Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre, The (Tales of Edgar Wallace)

1 9 6 0 – 1 9 6 4 (UK)

Between 1960 and 1964, 40 low-budget films were produced in Britain for the cinema screen (by Anglo Amalgamated) from the novels of crime writer Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace.

These films were then sold to the US as a TV series, where they were edited down to fit into a sixty-minute time slot and broadcast as The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre.

The series also aired later in the UK and in Australia.

Produced at Merton Park Studios in South West London, the Edgar Wallace films were often filmed in a week in the studios and the neighbouring streets.

They were then provided to British cinemas as ‘second features’, screened before the big films.

The first film was The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960) starring Bernard Lee.

The last film to be shot under the Edgar Wallace banner was Face of a Stranger (1964).

Many future British stars appeared throughout the series including Michael Caine, Harry H. Corbett, Barbara Windsor, Jack Hedley, Michael Gough, Alfred Burke, John Le Mesurier, Kenneth Cope, Rosemary Leach, Wanda Ventham, Dawn Addams and others, all paid on a daily basis and many appearing in more than one film.