Mix Me a Person

Plot synopsis:
Phillip Bellamy, a leading barrister, tells his wife, psychiatrist Anne Dyson, about his most recent case defending a young layabout, Harry Jukes, who has apparently shot a policemen on a country road and been found by police still holding the gun. Bellamy is convinced of his guilt, but Anne is less sure. Much of her practice is with troubled young people and she feels there is more to the story than the police evidence.
Anne visits Harry in prison. He is depressed and distrustful but finally agrees to talk to her. Harry's story is that he took a Bentley Continental car to impress a girl but when she went off with another boy decided to take the car for a spin before dumping it. Swerving to avoid another car he burst a tire but could not find any tools in the boot to change the wheel. He asked the driver of a car parked in the copse nearby for help but he was occupied with his girl and refused. Harry was spotted by a policeman on a bike who stopped to help. He flagged down a lorry to ask to borrow a jack. The lorry stopped but the passenger immediately produced a gun and shot the policeman. Harry managed to grab the gun off the killer as the lorry drove away. Shortly after, a police car arrived and Harry was arrested.
Anne believes Harry's story and tries to persuade Bellamy of Harry's innocence. She interviews Harry several times and begins to follow up some aspects of his story. She visits the gang that Harry hung out with in a cafe in Battersea and they agree to help her by trying to find the couple in the parked car. She also visits Taplow, the man whose car was stolen, several times and finds his account unconvincing. One of the boys from the cafe agrees to take a job at Taplow's frozen food depot to do some investigating there.
Harry is found guilty and the subsequent appeal is dismissed. Anne manages to find more details supporting Harry's story but none of this evidence is accepted by the authorities. The boys from the cafe manage to find the couple and two of them go with Anne to confront them. The woman is ready to co-operate but the man panics and in trying to get away crashes into a tree and is killed. His injured girlfriend makes a statement but it is of no help. On the eve of Harry's execution, Dirty Neck, Harry's friend who has been working at Taplow's depot, arrives to tell Anne that something odd is happening at the warehouse. Anne goes there to investigate and is imprisoned in the cold store from which Taplow helps her escape. She contacts the police who have actually been looking into the case again.
It transpires that an IRA outfit were planning to rob an arms lorry on its way between bases. A previous attempt had been aborted because of a policeman intervening - which led to his shooting and the murder trial for which the innocent Harry now stands convicted. Now the IRA are planning a similar operation but are thwarted by the police. Both Taplow and his comrade Terence end up dead. Harry is released from prison, and returns to join his mates at the Battersea Cafe.

Tags: murder

Review:
Clunky but compelling. Adam Faith is a teenage tearaway accused of killing a policeman, but he never done it, honest. Anne Baxter is his lawyer's shrink girlfriend (or so we think), determined to find out the truth. Plot twists will keep you glued. But listen carefully, as Faith talks in a rapid Cockney mumble, and both Baxter and Sinden have this annoying habit of constantly dropping their voices to a whisper. Nothing and nobody is quite what they seem. Sinden at one point accuses Baxter of 'morbid femininism' (sic).  Sexual relationships of all kinds are treated surprisingly realistically, and the UK prime minister's father in law is not bad in a small part.. Clunky mystery with young Adam Faith giving better performance than more seasoned actors. Adam Faith shows Anne Baxter and Donald Sinden a thing or two about natural acting. While they play to the gallery, the 50s/60s pop idol nicely underplays his part as a young lad charged with murder. The scriptwriter/production designer/director has a ludicrous, but typical idea of what 'upper-class' Sinden calls a teddy-boy (already a dated idea in 1962.) Faith and his mates are a neatly attired, clean-cut crowd, hanging out in an espresso bar, decked with pictures of Ella Fitzgerald and Chris Barber (!) - a more likely venue for 40 year olds at that time. It was the pre-Beatles era, and most British films were very myopic in their portrayals of youth, although 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' had hit the screens two years previously. This does seem like the Tunbridge-Wells version of youth gone astray,and accordingly it wasn't exactly a box-office smash. The clunky plot has more than one handy coincidence, and while the portrayal of the working classes is condescending, at least Anne Baxter's psychiatrist character gets to voice her opinion that people are human beings and should be treated as such. Jack MacGowran shines as a villain, as does Alfred Burke as a humane screw, and it's good to see Aussies Ed Deveraux and Ray Barrett playing senior coppers, but generally the whole pic is just a budget cut above one of the typical British supporting features that were still being produced at the time.. Terrible but undeniably entertaining. Terrible but like a lot of bad films, undeniably entertaining, "Mix Me A Person" was a 'hard-hitting' (for that read, X certificate), British film dealing with crime, punishment, teenage delinquents and what appears to be the IRA. Anne Baxter, whose career was on a somewhat downward spiral at the time, is the psychiatrist trying to prove Adam Faith's innocence on a charge of murder. She also happens to be married to his barrister, Donald Sinden. Lots of flashbacks tell us that Adam is indeed innocent while in the present Anne takes on the role of investigating snoop. The dialogue, by Ian Dalrymple, is laughably bad as is Leslie Norman's insipid direction but it gallops along and it's always fun seeing someone like Baxter slumming it. Needless to say the film wasn't a success and has all but disappeared. Don't seek it out but should it come your way, you could do a lot worse.. A mixed up film. At the time this film was made the Swinging Sixties in Britain were yet to begin. Britain's old social mores still held sway, while youth culture was bubbling up ready to take centre stage. In this film teenagers at the Paloma café call each other "nit" and "berk" and say things like "Cor! Strike a light!" While the word "virginity" is censored to a "V."The star of the film is the pop singer Adam Faith. Although he sings the theme song "Mix Me a Person" and does an English language version of "La Bamba" in the film, he plays a serious role in a serious film dealing with serious issues. Faith can almost certainly act better than he can sing; and, as the teenager sentenced to death for the murder of a policeman is totally convincing throughout.The plot is not too bad although it hangs together with a series of unbelievable coincidences. But I suppose that just goes to show that no matter how convincing the case against a condemned man is, there is always an element of doubt, which makes the irreversible death penalty useless in a civilised justice system. The film is fairly well directed. The script is a little jaded and unreal. Otherwise Mix Me a Person is well above average for a British B movie; and is much, much better than the cops and robbers tripe that was typical of the period.Now the acting. The warders, police, villains, do their jobs well. It's the principle characters that are - well - they are absolutely pathetic in many cases. As mentioned, Adam Faith is great. Anne Baxter, who plays the psychiatrist with gravity-defying hair who tries to prove Faith's innocence, acts well or badly, depending on whom she is playing the scene with. If she plays with someone who acts well, she acts well. Unfortunately, many of her scenes are played with her barrister boyfriend played by Donald Sinden. Sinden chews up the scenery so much that there must have been teethmarks all over the film stock; so, in her scenes with Sinden, Baxter does likewise. Then there are the new generation of actors represented by the kids at the Paloma Café. Of these, Dr Who girl Carole Ann Ford is excellent and totally convincing. The rest, which include Tony Blair's father-in-law Anthony Booth, are, in my opinion, absolutely APPALLING. On the credit side, the abolition of the death penalty was a hot topic at the time. It would be easy for this film to sentimentalise and trivialise this subject; somehow this film avoids that, and no doubt had a minor role to play in the death penalty's final abolition a year or two later. The helplessness of the innocent man and those who take his cause against a bureaucratic and rigid justice system determined to exact its pound of flesh is captured wonderfully well. For all its faults this mix-me-a-film is well worth watching. Its good points outweigh its bad ones, which is why I have given it 7 out of 10.