The Trygon Factor

"The Trygon Factor" is a weird combination of mystery (there is a masked killer at work), heist movie (a gold robbery), and comedy (of the black kind). It mostly falls flat, but it also has its moments (like the scene mentioned in my summary above), and scores points for having several women - for a change - running the criminal organization that Granger goes up against. ** out of 4.

Edgar Wallace wrote some fine old English murder mysteries and practically invented the genre with the glorious exception of Sherlock Holmes. He was a pretty prolific author and The Trygon Factor was one of his stories. Sadly this souped up modern version updated for the swinging London 60s just doesn't cut it. Stewart Granger stars as the Scotland Yard Inspector on the trail of one of his own gone missing and stumbles on a nice smuggling racket run by a most eccentric landed gentry family and a convent who share the same real estate. It's a fine kettle of fish when the aristocracy has to use one of its stately homes of England for some racket. But when aristocrats fall on hard times they'll do anything short of day labor. Not even Robert Morley and Cathleen Nesbit can save this. And Susan Hampshire as a love interest for Stewart Granger is absurd.

I must admit this was an interesting picture. It has some zany scenes, like nuns racing down the River Thames in a motorboat, which alone are worth the price of admission. It was filmed partially at St. Mary's College in Twickenham, Middlesex, England, using the part of the college termed "Strawberry Hill," which Horace Walpole built as a Gothic-revival castle in the mid-1700's. I was an American teenager who happened to study at that college in 1969, and the staff mentioned that this picture had been filmed there a few years before. In fact, quite a few films and television shows have been made at "Strawberry Hill" because the college needs the funds badly for upkeep. I also remember a scene in the film with overt lesbian overtones.

A Scotland Yard inspector is called on to investigate a series of unsolved robberies and the death of her lady colleague previously tracking down the case, and ends up at the country manor of an eccentric noble English family, sharing their castle with a mysterious sisterhood. Crazily convoluted thriller that also mixes several styles from crime and action to romance and black comedy, and is peopled by mainly dislikable eccentrics. Eventually, somehow all these elements combine to produce an enjoyable rehash of Edgar Wallace and a general air of slickness and competence.