The Avenging Hand

Noah Beery was the less famous brother of Wallace Beery. During his career, Noah mostly played supporting roles...so "The Avenging Hand" was an unusual opportunity for him to star in this British B-movie.

Lee Barwell (Beery) is an American gangster who is vacationing in Britain. He's amazed how lax everything is here and his criminal inclination thinks he's in a place ripe for fleecing. However, he is on vacation and instead goes to hang out at a swanky hotel. There he meets an odd man...a match-seller who has inexplicably come upon some money under unusual circumstances. However, some time later the poor guy is murdered and the killer stuffs a gun in his hand to make it look like a suicide. Barwell realizes it's a murder as he could smell some sort of cologne lingering from the assailant and spends the rest of the film acting like a detective investigating the crime.

The amateur detective investigating a murder is a common American genre of the 1930s....but putting the story in Britain and having a criminal doing the investigating...well that IS unique. Very watchable...mostly because I found Beery's performance enjoyable.