Dead Men Tell No Tales (1938 film)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Dead Men Tell No Tales is a 1938 British thriller directed by David MacDonald. It stars Emlyn Williams, Sara Seegar and Hugh Williams. The screenplay was written by Stafford Dickens, Doreen Montgomery, Walter Summers and Emlyn Williams, and is based on Francis Beeding’s 1935 novel The Norwich Victims. The film was produced by John Corfield for British National Films and shot at Welwyn Studios. It has a running time of 70 minutes and is in English.

Plot
An English schoolteacher wins a French lottery. On her trip to Paris to claim the prize, she is murdered and an impostor tries to claim it.

Reception
The film received positive notices in Britain, with Kinematograph Weekly noting press approval and box-office success in May 1938. The Monthly Film Bulletin praised its suspense, Williams’s dual roles (the pedantic schoolmaster and the cold-blooded killer), and the strong technical quality. The Evening Standard said the film starts with a hair-raising pace but slows later. In the United States, Variety called it a solid English murder mystery with plenty of action and dialogue, praising Williams’s performance and the cast, including Sara Seegar and Hugh Williams.