The Rossiter Case (1951) User Reviews

The Gold Blend Coffee Guy's Mother

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 12 December 2021]

Helen Shingler stars with Clement McCallin and Sheila Burrell in "The Rossiter Case" from 1951.

Before I go on, if you remember the Gold Blend Coffee commercials with Anthony Head that were a continuing saga, like a soap opera, Helen Shingler was Anthony Head's mother. She died two months after her 100th birthday.

Here, Shingler plays Liz Rossiter, who is paralyzed from the waist down. Her husband Peter (Clement McCallin) is having an affair with his sister-in-law Honor (Sheila Burrell). She's a horror - it's like a Whatever Happened to Baby Jane scenario.

Honor insists that Peter divorce Liz, which he doesn't want to do - he still loves her and doesn't want to hurt her. A specialist is at the Rossiter home to examine her - if he thinks there is some hope Liz can walk again, Honor extracts a promise from Peter that he will take steps to leave her.

Liz claims she can be helped, but it's a lie because she's afraid of losing Peter. Everyone is aware of the affair, even though Liz pretends she doesn't.

Peter decides to end it with Honor once and for all. Then Honor hits him with the news that she's expecting. He goes out and gets drunk. Meanwhile, no one is home, so Liz asks a member of the staff to take her to Honor's cottage, which is at the end of the road.

I liked this film - the acting and the atmosphere are both good. I guess if you're a Hammer fan, it's disappointing, but I loved the drama of it. And Helen Shingler is an actress I wasn't familiar with until now. She did an excellent job.

The Torment of Liz Rossiter

[bnwfilmbuff · 7/10 · 9 April 2017]

Well-made if somewhat slow-paced British melodrama involving an aristocrat cheating on his paralyzed wife with her sister. Sheila Burrell's portrayal of the husband-stealing sister is powerfully disturbing even negatively impacting her physical appearance as her character unfolds throughout the movie. The condoning of the overt affair by family and friends is remarkably insensitive to its impact on the paralyzed woman, Liz Rossiter. Helen Shingler's Liz Rossiter is selfless without becoming pitiful. This is a good movie that requires patience due to the snails-pacing.

Do The Right Thing

[boblipton · 6/10 · 28 September 2019]

Helen Shingler is paralyzed from the waist down. Her husband, Clement McCallin, loves her dearly, but is carrying on an affair with his sister-in-law, Sheila Burrell. Everyone knows about it, but keeps quiet. When Helen tells McCallin that the doctor says her paralysis can be cured, he decides to call an end to the affair, calmly, decently, but she tells him she is expecting. So he does the only thing a man can do decently in a situation like that: he goes out and gets stinking drunk. Meanwhile, his wife has one of the help wheel her to Sheila's cottage, where the two of them have it out.

It's a murder story, but not a murder mystery. It's a story of emotions and doing the right thing and stiff-upper-lipping it through a bad situation. It's not the sort of story I like, but it seems to be very well done, even though it's a cheap affair from Hammer. It's from a stage play by Kenneth Hyde. None of the actors are well known, but they all do a fine job.

I've said that none of the actors are well known, but Miss Shingler celebrated her hundredth birthday this year.

A drama or a crime movie?

[searchanddestroy-1 · 6 May 2012]

Not bad for this little flick from UK and directed by the prolific Francis Searle, as were Godfrey Grayson, Monty Tully, Vernon Sewell and many other filmmakers who worked for small companies: Butchers, Danzigers etc...

Pleasant, entertaining tale of a paralysed young woman after a car accident who have to face her husband and his new mistress. Predictable, as you may guess, especially between the two women. But it remains an acceptable time waster, and really well acted. The seventy five minutes are quick for the viewer in front of his TV set.

I can't although tell it's a film noir, as I am used to. But at least a fairly good drama.

Stanley Baker as an extra with one line of script

[howardmorley · 6/10 · 3 April 2017]

The only point of interest in this way too talky film was seeing a young Stanley Baker as a glorified extra cast as Joe who is entrusted with one line of dialogue by the producers and yet he became the more famous of the cast.Other reviewers have given the basic premise of this 1950 film which could have been edited to one half its length.I will not repeat the sparse plot and I only rated it 6/10.The only actor familiar to me was seeing Euen Solon as the police inspector.I agree with another user's review, it should not have been filmed but consigned to the radio at a time when most of the population went to the cinema to see their heroes and heroines of the silver screen and listened to the radio.

Hammer's slow paced mystery

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 27 April 2018]

THE ROSSITER CASE is a very low budget and slow paced mystery yarn from Hammer Films, made on a particularly tiny budget. The main characters are a disabled woman and her husband, who is carrying on a secret affair with her own sister. You get an hour of slow-witted melodrama and inaction followed by some brief murder elements, but it's all very trite and hackneyed and not a patch on the other thrillers that Hammer would put out both during the 1950s and 1960s. It says something that the only fun here is from witnessing a pre-stardom Stanley Baker in a cameo during the opening pub scene.

Dreadfully intrusive music

[malcolmgsw · 4/10 · 9 April 2018]

Maybe the music director decided that the dreadfully slow drama needed beefing up.So he thought it could do with a touch of the Max Steiners.So every dramatic moment is overlaid by screeching violins which at times render the dialogue inaudible. This film only warms up in the last 15 minutes.This despite the fact that the writers and director were very experienced in making this sort of film.

Way too talky with with a WTF denouncement is not worth the effort

[dbborroughs · 2/10 · 28 May 2013]

The plot of the film largely has to do with the love triangle between a married man, his wife, who was paralyzed in a car crash and her sister who is having an affair with the husband. The sister wants the husband to leave his wife, but he won't and it causes all sorts of problems...Actually it leads to murder in the final 15 or 20 minutes of the film. There is no mystery as to who does it, the real question is will they be found out and what will the ramifications be.

A way too talky film substitutes talk for action. Nothing much really happens other than emotions simmer under the surface which would be all fine and good except that the film is largely static as a result with people just sitting and standing around talking with no sense of motion (this would have been a heck of a radio play. By the time the murder happens you really won't care, especially after the denouncement at the end What were they thinking?

Sheila Burrell Puts in a Very Sinister Performance

[kidboots · 8/10 · 15 October 2018]

Even though Helen Shingler had already played Liz Rossiter in an earlier 1948 made for TV play, she was still an unknown like the rest of the cast. Lacking a star name (although the then unknown Stanley Baker had a walk on part) and any radio associations which in those times counted for a lot, it had to wait quite a while for a circuit release. I didn't think it was too bad either, at 70 minutes it hardly had time to drag.

Peter, whose wife Liz has been wheelchair bound after a car accident, is desperately trying to break off an affair with Honor, Liz's sister, even though she is using every trick in the book to keep him, including the old standby "I'm going to have a baby"!! The family, including Liz, have long suspected and in an effort to hold her marriage together confronts Honor one night.

Sheila Burrell is the person to watch in this movie, she plays the scheming Honor with very sinister overtones and the confrontation (that leads to violence) is beautifully underplayed by the two women. A stylish if slow to get started melodrama.

These are not two devoted sisters.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 19 July 2022]

Sheila Burrell and Helen Shingler couldn't be any more different. As sisters, there is not one bit of warmth between them. Shingler has been involved in a car accident and is paralyzed so her husband (Clement McCallin) turns to Burrell for company which leads the neurotic woman to make demands on him he's not willing to agree to. Realizing what's going on, Schingler confronts her sister, and later on, Burrell is found dead. The audience knows what happened, but husband McCallin fears the evidence will point to him. The audience fears that the 70 minute running time is a lie and will go on much longer.

A rather poor quote a quickie British melodrama with a rather dull cast and a predictable outcome for a rather cliched premise, done so much better with many other films. Burrell does liven things up with two scenes where she really shows her wickedness, and other than Stringer showing some spunk when she makes demands of the servant girl to get her down to the cottage where Burrell is, there is absolutely nothing interesting about this. This seems like the type of script that was always pulled out and altered when the quota was needed to be raised for British B pictures, and as a result, the audience suffers. Very stagy and poorly directed, quite confined to a few sets so nobody really moves around much.