The Green Man

A splendid black comedy, adapted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat from their own play Meet a Body. Sim is up to his old tricks as a timid watchmaker who is a professional assassin in his spare time. All the right people get bumped off (headmasters, businessmen, and other assorted dictators), and the movie is quite vulgar enough to be funny. It is fascinating to compare Sim's hilarious schizophrenia with Alec Guinness in The Ladykillers. Inside every Englishman there lurks a ruthless criminal, impatient to steal scenes.