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source: Moss Rose

Moss Rose

I love old B&W films and this started really well, plus a Murder mystery. As a bonus Victor Mature and Vince Price. Oh my goodness the attempts at cockney and English accents is absolutely hilarious. Thses actors have never heard a cockney accent in their lives. Peggy Cummings is so bad bad as the lead. She flutters here eyelashes, moves her eyes many times, and tawks lark that. I've never seen her in anything else and going by this performance I'm not surprised. Although Irish you'd think she'd know an east London accent Barrymore looks odd, is a dreadful actress here, overacting the facial expressions and eye movement. Creepy and very funny. I'm sure there's a good plot here but the terrible accents and OTT acting is a very funny distraction. Even Price speaks like Stephen Hawkin's voice box. Mature is great as usual and the actress playing his finance (Audrey) was the best thing in the film.

A mystery thriller of the 1940s, typical in look and feel, and heavily indebted to many others like GASLIGHT and REBECCA. This one features Peggy Cummins - sporting a horrendous Cockney accent - as a woman who suspects a local aristocraft, played by Victor Mature, of murder. Instead of going to the police she ends up blackmailing and marrying him instead, and the rest goes from there. A good cast in this one, with Ethel Barrymore playing up her family's reputation and Vincent Price well cast as a suave detective on the case.

Two English roses newly arrived in Hollywood, Peggy Cummins and Patricia Medina (the former sporting big forties hair and a cockney accent that would have made Dick Van Dyke blush) are showcased in this deliriously artificial Edwardian melodrama set in a typical Fox London of fog and barrel-organs I smugly assumed I'd figured out whodunnit nearly immediately, but I'd actually fallen for a red herring and the real identity of the film's psycho-killer came memorably from left field. (Ghouls take note: two people turn up dead with their eyes open long before people are generally thought to have died that realistically in movies.)

A distinguished cast (including a pre-horror stardom Vincent Price as a police inspector!), a clever "voice recognition test" sequence, and some plot surprises make "Moss Rose" worth your while, although it's quite slow-moving and somewhat derivative. The mystery resolution has some daring psychological implications. **1/2 out of 4.

Various internet sources state that the film "Moss Rose" was based on the Joseph Shearing novel, "The Crime of Laura Sarelle." This is simply not true as any reading of that novel will clearly show. The 1947 film "Moss Rose" was based on the 1934 Joseph Shearing Novel, "Moss Rose." And although the film plot varies greatly from the novel, the basic story is quite similar and many of the same character names were used in the film. The novel was based on the 1872 murder of a London prostitute, well before Jack the Ripper appeared on the scene. Incidentally, Joseph Shearing was one of many pen names used by Marjorie Bowen (another pen name) who was born Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell and later married Arthur L. Long. She wrote many thrillers, romances, and novels of the supernatural, all under various pen names. In any event, the film "Moss Rose" exudes Victorian/Edwardian atmosphere and suspense and is well worth watching. Truly, they don't make them like this any more.