BULLET FROM THE PAST

GB
1957
33mins
Dir: Kenneth Hume
Starring: Ballard Berkeley and Gretchen Franklin

While investigating an apparent suicide, a Scotland Yard detective solves a murder that occurred 27 years earlier

This short crime film was part of the Scotland Yard series, a series of 39 episodes produced by Anglo-Amalgamated between 1953 and 1961. They are short films, largely half-hour in length, that were originally made to support the main feature in a cinema double-bill. Each film focused on a true crime case, with only the names changed, and featured an introduction by the crime writer Edgar Lustgarten. Bullet from the Past was No.20 in the series. These films should not be confused with the BBC television series of the same name broadcast in 1960 which are unrelated. Bullet from the Past features shots of the concourse at London Waterloo, scenes at Guildford station with a 4 COR EMU arriving, and scenes at Godalming station. The shots at Guildford appear on Diesel & Electric on 35mm Volume One, where it is announced that they were filmed by Merton Park Studios for an ‘unknown production’. This then, was that production.

This opening scene is a view from Forest Lane in East Horsley, Surrey, with the bus crossing the bridge that takes Forest Road over the railway to the southwest of Effingham Junction. There appears to be a siding in the foreground, visible through the fence.
Donovan Winter on the platform at Godalming
A familiar glimpse of proceedings at Waterloo
Some 4-wheel vans and what might be an EMU are partly obscured by the station sign at Guildford
A 4 COR EMU arrives into Guildford, probably on a ‘Pompey’ service
Ballard Berkeley and Donovan Winter enjoying the sun outside Guildford station
As Ballard Berkeley walks off into town we get a glimpse of the old station of Guildford before its modernist rebuild
This is the main station building at Godalming which, unlike Guildford, remains largely untouched. The only major change is the removal of the red telephone box.