The Green Man (Blu-ray)

Starring the scintillating Alastair Sim (A Christmas Carol, School for Scoundrels), directed by Robert Day (The Avengers) and with a BAFTA nominated screenplay by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (The Lady Vanishes), The Green Man is an enormously entertaining farce originally released in 1956.

Supporting Sim are an exemplarity cast of the era that includes George Cole (The Happiest Days of Your Life), Terry-Thomas (School for Scoundrels), Jill Adams (Private’s Progress) and Raymond Huntley (Night Train to Munich). A farce that ticks all the genre’s boxes (mistaken identities, compromising positions, much panicking and slamming of doors), the film makes an interesting companion piece to Ealing’s The Ladykillers (1955).

Alastair Sim plays Hawkins, a timid watchmaker with a part time job – he is also a professional assassin who bumps off the people we love to hate. But when the philandering MP Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley) is the intended target, vacuum cleaner salesman William Blake (George Cole) and Hawkins’ new neighbour Ann Vincent (Jill Adams) repeatedly get in the way. As the time of the assassination draws ever closer and Hawkins tracks his victim to a dilapidated seaside hotel called the Green Man, the laughs and the tension steadily rise to a brilliant climax.