Cover Girl Killer (1959)

Set in the era of Soho strip clubs, smoky coffee bars and rock ‘n’ roll, a man obsessed with the women who appear on the front cover of Wow! magazine (a typical late 50s cheesecake magazine) makes it his crusade to kill each cover girl in the same pose and setting that they appear on the front cover in order to cleanse Britain of what he sees as a tide of filth and obscenity.

The killer should be easy to spot – he wears a raincoat, thick glasses and a bad wig – but he cleverly uses the disguise to make himself obvious while he commits the crimes and then loses it to blend back in with the outside world.

Canadian John (Spencer Teakle) has inherited the Stripclub ‘the Kasbah’ and Wow! magazine and is attempting to woo June (Felicity Young), one of the showgirls, by posing as a journalist – unaware that the Cover Girl Killer (posing as a photographer) is luring another showgirl, Gloria Starke (Bernadette Milnes) to her death.

Searching back issues of Wow! for his next victim, the killer locates last month’s model (and Miss Torquay 1959), Joy Adams (Christina Gregg) and strangles her during the photoshoot for a sun cream commercial.

The Cover Girl Killer poses as Mr Fairchild, an outrageous bowler hat-wearing toff alter-ego to throw the police off his trail, while Hammer stalwart Charles Lloyd Pack threatens to steal the show as a doddering, wheelchair-bound war veteran who reminisces about the old times.

Soft-spoken, sinister and creepy as the Soho Bogeyman, Harry H Corbett is superb, and a million miles from the Steptoe and Son character he would make famous in a few years’ time.

The Man
Harry H. Corbett
June
Felicity Young
John
Spencer Teakle
Brunner
Victor Brooks
Gloria Starke 
Bernadette Milnes
Joy Adams
Christina Gregg
Sergeant
Tony Doonan
Lennie Ross
John Barrard
Hodgkins
Alan Edwards
Captain Adams
Charles Lloyd Pack
Pop
Dermot Kelly
Actor
Denis Holmes
Rosie
Julie Shearing
Doctor
Tony Thawnton
Stagehand
Paddy Joyce

Director
Terry Bishop