Dilemma (1962)

This British thriller is full to the brim with suspense and black comedy.

Respectable music teacher Harry Barnes (Peter Halliday) returns home from the school where he works on the eve of a wedding anniversary holiday to find a strange man dead in the bathroom of his suburban house and his beautiful, rich wife, Jean (Ingrid Hafner) missing.

What to do? Call an ambulance? Ring the police? Or bury the corpse under the living room floor . . .

Unfortunately, Harry is constantly interrupted in his endeavours – by nosey neighbour Mrs Edna Jones (Patricia Burke); nuns collecting for missionaries; a blind piano tuner (Arthur Hewlett); a young lad arriving for his weekly piano lesson; his harridan mother (Joan Heath) showing up to criticise his wife and so on.

Harry visits a local builder’s yard to buy some cement and soon after the police visit the same yard asking questions about an abandoned car and its criminal owner.

Meanwhile, Jean has been to the hospital to have her cut hand attended to and is now in a tizz down at the bank because she can’t find her security box key (she dropped it in the garden when she fled) and she is desperate to get the box open.

The police’s questioning brings them to Harry’s door and the ending is packed with accusations with the police initially reluctant to reveal why they are interested in their mystery man.

It turns out he is a known drug dealer who sets up affluent suburban housewives to act as couriers.

Dilemma was the last production of ACT Films. The distributors were unable to obtain a cinema release and it went straight to TV.

Harry Barnes
Peter Halliday
Jean Barnes
Ingrid Hafner
Edna Jones
Patricia Burke
Mrs Barnes
Joan Heath
Inspector Murray
Patrick Jordan
Nun collecting charitable donations
Barbara Lott
Mr Ridley
William Sherwood
Piano Tuner
Arthur Hewlett
Arthur Jones
Alan Rolfe
Doctor
Robert Dean

Director
Peter Maxwell

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