All manner of interesting detail, if you study it wellClassic cars, like the Ford Zodiac, with whitewall tyres, and the Citroen Traction AvantThe planes and airline scenes are well worth studying tooThe plot might be thin by today's standards, but the Brussells street views more than make up for itI found it thoroughly entertaining, and worth watching

MARK OF THE PHOENIX is a stodgy little effort from the reliably poor Butcher's Film Service. This one tries for a Cold War vibe but ends up being poorly-plotted and rather uninteresting, with long stretches where nothing happens. The cast of rogues are hardly engaging and the storyline, about a new metal alloy which everybody's trying to get their hands on, is particularly dull.The film features Anton Diffring and Roger Delgado as a couple of detectives on the hunt for a cigarette case, and there are various murders and fights between principal characters along the way. However, the direction is constantly pedestrian - Maclean Rogers did a lot better with some of the Paul Temple films earlier in his career - and the script from CARRY ON writer Norman Hudis fails to find any sympathetic characters in the cast. It's nice to see Diffring and Delgado playing the good guys for a change, but they have very little screen time at the end of the day.

There is actually a good story line here. Obviously the film had a zero budget and it shows but it is well worth the watch. There are numerous flaws but there is a great deal of attention to detail - I particularly liked the scenes in the shop when the lighter case was moulded and then electroplated. As an engineer it all looked pretty accurate to me. Also the genuine coldness of the murderers who took the life of a lonely scientist. I also found the story really good - the dissident who swapped hotel rooms was an interesting character.Not the easiest film to get hold of but if you watch it in context of it's age and low finance it is quite good.

Anton Diffring stars in this duff British supporting thriller concerning (guess what!) the smuggling of a cigarette case composed of a secret alloy. Really it's just "The Lavender Hill Mob" without the Eiffel towers or the comedic charm of Ealing. Its produced by "Butcher's Films", Britain's poverty row film production company who turned out many a mediocre b-feature at this time. This particular one was made in 1957, but shelved until 1959 until a suitable main feature was found to go with it. Don't let the rather nudging title fool you because it's not that exciting. These days the Butcher's films occasionally turn up on ITV in the wee small hours as a time filler.