Mar 10, 2021
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939)
"But why the fishing hat?"
"This is the hat I make my arrests in."
#The Arsenal Stadium Mystery#british cinema#1939#films i done watched#crime film#Thorold Dickinson#Leonard Reginald Gribble#Leslie Banks#Greta Gynt#Ian McLean#Liane Linden#Anthony Bushell#Esmond Knight#Brian Worth#Richard Norris#Wyndham Goldie#Alastair MacIntyre#George Allison#Tom Whittaker#E.V.H. Emmett#Dennis Wyndham#David Keir#Johnnie Schofield#Maire O'Neill#Absolute nonsense in the best possible sense. Belongs to that very specific just pre war era of British film making when everything was#Very irreverent and slightly silly. Of huge interest I imagine to football scholars (which I am not) but also quite fun for those who know#And care nothing for the game (of which I am one). Most importantly we get an absolutely diamond Leslie Banks performance: hamming it up#Outrageously as a hat obsessed detective who cares more about the police concert he's putting on in a few days than he does about the crime#I mean he literally ascribes an arbitrary time constraint to the investigation (we must solve this in three days!) literally because he has#A concert coming up. Incredible. The plot's fine the film's goodish the cast whatever whatever; this is all about Banks and those hats