User reviews

Despite only lasting an hour, this film about a serial killer who has a grudge against cover girls - a la The Lodger and Jack the Ripper - rarely flags and has an energy which lifts it above other B movies of the time. It also has Harry H Corbett, best known these days for Steptoe and Son, proving he could act in a serious role. He is genuinely creepy, chilling and calculating.

In some respects this film also reminds me of Peeping Tom, also about a psychopathic murderer of high intelligence who kills by ritual. While that film was a straight A, 'Cover Girl Killer' does not pale in its company, and it proves its worth as a late night regular on TV.

There are some surprisingly long well-informed reviews of this seemingly rather undistinguished 1959 British B. Those who might have seen it at that time are now all senior citizens. But for a few, perhaps a very few, such elderly gentlemen it evokes memories of their formative years like nothing else.

If you had been a young person with an interest in photography you would have been aware of the publications safely tucked away on the top shelves of the newsagents shops - as appear in this film. Soho was then as now an exotic location well known for the fleshly pleasures including foreign foods. Indeed it was a basket of exotica quite unique in the entire UK. Oddly at the same time, it was the home of army surplus radio gear - all displayed on stalls outside the shops. It thus drew serious studious radio amateurs old and young to briefly share its busy notorious pavements with its more permanent and mostly female residents as well as passing rather furtive older gentlemen in raincoats and often bowler hats whose visit might only be slightly longer than that of the innocent old and young radio enthusiasts.

By the standards on the 1950s, the above would be quite unsuitable for any kind of family publication or family conversation as it alludes to what was common knowledge but then a taboo topic in family contexts. Such were the dim and distant 1950s - made vivid again by this film whose makers clearly knew their market.

Did I see it at the time? I'm not sure - it would have been at least an A possibly an X certificate. Yet Felicity Young seems oddly very familiar. Why was she so memorable? Not just because she was very good looking. I think because she was a classy ostensibly "nice" girl who did - remove her clothes, not all of course. In a world then firmly divided between nice girls who didn't and not nice girls who did, Felicity Young produced a thrilling confusion in a younger impressionable mind - apparently.

It is a strange thing that less can be more. In such restricted times, very little could seem very much more.

This movie for me is very much a sweet and sour affair. One the one hand I think Steptoe and Son is the finest comedy ever but also I think if it would never have happened we could and should have seen Harry H Corbett as one of Britains finest actors. This gem of a movie takes all the naivety of days gone by with the age old story of a bad man who thinks the world is changing for the worse and depravity rules. Blitzed into just 60 odd minutes this was obviously made as a B movie but is a world above anything it was made to run alongside. If this was remade today it would have to be a gruesome 18 cert affair probably filmed in the seedy parts of London and involve drugs and prostitutes ( Harry Brown springs to mind)but the way they get the message across without so much as a grain of smut is incredible. Absolutely fantastic piece of movie making and seems as relative today as it was when made over 50 years ago.

Nineteen years before Mary Millington crossed paths with a misogynist murderer bearing a grudge against bust models in The Playbirds, B-movie actress Felicity Young (Play it Cool) had to deal with the late Fifties counterpart in this enjoyable Butcher's Film Distributors programmer. Set in the era of Soho Strip-tease, smoky coffee bars and rock and roll, The Cover Girl Killer opens to its titular character, a bogeyman by way of a Soho dirty mack leering at a non-stop follies marquee. Dressed in a raincoat, pebble glasses and a wig The Cover Girl Killer is played by future Steptoe, Harry H Corbett who remains unrecognisable from his later TV incarnation. Motivated by the `unsavoury obsessions of his twisted mind' and a need to `give back man his dignity to free him from the prison of lustful images that foul his mind and his sanity' the anti-smut Cover Girl Killer poses as a photographer in order to murder models who have appeared on the cover of Wow, a typical late Fifties cheesecake magazine. Canadian Spencer Teakle (a Butcher's mainstay) inherits music hall stripclub `the Kasbar' and the magazine Wow, both the source of the Cover Girl Killer's rage. Attempting to woo June, one of the showgirls by posing as a journalist, Teakle is unaware that The Cover Girl Killer is luring Gloria his showgirl `with the most on show' to her death. A leopard skin themed photoshoot ends with Gloria being found dead and bikini clad, in a kinky fashion she's posed identical to her sexy cover shot. Initially invistigated as the murderer Teakle helps the police, who are constantly outwitted by `the man' (as he is billed in the credits). Going through the back issues of Wow for his next victim The Cover Girl Killer locates last month's model Miss Torquay 1959 (Christina Gregg another Butcher's player). Contracted to shoot a Sun Cream commercial, when Miss Torquay emerges in a bikini the Cover Girl Killer can control himself no longer, meaningfully stating `your nudity means nothing to me' before strangling her. Running just over an hour The Cover Girl Killer is rarely dull- the police actively encourage Teakle's Harrison Marks wannabe to publish his exotica in order to catch the killer. The Cover Girl Killer poses as Mr Fairchild an outrageous bowler hat wearing toff alter-ego to throw the police off his trail, the police subsequently put June on the cover to trap Corbett's well respected man, the detective in charge drinks a lot of tea, The Cover Girl Killer goes to a showbiz impresario with plans to make a movie version of his killings `I'm all for the good old X-certificate if you can get it'. Given that Wow is portrayed as the cutting edge that 1959 had to offer The Cover Girl Killer's climax, with the Cover Girl Killer dressing June in lingerie, chasing her around a studio and forcing her onto a four poster bed to reinact her front cover must have seemed raw stuff indeed. Some of the dialogue is wonderful, you can almost imagine the hack screenwriter sitting in a Soho office on a wet afternoon turning out headline dialogue like `surely sex and horror are the new Gods in this polluted world of so called entertainment'. As the Soho Bogeyman Corbett is never anything less than surprising, making up for some of the other less than credible performers. Corbett's career was bookmarked by exploitation, for after fame cameos in Adventures of a Private Eye and the Fiona Richmond vehicle Hardcore Corbett demanded high fees for limiting roles. Soft spoken, sinister and creepy his performance in the Cover Girl Killer suggests he did deserve better. Cover Girl Killer is a delusion from the mind of righteous filmmakers who believe themselves worthy of greatness but can only score sensational tack. It's full of acid comments on the illiteracy of readers of cheesecake magazines (and by association viewers of films with titles like The Cover Girl Killer). At times the film totally identifies with the killer's ideology especially in its depiction of the victim's husbands and fathers- sad broken men whose inability to keep hold of their women lead to their loved one's demise. This fashioning schizoid edge however says more about the filmmakers than it does the audience, never is the film more true than its depiction of it's chicken in a basket showbiz crony which draws impossible to ignore comparisons with Butchers themselves who were known for paying people as low as 35p to £2.50 for scripts. Butchers Film continued grinding on in the polluted world of so called entertainment making countless B pictures up until the late Sixties. Like their counterparts Tigon they freewheeled throughout the Seventies distributing foreign sex films like Erika, The Fabulous European Strip-Tease and The Sex Artist. One of their last releases was Norman J Warren's 'alien rape' movie Inseminoid. For years considered a lost film but kept alive on the strength of Corbett's appearance and historically being one of the earliest slasher films, The Cover Girl Killer now enjoys a second life as a stable of late night television, guaranteeing that the Ghost of the Cover Girl Killer will haunt insomniacs and the curious for many years to come.

Serial killer thrillers have become quite popular in Hollywood over recent years, especially since the success of "The Silence of the Lambs", but "Cover Girl Killer" is a rare British example of the genre from the late fifties. A maniac is targeting the models who have posed for the front cover of a men's magazine called "Wow!" The magazine's publisher and his girlfriend (herself a model) join forces with the police to help track down the killer.

A film made on this theme twenty, or maybe even ten, years later, to say nothing of one on the subject today, would doubtless be ultra-violent with plenty of nudity, and possibly sex scenes as well. In 1959, however, they did things differently. Although it deals with murder, the film is reassuringly old-fashioned and traditional in the same way as an Agatha Christie mystery is reassuringly old-fashioned and traditional. The investigating detective is played as the typical Englishman from so many films around this period, tweedy, pipe-smoking and normally seen brewing himself a cup of tea. "Wow!" magazine is much tamer than the "Playboy" type of girlie mag, with no nudity or even toplessness; pictures of girls in bikinis is about as far as it gets. The girls themselves are all pretty, sweet and wholesome rather than raunchy or seductive. Even the publisher is not some Hugh Hefner or Bob Guccione figure but a mild-mannered Canadian archaeologist who has inherited the magazine from an eccentric uncle.

Even the killer is a traditional figure, a deranged Jack the Ripper type who is on a mission to cleanse Britain of what he sees as a tide of filth and obscenity. (We never learn his true name, although he uses various false ones; in the cast list he is referred to simply as "The Man"). When we first see him he is wearing thick pebble glasses, a badly-fitting wig and a raincoat, making him look like the standard cartoon image of the Dirty Old Man. (Ironically, "You dirty old man!" was to become the catch-phrase of the actor who plays him, Harry H Corbett, when he later starred in the television comedy series "Steptoe and Son"). This image proves to be a disguise; the killer is rather more subtle and intelligent than the police had originally assumed. Just because he's a psychopath doesn't mean he's stupid.

Corbett's portrayal of this obsessive maniac makes for the best contribution to the film. He started off as a serious actor, even starring in productions of Shakespeare, but was unlucky in two ways. He was unlucky in that he shared a name with Harry Corbett, the popular children's entertainer of "Sooty Bear" fame. Although he did not have a middle name, he was forced to add a bogus middle initial in an attempt to avoid confusion, not always successfully. (According to one, possibly apocryphal, story, this confusion was responsible for the Sooty Bear man being made an Officer of the British Empire, an honour which should have gone to his namesake). He was also unlucky in that the success of "Steptoe" led to his being typecast as a comic actor and made it impossible for him to re-establish himself in the sort of serious drama he preferred. In the later part of his career he was rarely offered parts in anything but comedies.

As I said, the film has a very dated feel, yet it is skilfully made and succeeds in generating a certain amount of tension. When it turns up on television (as it occasionally does) it is worth watching, if only as an example of a very different style of film-making to anything we might be used to today. 6/10

Spencer Teakle is a stage door Johnny with the shyest manner. He claims to be a journalist for "WOW!", one of those magazines whose sales depend more on pretty, underdressed women on the cover than their prose. Show girl Felicity Young doesn't believe him for an instant. She's right. He's actually the publisher of the magazine, left him by his uncle, who thought the repressed archeologist needed to broaden his interests.

Then the girl on the most recent cover dies of a sleeping pill overdose, wearing the same costume. Teakle digs through the back files and discovers other recent cover girls have died in the same way. Police Inspector victor Brooks thinks they're dealing with the sort of serial killer that he cannot catch: not only insane, but highly intelligent.

Given the premises of this movie, I was surprised at its intelligence and competence. Of course, it's fun to look at the series of young ladies wearing sexy clothes and little of them, but an unrecognizable Harry Corbett as the killer has a great role, and Teakle seems to be having a lot of fun. Good script, good direction, good acting: they combine to make a very good movie.

The British made suspense film, "Cover Girl Killer" (1959) follows the exploits of a mentally disturbed but un-named man (played with 100% sinister conviction by the wonderful Harry H Corbett) who is so strongly opposed to the use of sexually suggestive images on magazine covers, he takes it upon himself to murder any model he can find who is happy to exploit herself on a top shelf mag by posing as a photographer.

Young hopefuls are lured back to his seedy flat for portfolio photographs, never to leave the room alive.

To assist the police, the "WOW" magazine editor (Spencer Teakle) sets a plant by putting his girlfriend (gorgeous Felicity Young) on the next month's front cover in order to trap the serial killer.

Things go tits up however, and that's when the fun begins...

Well worth seeing for the very creepy performance of Harry H Corbett who started out as a serious Shakespearian stage actor and ultimately became immortalised in the long running British comedy series, "Steptoe and Son" (which was reworked in the States as "Sanford and Son") and the "Carry On" movie comedies.

If Cover Girl Killer was made a few years later after Psycho and Peeping Tom. It could had been lurid pulpy B movie.

Instead it is a dull but slightly risqué potboiler.

Harry H Corbett is the unhinged but cunning killer of young models. He leaves the corpses in same pose as they did in the rude magazine called 'Wow!'

Johnny Mason is the new owner of Wow and he joins up with the police to catch the killer.

Johnny got a glimpse of the killer. He wore thick glasses and a bad wig.

The police convince a model called June as bait. A model that Johnny is romantically interested in.

This is a routine B quickie. Many of the characters are not that interesting. Maybe more focus should had been placed on the killer. The twist of him sending someone else as a patsy could had been developed more.

Harry H Corbett won acclaim as a stage actor early in his career but in 1962 he appeared on television for a 'one-off' Galton and Simpson Playhouse called 'The offer'. This was successful enough for Galton and Simpson to be asked to turn it into a series which they called Steptoe and Son. This was so popular that it ran for eight series ending in 1974.

Most people will only know Harry H Corbett for his portrayal of Harold Steptoe in Steptoe and Son. The quality of these performances, especially the little monologues and character sketches that were often included in the beginning of some of the later episodes, give an insight into the potential he had which was never realised.

Sadly, after 12 years as Harold Steptoe, Harry H Corbett was irredeemably typecast and found little serious dramatic work before his untimely death from a heart attack in 1982.

In Cover Girl Killer he is almost unrecognisable and his (believable) character could not be much further from his later typecasting.

This film is slightly clichéd but is worth seeing in its own right. However, I would advise anyone who has enjoyed Harry H Corbett in anything else to watch this if only to see what we missed of a potentially great dramatic career.

A quarter of a century later in the song 'Two Tribes' Frankie Goes to Hollywood repeats almost verbatim the line snarled by The Man Harry H. Corbett that "sex and horror are new gods in this polluted world of so-called entertainment"!

Coincidence? The bow-tie and pebble-lens glasses possibly also inspired Les Dawson's depraved creation Cosmo Smallpiece!!

AS others have said, the best thing about this film is Harry H Corbett showing he was a more versatile actor than his later pigeon-holing suggested. Those glasses are ridiculous though. The rest is fairly routine B movie fare, including the commonly used trope of the police inexplicably allowing a member of the public to tag along with their enquiries, and share evidence with him. This is made all the more absurd since, in this case, he's actually a Person of Interest, but such films need this device in order that the hero can be in on the finale (by which time he's telling the police what to do!) The villain's actions don't always make logical sense, but it's only an hour of your time.

A wonderful gem of sleazy 1960s London with a brilliant performance from the wonderfully versatile Harry H Corbett in a very dark interesting turn as a Serial killer

Cover Girl Killer was originally made as a routine B pic short, but later in its life has developed something of a Cult status. Sure, the set up and overall narrative appear crude, but it is largely compensated by Harry H. Corbett's excellently creepy performance as a sadistic psychopath on the war path against the "evils" of the late 1950's adult titillation industry.

Victor Brooks provides, as ever, solid support as the Inspector on his trail, and Felicity Young is good as the girlfriend of Spencer Teakle, the somewhat naive new owner of "Wow" magazine.

Short, distinctly unsavoury with no finesse - in other words a fine piece of B&W schlock- if that's your thing.

Any chance to see model-turned-actress Christina Gregg is worthwhile, no matter how disappointing this particular British New Wave crime thriller is despite the cool title of COVER GIRL KILLER, supposedly the harbinger of PEEPING TOM...

Gregg would later play a 15-year-old virgin stalked by a psychotic phone caller, while here she's an older yet equally shy, innocent and naïve victim of a spectacle-wearing photographer who kills cover girls, as the tile implies...

Sadly, most of the film has two cops discussing the murders when there could have been more British beauties taken out in a body count fashion, mixing horror within the pulpy police procedural that's not very intriguing...

Although lead ingenue Felicity Young, as the girl/friend of a flaky magazine owner no one takes seriously, is also worth the watch. You'll hope she fares better than poor Christina.

A weirdo approaches the stage door of the Casbah Club, in 1950s Soho, and is transfixed by a portrait of Miss Gloria Starke (Bernadette Milnes, who pops up in the opening scene of Cover Story, a Sweeney episode, fifteen years later - if you're interested, like).

This is a film by Butchers Film Distributors (at least, I think it is – IMDb lists it as Jack Parsons Productions) and it's a film on a different level, theme wise, to almost every other second feature of its era. Cover Girl Killer is a film about a voyeur (in this most voyeuristic art form) who becomes a serial killer in order to "give man back his dignity, to free him from the prison of lustful images which foul his mind and pollute his sanity." The killer, played by Harry H Corbett, and billed only as The Man, feels imprisoned by society's values (which he finds morally abhorrent) and can only become "free" by killing girls who take off their clothes for Wow! Magazine. "I assure you, miss, your nudity means nothing to me", says Corbett, before dispatching one of them, Christina Gregg, who often popped up as the vulnerable type.

I've always had a problem with Corbett in a straight roll (Harry not Ronnie); his acting is just ludicrously mannered – really bad, oo I can act, look at me, amateur dramatics. Here, fortuitously, he's playing such an oddball that he's actually quite effective. Of course, the killer doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. "The borderline between what we call insanity and a hyper sensitive intellect is not always very clear, inspector", he tells Inspector Brunner (Victor Brooks), after turning up in his office, pretending to be Mr. Fairchild, property developer. Why he does this is not clear. Maybe, it's an ego thing and he wants to pit his wits against the police.

The most interesting scene is when the killer approaches Lennie Ross, (Theatre, Screen and TV agent, 3rd floor), for an actor to play the killer in the cover girl case. "Surely sex and horror are the new gods in this polluted world of so called entertainment?" (This line later featured in a UK number 1 smash for Frankie Goes To Hollywood, pop pickers.) Here, Cover Girl Killer really gets to the heart of the matter; reflecting on itself as we watch plans for a film version of the film we are actually watching.

This was a very unusual British film, inasmuch as the cinema audience had an advantage over the characters in the film. In other words, those watching the film knew who the killer was right from the start.

It was nice to see Harry H. Corbett in one of his earlier performances, proving that he was a very good character actor, before being type cast as "Harold" in the much-appraised television series, "Steptoe and Son".

Cover Girl Killer (1959)

** (out of 4)

A disturbed man (Harry H. Corbett) objects to sexuality being used on the cover of magazines so he begins to kill the women who grace those covers. The magazine's owner (Spencer Teakle) decides to help the police by having his girlfriend (Felicity Young) appear on the next issue and sure enough the maniac comes after her. Considering some of the elements in this British shocker you can't help but walk away feeling very disappointed. There's some interesting stuff going on in this film but sadly director Terry Bishop does absolutely nothing with it and in the end this 61-minute "B" picture seems to run twice as long. The biggest problem is the actual screenplay because we spend so much time with the police and the magazine editor that you can't help but roll your eyes for a number of reasons. One is the fact that the characters are all very dull. Another problem is that the actual investigation doesn't lead to any drama or tension. The biggest issue is the fact that throughout the film we do spend a little time with the killer and he's such an interesting character that it becomes rather frustrating when we go away from him and settle back with the boring characters. Corbett does a very good job at playing this rather disturbed and creepy guy. I thought the actor did a fine job at showing how weird this guy is but he was also good enough to show how intelligent he was. The supporting players aren't nearly as impressive, although Young isn't too bad as the "next" victim. I guess it's important to note that this film was made and released a full year before both PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM. Whereas those two films actually crossed the line in an attempt to do something new and fresh, this film here clearly just wanted to be another "B" picture and that's really a shame because the subject matter was an interesting one. There are bits and pieces of good stuff here but sadly they never come together. There's even talk about Jack the Ripper and how the two killers are connected but that's about it. COVER GIRL KILLER isn't a bad movie but at the same time you can't help but wish it had tried to be better.

"Surely sex and horror are the new gods in this world of so-called entertainment."

Also Echoing is a Song from "Frankie Goes to Hollywood".

Paraphrasing the Above Often Quoted Line from this Underrated, Under-the-Radar "B" Movie from England.

Spotlighting the Double Meaning of Society's Controversy/Fascination with Sex and Sexploitation.

We are Still Coming to Grips with the 1st Amendment that No Less was Taken Up by the Supreme Court in the 70's because of "Screw", the Hard-Core Pornographic Tabloid Flourishing on Newsstands right Next to "Newsweek".

The Result was that Pornography was Ruled Legitimate "Free Speech".

Brings to Mind the Eternal Question...Is it Art Imitating Life or Life Imitating Art?.

The Serial Killer in this Movie Thinks and States that it is a Corrupting Influence and the Bikini Clad "Cover Girls" Deserved to be Executed.

Harry H. Corbett Plays "The Man".

A Character Obviously Named to Represent "Man" in General with a Specific Focus on One who is Deranged, Delusional, and Psychopathic.

He Represents a Significant "Voice". A Part of the Duality in the Herd Male Mentality.

A Public that Supports, Participates, Rejects, Embraces, Loves, and Hates What He Sees.

Disturbed by it, and Becomes a Disturbed Individual, the Result is Tragic.

Representing a "Group" and Not an Individual. However this is the Result of 1 Man's Actions.

Corbett is a Household Name in Britain because of a Long Running TV Show Called "Steptoe and Son". Not Well Known Outside the UK.

His Performance is the Highlight.

This is a Very Good, Intelligent Low-Budget, but Tasteful Invasion into the World of the "Wow" Magazine Types.

A Feed-Back Loop Analyzing the Subject and at the Same Time is the Subject.

The Police Investigation and the Psychology of the Sex Serial Killer Focus.

This is One Time the Avalanche of "B" Movie Output Gathered a Rock-Solid Reason to Exist, Inform, and Entertain.

A Gem of its Kind with Kudos All Around.

"Submitted For Your Approval".

This Miniscule Primitive Art Production is a "Signpost" from Way-Back.

A Must-See.