For a B-movie made on an obviously low budget, this is great stuff. Made on the cheap, in black and white and as a supporting feature, COVER GIRL KILLER is a short, simple story of the police's attempts to catch a murderer and his attempts to elude capture. It's as simple as that. Blessed with quirky performances, occasionally ripe dialogue and a lightning-fast pacing that eliminates any extraneous plot strands, this is as good as a B-movie can get.Here, Harry H. Corbett plays "The Man", who believes that by murdering glamour models he is making the world a better place. Corbett would later go on to become one of Britain's best-loved comedians in the television show STEPTOE AND SON. For those critics who view him as a one-note, second-rate comic actor, I would suggest that they check out his subtle performance here, free of any of the gurning that later populated his roles. Corbett excels as the softly-spoken, quietly convincing murderer who, through his intelligence alone, has the upper-hand on the police force all the way through until bad luck spells the end for him at the film's conclusion.Spencer Teakle is the unlikely leading man, an odd-looking chap whose face seems to be in a perpetual state of amusement. Teakle's bizarre character is just one of the many highlights of this movie. Victor Brooks is the caricatured police Inspector, a world-weary chap who prefers sitting in his office and drinking coffee than actually going out and solving the case. Hammer stalwart Charles Lloyd Pack threatens to steal the show as a doddering, wheelchair-bound war veteran who reminisces about the old times.All of the actresses playing the '50s-era glamour models are convincing in their portrayals of vain, money-hungry, bubble-headed and supremely unintelligent women; every one is subservient to men, apart from the strong-willed lead Felicity Young, who predictably ends up melting in the hero's arms at the film's end. The glamorous, slightly sleazy (of course, to today tame) side of the film sees the actresses decked out in row upon row of skimpy costumes and bikinis; Young spends the end of the film being menaced in a bunny girl outfit! Seen today, this film has dated a lot and offers a perspective of things in the old-fashioned days, when murders were off-screen and left to the imagination. It's certainly a curiosity piece and is worth watching for the moral undertone and some of the dialogue alone, such as the following hilarious snippet from Corbett; "... surely sex and horror are the new gods in this polluted world of so-called entertainment!" he snaps during one of his disgusted outrages - and who can't deny that this is a thinly-veiled comment on the output of Hammer Studios back in its golden period? One of those amusing films which exploits what it sets to condemn at the same time, COVER GIRL KILLER is an interesting precursor to the more famous PEEPING TOM, and is a rarity worth catching for those who like their horror old-fashioned and proud of it. Check out the disguise that Corbett wears when carrying out the murders - his ill-fitting toupee and pebble-lensed spectacles make for a unique, unforgettable appearance! A thoroughly enjoyable little B-film.

Although done so much better in "Peeping Tom"(1960), "Cover Girl Killer" was an early attempt to delve into the sleazy adult entertainment world with sex magazines, strippers plying their trade and the unusual casting of Harry H. Corbett, an actor known more for his comedy roles. With his pebble glasses, odd isn't the word for his look but it showed that British films wanted to at least tackle some unsavoury contemporary themes and on the strength of this film, Corbett was given a few off-beat roles before he hit pay-dirt with "Steptoe and Son".The glasses were just part of his disguise as a nerdy photographer who lured buxom models to duplicate their cover poses from "Wow" magazine without being in the least suspicious. Meanwhile the flaky young magazine owner decides to boost his flagging sales (somehow no models want to be "Wow" cover girls now!!) by running a series on the "Cover Girl Killer". Lovely Christina Gregg played one of the victims - Miss Torquay. Gregg was beautiful in the Jean Simmons mode and really refined her acting technique from this early role as a shrill talking girl new to the modelling game. It's such a pity she didn't have a bigger career. Her part, small as it is, does further the narrative. All the other murders are done with a lethal injection of morphine but she starts to panic when the killer begins a tirade of "you are frightened to be alone with me but you parade your body before the world" etc, so she is strangled.Like all those "my brain is bigger than the whole of Scotland Yard" criminals, he visits the police - as a concerned landlord who is convinced he has let one of his flats to the notorious killer. With models prepared to be on a "Wow" cover completely dried up, the police organize for June, the magazine owner's girlfriend to be the cover girl bait but "the man" is one jump ahead and hires a lookalike to be a decoy - while the police think they have their man, "the man" is free to strike again!!Butcher's Films were started during the Boer War and was the oldest company still in film production after the Second World War. It's most popular film was "The Monkey's Paw" and while during the 1950s it had gone into television, by the early 1960s it had all but ceased production.

Despite only lasting an hour, this film about a serial killer who has a grudge against cover girls - a la The Lodger and Jack the Ripper - rarely flags and has an energy which lifts it above other B movies of the time. It also has Harry H Corbett, best known these days for Steptoe and Son, proving he could act in a serious role. He is genuinely creepy, chilling and calculating.In some respects this film also reminds me of Peeping Tom, also about a psychopathic murderer of high intelligence who kills by ritual. While that film was a straight A, 'Cover Girl Killer' does not pale in its company, and it proves its worth as a late night regular on TV.

Nineteen years before Mary Millington crossed paths with a misogynist murderer bearing a grudge against bust models in The Playbirds, B-movie actress Felicity Young (Play it Cool) had to deal with the late Fifties counterpart in this enjoyable Butcher's Film Distributors programmer. Set in the era of Soho Strip-tease, smoky coffee bars and rock and roll, The Cover Girl Killer opens to its titular character, a bogeyman by way of a Soho dirty mack leering at a non-stop follies marquee. Dressed in a raincoat, pebble glasses and a wig The Cover Girl Killer is played by future Steptoe, Harry H Corbett who remains unrecognisable from his later TV incarnation. Motivated by the `unsavoury obsessions of his twisted mind' and a need to `give back man his dignity to free him from the prison of lustful images that foul his mind and his sanity' the anti-smut Cover Girl Killer poses as a photographer in order to murder models who have appeared on the cover of Wow, a typical late Fifties cheesecake magazine. Canadian Spencer Teakle (a Butcher's mainstay) inherits music hall stripclub `the Kasbar' and the magazine Wow, both the source of the Cover Girl Killer's rage. Attempting to woo June, one of the showgirls by posing as a journalist, Teakle is unaware that The Cover Girl Killer is luring Gloria his showgirl `with the most on show' to her death. A leopard skin themed photoshoot ends with Gloria being found dead and bikini clad, in a kinky fashion she's posed identical to her sexy cover shot. Initially invistigated as the murderer Teakle helps the police, who are constantly outwitted by `the man' (as he is billed in the credits). Going through the back issues of Wow for his next victim The Cover Girl Killer locates last month's model Miss Torquay 1959 (Christina Gregg another Butcher's player). Contracted to shoot a Sun Cream commercial, when Miss Torquay emerges in a bikini the Cover Girl Killer can control himself no longer, meaningfully stating `your nudity means nothing to me' before strangling her. Running just over an hour The Cover Girl Killer is rarely dull- the police actively encourage Teakle's Harrison Marks wannabe to publish his exotica in order to catch the killer. The Cover Girl Killer poses as Mr Fairchild an outrageous bowler hat wearing toff alter-ego to throw the police off his trail, the police subsequently put June on the cover to trap Corbett's well respected man, the detective in charge drinks a lot of tea, The Cover Girl Killer goes to a showbiz impresario with plans to make a movie version of his killings `I'm all for the good old X-certificate if you can get it'. Given that Wow is portrayed as the cutting edge that 1959 had to offer The Cover Girl Killer's climax, with the Cover Girl Killer dressing June in lingerie, chasing her around a studio and forcing her onto a four poster bed to reinact her front cover must have seemed raw stuff indeed. Some of the dialogue is wonderful, you can almost imagine the hack screenwriter sitting in a Soho office on a wet afternoon turning out headline dialogue like `surely sex and horror are the new Gods in this polluted world of so called entertainment'. As the Soho Bogeyman Corbett is never anything less than surprising, making up for some of the other less than credible performers. Corbett's career was bookmarked by exploitation, for after fame cameos in Adventures of a Private Eye and the Fiona Richmond vehicle Hardcore Corbett demanded high fees for limiting roles. Soft spoken, sinister and creepy his performance in the Cover Girl Killer suggests he did deserve better. Cover Girl Killer is a delusion from the mind of righteous filmmakers who believe themselves worthy of greatness but can only score sensational tack. It's full of acid comments on the illiteracy of readers of cheesecake magazines (and by association viewers of films with titles like The Cover Girl Killer). At times the film totally identifies with the killer's ideology especially in its depiction of the victim's husbands and fathers- sad broken men whose inability to keep hold of their women lead to their loved one's demise. This fashioning schizoid edge however says more about the filmmakers than it does the audience, never is the film more true than its depiction of it's chicken in a basket showbiz crony which draws impossible to ignore comparisons with Butchers themselves who were known for paying people as low as 35p to £2.50 for scripts. Butchers Film continued grinding on in the polluted world of so called entertainment making countless B pictures up until the late Sixties. Like their counterparts Tigon they freewheeled throughout the Seventies distributing foreign sex films like Erika, The Fabulous European Strip-Tease and The Sex Artist. One of their last releases was Norman J Warren's 'alien rape' movie Inseminoid. For years considered a lost film but kept alive on the strength of Corbett's appearance and historically being one of the earliest slasher films, The Cover Girl Killer now enjoys a second life as a stable of late night television, guaranteeing that the Ghost of the Cover Girl Killer will haunt insomniacs and the curious for many years to come.