Very enjoyable little thriller from the Rank Organization. I can't think of any Rank film I have seen that does not have some merit and a solid script. In this case the script is from the great Eric Ambler who during the 30's and 40's was the preeminent spy novelist with A Coffin for Dimitrios, Journey into Fear and Background to Danger among his best. I am a huge fan of his literate novels. A number of them were made into films but Highly Dangerous is an original script though it contains one of his main trademarks - innocents getting involved in spy craft. Before WWII the Fascists were the enemy in his books, but after the war they were the Communists.


Margaret Lockwood (The Lady Vanishes, Trent’s Last Case) is in the sexiest of professions. She is an Entomologist, a bug person and she has found it difficult to find a man who likes bugs as much as she does. I can’t imagine why. She is getting ready to go off on her vacation by herself to the lovely resort of Torquay – most famous now as the location of Faulty Towers. Someone (Naunton Wayne - also The Lady Vanishes as one of the cricket crazy duo) from British intelligence comes to her and asks her to go to an unfriendly Eastern European country behind the Iron Curtain and have her vacation there instead. And snoop around as some insect experiments have them concerned that they can be used for biological warfare. In the end Torquay does not beckon her and she accepts the highly dangerous assignment. She is given the name Francis Conway who is looking for potential tourism opportunities. That cover lasts for about a heartbeat.

 
As soon as she enters the country she falls under suspicion of the Chief off Police (Marius Goring) and followed. She befriends an American journalist (Dane Clark) who recognizes her and smells a story. But the police swoop in and arrest her and fill her with enough truth serum to make Mr. Ed talk about his relationship with Wilbur. But she just babbles and they let her go. But the truth serum has discombobulated her brain and she now thinks she is Frank Conrad, a radio show secret agent and decides to go through with her mission and ropes the poor journalist into breaking into a secret lab and stealing bugs. A tense little Cold War thriller. They may come in vogue again. A few other Brits on hand – Wilfred Hyde-White as the British Consul and Michael Hordern as her boss at her place of work. Up on YouTube I think. It is directed by Roy Ward Baker who had a few Hammer films on his resume – Quatermass and the Pit, The Vampire Lovers, Scars of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and the great The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.