Anton Diffring and Allan Cuthbertsone play spies who steal documents that need to be smuggled out of the country. Anton's wife, played by Delphi Lawrence, goes along with them to a sleepy Cornish fishing village where Donald Houston, the local salmon rustler and well-known bell ringer, is being hounded by a frustrated jobsworth of a customs official played by William Hartnell.
The spies pay Houston to steel a boat and get them over to France. Only Houston overhears their plans and steers them up the English coast and dumps them in said small cove. Delphi warns Houston that her trigger happy husband intends to kill him. So Houston wrestles with Anton long enough to get back to the boat where Delphi has stayed. Anton grabs Cuthbertson's gun and just manages to shoot at the boat and hit the fuel tank. As the boat bears home, Houston and Delphi not only put the sails up but also fall in love. (Is that a metaphor...?)
As everyone, including the Chief Constable and a detective from London, but bar Houston's family, wonder where he is, he returns to put the record straight and defend Delphi. Now a hero in the eyes of the law, the police frustrate Hartnell even more by covering up for Houston's poaching as a minor thing.
This is a pleasant enough film that doesn't quite hit the mark, though. There is no real tension as this is a 1950s film with, at times, 1930s acting and the two don't mix. Delphi reminds me a lot of the mysterious Miss Smith at the beginning of Hitchcock's version of The 39 Steps, especially with her mock Hungarian accent. Her interaction with Anton seems quite old-fashioned and theatrical at times. In fact, Delphi Lawrence is probably the problem here. Although a perfectly good actress herself, she seems to be too mature and sophisticated for Houston's character to fall truly in love with and for her to reciprocate, however much she no longer loves her husband.
There are some excruciatingly embarrassing speeded up scenes of the boat to try and inject some action, but an inconsistency between rough seas and calm waters. There are the running gags of the salmon poaching and bellringing to inject some comic relief but this combines with the lack of authoritative acting from those playing the police, especially in comparison with the bigger name leads, who, however, aren't themselves sharp enough to be action players and a rather embarrassed looking young Kenneth Cope as the coast guard to make the film appear not to know what it is exactly.
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