THE HANGMAN WAITS

GB
1947
1hr 03mins
Dir: Albert Barr-Smith
Starring: John Turnbull and Beatrice Campbell

Police track down the murderer of a cinema usherette

This semi-documentary style featurette is shot around a newspaper printing press, and largely tells the story in the eyes of the reporters, and how they get the story of the murders out to the public as front page news. It is interesting in that it was made with the co-operation of the News of the World, but it shows little of any worth. Near the beginning it features a journey to Waterloo station, which includes some brief stock shots of unrebuilt parallel-boilered ‘Royal Scot’s’ on LMS expresses in the 1930s! This, however, is followed by a shot of a streamlined ‘Merchant Navy’ Class 4-6-2 bringing a train into Waterloo, which is then followed by shots of the concourse. A little later there is a journey by train to Eastbourne at night. The shots of the train in this sequence are over-exposed, but it is clear from the shape of the locomotive and the large central headlight that this is footage of a classic ‘Western-style’ American train!!

This stock shot of an unrebuilt LMS ‘Royal Scot’ on an express can also be found in Dreaming (1944) and Frieda (1947)
It is then followed by this now familiar, and much reused shot, of another LMS express passing through the Lune Gorge. The loco is another unrebuilt ‘Royal Scot’. This shot first appeared in A Honeymoon Adventure (1931), and then cropped up in No Limit (1935), Quiet Wedding (1941), The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942), Next of Kin (1942), and The Echo Murders (1945), before its appearance in The Hangman Waits.
From the LMS to the Southern, and a shot of an express drawing into London Waterloo in the hands of a ‘SpamCan’
To be a bit more precise, the distinctive shape of the nameplate tells us that the loco is a ‘Merchant Navy’
The arrival scene at London Waterloo
A final brief shot of the concourse at Waterloo