Product Details

• Actors: Alastair Sim, Frederick Piper, Harry Fowler, Douglas Barr, Joan Dowling
• Directors: Charles Crichton
• Writers: T.E.B. Clarke
• Producers: Henry Cornelius, Michael Balcon
• Format: PAL
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Number of discs: 1
• Run Time: 82 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0002HSDCS
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #406,042 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Hue and Cry [Region 2]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

[NON-U.S. FORMAT (PAL) Region 2 U.K. Import - This will not play on U.S./Canada DVD players or those from most other countries outside of Europe. You would need a "multi-region" or "region-free" PAL compatible DVD player or computer.] SYNOPSIS: Street boys throw rocks as the credits for HUE AND CRY appear behind them, among the grafitti on a brick wall. Director Charles Crichton's camera pans across London's Docklands. Joe (Harry Fowler), one of the street boys, reads from a Blood and Thunder comic. Enthralled, he finds he is walking down the streets mentioned in the comic, as the action from the comic appears to unfold before him--a truck with the same number plate stops, men unload large crates looking like those in the comic, a man with a moustache waits outside. With hardly a thought, Joe is spying. He is caught but, after being interviewed by the police, finds he has a job in Covent Garden, and a puzzle to solve. Joe's gang discovers the comic is being used to send coded messages to gangs of criminals. Nobody believes them--so they set out to investigate themselves. The memorable, climactic sequence sees a huge swarm of boys attempting to round up the baddies through the London's 1940s docklands. With fine performances by Fowler, Joan Dowling as the gang's only girl, Alastair Sim as the timid author of the bloodthirsty stories, and Jack Warner as Joe's boss, with T.E.B. Clarke's cunning script and Crichton's direction, HUE AND CRY snowballs from realism to fantastic thriller as it plays out in London's bomb-stricken streets.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An enjoyable film!, September 23, 2006

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hue and Cry [Region 2] (DVD)

In the reduced list of the most relevant films of U.K. made in the late forties, this is one of the top ones. A meek detective story writer and a group of kids crack a gang of thieves. This was the same team who eventually made "The lavender hill mob."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amusing, Wry And Endearing, April 17, 2006

By 

C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hue and Cry [Region 2] (DVD)

Hue and Cry is considered the first of the Ealing comedies, a string of very funny British films put out by Ealing from the late Forties to the mid-Fifties.

Joe (Harry Fowler), a London East End kid, is addicted to a boy's adventure weekly called The Trump. He begins to suspect that a series of burglaries somehow are related to the weekly storyline...that there are hidden messages in the story that tell gang members the place and time of the next store to be hit. Harry convinces the other boys in the neighborhood and they go to the cops. When the police don't believe them, they set out on their own to stop the gang and capture the ringleader. Along the way they find themselves trying to stop a burglary in a department store, getting noticed by Jim Nightingale, a tough greengrocer (Jack Warner), kidnapping a luscious blond secretary who may know more than she lets on, and trying to deal with Felix H. Wilkinson (Alastair Sim), the eccentric writer of the The Trump's storyline, a man with a distaste for small boys. The film's climax is the wonderful Battle of Ballards Wharf, where it seems every kid in London shows up to confront the bad guys.

The film was shot in 1947, most of it on location, and piles of brick and rubble from WWII bombing are much in evidence. Alastair Sim gives a typically batty, funny performance, but the star really is Harry Fowler. He's completely believable as a Cockney kid outraged that crooks would use The Trump for their criminal purposes. This is a funny, good-hearted movie, very much of its time and place.

5.0 out of 5 stars one of Ealing's first, and fabulous, February 27, 2007

By 

lydia mesange (east coast, us) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hue and Cry [Region 2] (DVD)

A wonderful film for young and old. The heroes are a group of boys, and one girl who mixes it up with the best of them: post-WWII Baker-Street Irregulars. There's intrigue and suspense, and Alastair Sim at his comic best as a timid writer of tabloid adventure thrillers.
How sad that this film is not available on a Region 1 dvd! But if you have a multi-region dvd player, you can order it from Amazon.co.uk for £9.03, including shipping (about $18.00 as of this writing).