"Armchair Thriller" High Tide (1980)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Colin Bucksey

Writer:

Andrew Brown (writer)

TV Series:

"Armchair Thriller" (1967)

Original Air Date:

11 March 1980 (Season 3, Episode 4)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller

Plot:

Cast

Ian McShane	...	Peter Curtis
Wendy Morgan	...	Celia
Terence Rigby	...	Matthews
John Bird	...	Cyril
Malcolm Terris	...	Maxwell
Michael McKevitt	...	Fenton
Toby Salaman	...	Smith
Kika Markham	...	Helen
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
John Blain	...	Landlord
Patrick Field	...	Young man
Anna Fox	...	Miss Benson
Anne Havard	...	Cleaner

Runtime:

USA:88 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:PG

Company:

Southern Television

Slow paced puzzler with a few romantic entanglements.

To enjoy this mystery, and that's what it is, does require some patience, but it is far from boring. You'll be wondering what the heck is going on just as much as Peter Curtis is throughout. Curtis has just been released from prison in England. He had been sent up for manslaughter. While parked on an English country road to walk his Labrador Retriever, a reckless driver ran over and killed the dog. The man stopped. Curtis attacked him in a rage, and the man died of a heart attack, but not before muttering a few cryptic words. Curtis is driving to Cornwall to purchase a boat, intending to do some coastal cruising, but he becomes aware that a man is following him. This man finally approaches Curtis and asks what those final words were that the dying man had muttered those years before.

Curtis had no reason at the time not to tell the man, but he couldn't honestly remember. Later, when he did remember, the words "high tide" and a number caused him to suspect that some chicanery involving a sleepy coastal town was involved. Curtis, not short of money obviously, decides to investigate, especially after an apparently casual girl he had picked up proves to be set on him as a spy. In the coastal town, he meets up with a married couple, the wife of which it turns out owns a closed up mansion at the high tide mark up the river.

Well, now the mystery begins to have a little meaning. The woman is "heir" to a quantity of gold that her former husband and some other men had appropriated in France during WW2. It's the location of this gold that the men following Curtis are after. They think the man whose death he had caused must have told him as he lay dying. At this point, I think I must leave you dangling so you can have the fun of following this puzzler to the end yourself.

The whole TV film is pitched at a low key, with a few sudden eruptions to violence to spice things up, and a pair of fascinating women. You may find the editing a bit jerky as in most TV movies, but the direction is first rate, and the coastal and river scenery as Curtis sails about very pleasant. Ian McShane, whom you may associate mostly with the "Lovejoy" series, plays an entirely different character here, nicely nuanced in sync with the pace of the movie. It seemed to me there were a few loose ends not entirely cleared up. Maybe you can figure them out.