MR. DENNING DRIVES NORTH

London Film Productions, 1951.  Directed by Anthony Kimmins.  Camera:  John Wilcox.  With Phyllis Calvert, John Mills, Eileen Moore, Sam Wanamaker, Herbert Lom, Raymond Huntley, Russell Waters, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Freda Jackson, Trader Faulkner, Sheila Shand Gibbs, Bernard Lee, Michael Shepley, Ronald Adam, John Stuart, Hugh Morton, David Davies.

Herbert Lom has been romancing Eileen Moore, whose father is a wealthy airplane manufacturer played by John Mills.  Mills and his wife, Phyllis Calvert, don't like Lom, who is older than their daughter, and who has a mysterious background.  Mills has Lom checked out, and discovers that he is a bad lot.  So he goes to Lom to pay him off to leave his daughter alone.  But Lom refuses and, in a confrontation, Mills accidentally causes Lom to fall and hit his head, killing him.  Mills comes up with a plan to drop Lom's body off on a road and let it look like Lom was the victim of an auto accident.

Time passes, and for some reason the police fail to notice Lom's absence.  Mills grows increasingly nervous—what if they don't discover the corpse?  What if they check out Lom's apartment and find some clue that leads back to Mills?  Moore, in the meantime, begins to show curiosity about Lom's disappearance.  Not that she wanted to continue the relationship with Lom—she has met Sam Wanamaker, an American born attorney who is far more acceptable as a potential husband.

Mills tells Calvert about the truth and they start trying to push the authorities (subtly, of course) into attending to the area where the body was dropped.  But the details that they manage to drop have an effect that they did not expect.  Moore starts wondering if Lom has been killed, and Wanamaker (to show his care for her feelings) takes it upon himself to really push the police into investigating the disappearance.  Soon the police do find traces of the incident, but they are looking at it rather darkly—like a murder (which it was).  Mills keeps taking time to parry the police thrusts, but finds he has no way of covering up anything from the overly eager Wanamaker.  Soon he is in for a second shock, when the dead man's brother shows up (played by Lom again).  Now there are several interested parties in the search for the missing man.  And the issue is, has Mills plan slipped up, or will he get away with it?