Suspect (1960 film)

Suspect (U.S. title: The Risk) is a 1960 British 'B'[3] thriller film produced and directed by Roy and John Boulting and starring Tony Britton, Virginia Maskell, Peter Cushing, Ian Bannen and Donald Pleasence.

In The Monthly Film Bulletin Penelope Houston wrote: Suspect, we are told, was made by the Boulting Brothers "as an experiment in raising the level of the supporting feature".

Its subject matter, another of Nigel Balchin's stories of career scientists, with ministerial and security interventions, is approached with an air of superficial knowingness which breaks down quickly under pressure.

The security men are too flippantly treated; Whitehall, however cynically viewed, is found to know best; and whatever questions of scientific independence the film might seem to be raising in its dialogue are dodged for a pistols and fisticuffs climax and a comic chimpanzee fade-out.

Tony Britton, as the weak young man; Donald Pleasance [sic], as an insidious spy; Virginia Maskell, the femme link in the research team, Kenneth Griffith, Raymond Huntley and Peter Cushing could hardly be bettered.

Nominal stars Tony Britton and Virginia Maskell are awful, and you soon wish splendid supports Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, Raymond Huntley and lan Bannen had more to do.

The Boulting brothers fail to create the claustrophobia that might have intensified the climate of suspicion, and the casting of Spike Milligan in an espionage drama is the only real talking point.