Il marchio del cobra

Leonard Maltin has described this film as 'a modest affair enlivened by a solid cast.' Modest it certainly is and in common with all of director Harold French's output, is sorely in need of enlivening. The film's title promises much but the film itself alas delivers little.

Excellent Nigel Patrick with his trademark trilby is always good value and there is a delightful cameo from Joyce Grenfell as an aristocratic ornithologist. The dastardly drug smuggler is of course a European and is played by Theodore Bikel.

The Inspector Kenyon of Mr. Patrick foils a ring of brandy smugglers but then has to navigate more treacherous waters when tracking international drug smugglers to Cannes, not forgetting to pack his dinner suit of course. We see so little of the playground of the rich however that it might as well be Walton-on-Thames. There is a tantalisingly brief scene in a casino which could have been filmed anywhere. He dices with death in a singularly unexciting underwater sequence at the hands of sneaky Terence Morgan and manages to appeal to the better nature of Morgan's sister, the far from femme fatale Elisabeth Sellars, thereby preventing thirty pounds of heroin from wrecking the lives of a legion of dope fiends.

This is a quaint, harmless period piece which simply lacks an 'edge' and is ultimately defeated by its 'Englishness'. The subject matter warrants a far grittier treatment.

Depressingly, it is timeless in one respect only. It is a grim reminder that although the occasional battle against the evil of drugs may be won, the war is well and truly lost.