As well as the predictable list of titles, the BBC's Summer of British Film has seen some real gems unearthed for TV screening - including The Noose from 1948.
It's nigh-on impossible to get a copy of this movie, so well done the Beeb for showing it. Directed by Edmond T. Greville (pictured here - who you may know from Beat Girl), it's a typically sensationalist flick about a Soho crime boss and club owner - Sugiani (played by Joseph Calleia) and the 'brains' behind his organisation, Bar Gorman, dressed in full spiv uniform and bizarrely, like an early Kenneth Williams in both voice and mannerisms.
When yet another 'victim' is found washed up in the River Thames, reporter Linda Medbury (Carole Landis) takes it upon herself to challenge Sugiani. And with the aid of her boyfriend Jumbo Hoyle (Derek Farr) and a gang of boxers, market porters and taxi drivers, they take on Sugiani - dressed, rather strangely, in Chelsea football shirts.
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Recent history hasn't been kind to Patrick McGoohan - but it was all very different in the first half of the sixties. A string of successful film roles and the success of Danger Man made him one of the highest-paid actors on British TV - and a contender for the first Bond.
But McGoohan missed out on Bond (or possibly rejected it) and eventually left Danger Man to move onto a show he was to both produce and star in - The Prisoner. Ironically, a show about a secret agent who is imprisoned after quitting his job. The Prisoner baffled audiences before becoming a cult classic. And it also killed McGoohan's reputation in sixties Britain - he and his family had to flee the country at the time.
The controversy and cult status of The Prisoner has probably overshadowed Danger Man - which really was a great series. And it has now been reissued as a 13-disc Danger Man Special Edition so you can find out why it was so popular both in the UK and the US.
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