They Drive by Night

• Director: Arthur B. Woods
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Thriller
• Movie Type: Chase Movie, Crime Thriller
• Themes: Flight of the Innocent, Miscarriage of Justice
• Release Year: 1938
• Country: UK
• Run Time: 97 minutes
• MPAA Rating: NR

Plot

Not to be confused with either Nicholas Ray's melancholic 1949 crime tale They Live by Night or Raoul Walsh's 1940 action-melodrama (which borrowed only its title), this British thriller concerns one flawed man's attempts at clearing his name. They Drive by Night stars Emlyn Williams as Shorty, a just-released convict eager to reunite with his girlfriend -- whom he finds strangled to death when he reaches her apartment. Certain the police won't look favorably upon him should he report the dead body, Shorty enlists the help of ex-girlfriend Molly (Anna Konstam) in an attempt to find the real killer, amidst the intrusions of Walter Hoover (Ernst Thesiger), a creepy forensic criminologist who might know more than he lets on. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

Review

Arthur B. Woods' They Drive By Night -- not to be confused with Raoul Walsh's Hollywood movie of the same name, co-starring George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, from two years later -- was one of the finest British thrillers of the late 1930's. Woods, regarded as one of England's best young directors, turned in a Hitchcock-like tour-de-force, with Emlyn Williams and Ernest Thesiger leading us through a plot littered with odd twists and turns -- elements of which anticipate both I Wake Up Screaming (1941) and The Verdict (1946). Williams makes a highly sympathetic lead, while Thesiger mercilessly, quietly steals every scene he is in, and the combination of chase thriller and mystery is handled very deftly, and this was also the most critically successful movie produced by Jerome Jackson, a producer who had graduated from low-budget British "quota" films (a field in which he had worked with a young Michael Powell. Indeed, it was the best work of both Jackson and director Woods, neither of whom would survive the Second World War. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Cast

Joe Cunningham; William Hartnell; Michael Martin Harvey; Anthony Holles - Murray; Allan Jeayes - Wally Mason; George Merritt; Ronald Shiner - Charlie; Ernst Thesiger - Walter Hoover; Emlyn Williams - Shorty Matthews; Anna Konstam - Molly O'Neill; Yolande Terrell - Marge

Credit

Arthur B. Woods - Director, Basil Emmott - Cinematographer, Jerome Jackson - Producer, Derek N. Twist - Screenwriter, James Curtis - Book Author

Similar Movies

Frenzy; The Fugitive; Saboteur; Young and Innocent