"Yield to the Night" (1956)

[GoogaMooga]

NOW STREAMING: "Yield to the Night" -- (J. Lee Thompson, 1956) -- Gripping crime drama by the underrated J. Lee Thompson sees the full-bosomed beauty Diana Dors in a most unusual role as a woman sentenced to death for murder. There is nothing glamorous about Miss Dors in this role, which was inspired by the case of Ruth Ellis, who was hanged for murder in 1955. The death penalty was not abolished in Britain before 1965, and I have no idea whether Thompson's film had any influence on the Home Office ruling, but it certainly makes a good case for the inhumanity of capital punishment. As one prison matron points out, one more dead won't bring back the murder victim. It is a film told mostly in flashback, and J. Lee Thompson is perhaps a little too keen on clever camera angles, like the opening montage all shown in Dutch angles, but mostly the angles are spot on and augment what would otherwise be a very claustrophobic and harrowing death cell drama. Thompson manages to stay objective throughout, and we neither sympathize with, nor do we condemn the Diana Dors character of Mary Hilton, but rather we follow her on her transcendent journey, from a crime of passion to something like a spiritual awakening. As an aside, the most famous still of Dors looking through the iron bars of her headpost, was used as the cover for the Smiths compilation, "The Singles", proving that the film still resonates today.

[Minnie the Minx]

Great film.
Also starring of course, Michael ‘Ballsack King’ Craig and the crotch bulging Geoffrey Keen.

[GoogaMooga]

You just couldn't resist, could you? As if Diana Dors never got star billing on precisely her physical attributes.

[Minnie the Minx]

You just couldn't resist, could you? .

Nope!