Inspector Hornleigh is the first of the Inspector Hornleigh films, it came out in 1938, it was followed by two sequels. The character was created by John P Wynn, writing under the name Hans Wolfgang Priwin. for the BBC radio program Monday Night At Seven. It was one segment in the 50 minute long show and it ran from 1937 to 1940. The movie is written by Gerald Elliott, Richard Llewellyn and Bryan Edgar Wallace with Eugene Ford directing. They've made the radio series over and the movies are much more comedic. Gordon Harker plays Inspector Hornleigh and Alastair Sim plays Sergeant Bingham. It was Alastair that prompted me to pick up a copy of the trilogy but I have gotten to like Gordon quite a bit. They work well together, the actors, not the characters. The Inspector is a sharp cookie and the poor Sergeant is the comic relief machine. He's often out of his depth and easily bamboozled, especially by a pretty face.
The main plot concerns someone stealing the nation's budget for a sneaky peak before it's announced. Someone could make some money out of the knowledge. A man is found murdered in his room at a boarding house. The Inspector is called in, he soon finds a link to the man with the nation's budget. Our heroes interview some suspects and do some detecting. Eventually he solves the case.
There's murder and merriment, just like I like. I thought it was a good story, plenty of suspects and good dialog, I got a few laughs out of it. I bought the DVD that's available from Amazon, it's the same DVD available here as in the UK, it's not marked with any region code and there's nothing on the DVD or the printed case insert to tell you who put out the DVD. It's got a DVDr instead of a pressed DVD. The quality is fair to good, sound is good. The link in the title of the film has all three films processed into a block. It's too bad as that's the best copy on YouTube. Worth a look for both comedy and mystery fans.
Comments