Tiger in the Smoke

Tiger in the Smoke (1956)

A killer - savage, relentless, evil, loose in the city's fog he becomes a...

In wartime, a young officer is killed during a raid to kill a German general at the house that used to belong to his grandmother. Before he dies he talks about a treasure that was hidden there. Several years later, the members of that group are still together as a street band living in a cellar. The last of the gang, who was chosen for his skills as a ruthless killer, escapes from prison in a rampage of killing and, obsessed with the treasure, takes the gang to France to recover it.

Date of release
1956-11-27
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 34m
Genres
Thriller, Crime
Director
Roy Ward Baker

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

Tiger in the Smoke is a 1956 British crime film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Donald Sinden, Muriel Pavlow, Tony Wright, Bernard Miles and Christopher Rhodes. It is based on the 1952 novel The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham. The film is set in a noirish smog-shrouded London and briefly in Brittany, France, and combines the genres of mystery, thriller, crime and drama. The cinematography was by Geoffrey Unsworth.

Production

The movie was one of several thrillers Rank made that year.

Roy Ward Baker was offered the job of directing by producer Leslie Parkin, who worked with him on Morning Departure. Margery Allingham was one of Baker's favourite authors. As screenwriter Änthony Pelissier was also writing a television special, Baker helped write the script. He later said Allingham "was a very bizarre writer. Her books appear to be very realistic and straightforward detective stories, thrillers and suspense.

Baker felt the film "was a failure." He felt "One of the problems with the picture is that the central character doesn't appear until at least a third of the way through. It should be a man with an overwhelming personality, not macho but real strength, real evil and he is a determined villain."

Baker felt this role should have been played by someone like Jack Hawkins or Stanley Baker but John Davis insisted they use Tony Wright. He elaborated

Sometimes people get picked up for a part, a star part, in a good movie, and they’re just not right for it, and they can’t do it, and it ruins them for the rest of their lives. It blows it completely for them. Tony Wright did do, in fact, a lot of work after that, but he never really caught on as a major personality...It’s too bad, and it wrecked the film, and it wrecked this poor man’s career.It was shot at Pinewood Studios with sets designed by…

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