, occasionally gripping, and often amusing. Lowe (well backed up by Constance Cummings as a sidekick Nora to his Nick Charles) proves surprisingly adept at the throwaway touch and the nonchalant wisecracks.