NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Indicator Blu-ray (January 2026): Indicator have transferred six British Film Noir films to Blu-ray on their own individual discs in their Columbia Noir #7: Made in Britain Blu-ray package; A Prize of Gold (1955) The Last Man to Hang (1956), Wicked as They Come (1956,) Spin a Dark Web (1956), The Long Haul (1957) and Fortune Is a Woman (1957.) We have reviewed Spin a Dark Web on Sony DVD HERE, plus The Long Haul and Fortune Is a Woman on Kit Parker Blu-rays HERE and HERE. The Kit Parker Blu-rays are inferior with three films to a disc, smaller bitrates, the image can have a green hue and there are AR issues. It's not much of a contest the Indicator offer the best video image for all six films in the package.

NOTE: There are two presentations offered for Fortune Is a Woman, with the original UK title sequence; and She Played with Fire, the US title - the rest of the film is seamlessly branched and offers the same a/v quality on both presentations.

We have already reviewed Indicator's Columbia Noir #1, Columbia Noir #2, Columbia Noir #3, Columbia Noir #4, Columbia Noir #5: Humphrey Bogart, and Columbia Noir #6 The Whistler Series.

The 1080P presentations deliver high-definition remasters across all six films, showcasing a mix of glossy Technicolor for A Prize of Gold's vibrant, beautifully shot war-torn Berlin and London sequences, and sharp black-and-white widescreen (predominantly 1:75, with Wicked as They Come at 1:66) for the others, highlighting authentic 1950s locations like Soho's gritty backstreets in Spin a Dark Web and rain-slicked Scottish roads in The Long Haul. While the transfers are excellent overall, preserving era-specific details with fine grain and contrast, minor optical dirt in transitions reflect the archival sources, yet they enhance the films' vintage charm without detracting from the cohesive quality that marks world Blu-ray premieres for A Prize of Gold, The Last Man to Hang, and Wicked as They Come and UK premieres for Spin a Dark Web, The Long Haul and Fortune Is a Woman.

The cinematography emphasize gritty urban and rural atmospheres, location authenticity, and character-driven compositions, though A Prize of Gold stands out as the sole Technicolor entry; shared features include economical yet effective lighting that often prioritizes narrative tension over visual flair, occasional documentary-style handheld work for realism, and the HD presentations highlight era-specific grain and contrasts with a few frames of excess speckles (see HERE.) A Prize of Gold lensed by Ted Moore (The Gamma People, From Russia with Love, A Man for All Seasons, Dr. No, Thunderball, Dominique) blends glossy Hollywood aesthetics with post-war vibrancy, though its attractive hues sometimes clash with the grittier noir tones seen in the other five films. Desmond Dickinson's (Tower of Evil, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, Trog, Berserk, A Study in Terror, The Frightened City, Konga, The Hands of Orlac, Horrors of the Black Museum, The Man Between, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Browning Version) work on The Last Man to Hang delivers a restrained black-and-white style focused on domestic interiors and jury rooms, with well-organized but occasionally awkward framing that suits the courtroom drama's staid atmosphere, echoing the procedural restraint. Basil Emmott (Curse of the Fly, Town on Trial, They Drive by Night) cinematographs Wicked as They Come in understated black-and-white, prioritizing close-ups and urban settings for character manipulation without standout flair, a competent approach that aligns with his later efforts where subtlety supports dialogue-heavy intrigue rather than overshadowing it. Emmott also handles Spin a Dark Web, infusing black-and-white visuals with gritty Soho authenticity through extensive location shooting and documentary-style handheld camera work for nightlife scenes, adding a raw, impersonal grittiness that elevates claustrophobic backrooms. In The Long Haul, Emmott's third contribution, the black-and-white cinematography excels with high-contrast noir lighting on authentic Northern locations and dreary, rain-slicked streets illuminated by vehicle beams, creating atmospheric grit and pursuit tension. Gerald Gibbs' (No Orchids For Miss Blandish, The Leather Boys, Devil Doll, X the Unknown, The Green Man, Whisky Galore!,) cinematography for Fortune Is a Woman presents a staid, talky black-and-white pace with handsome shadows, fluid movements, and dark lighting in manor houses and offices, evoking classic noir mystery through cigarettes in ashtrays and procedural elements. Overall, despite 5 of the 6 being single-layered these HD presentations are highly pleasing.

NOTE: We have added 270 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Indicator use either DTS-HD Master dual-mono tracks (Fortune is a Woman) or linear PCM mono tracks (16-bit for A Prize of Gold, The Long Haul and Spin a Dark Web) and 24-bit for Wicked as They Come, and The Last Man to Hang) all  in the original English language. The audio tracks are faithfully in reproducing the era's sound design with clear dialogue and orchestral scores that can occasionally feel busy or intrusive, such as Malcolm Arnold's (The Night My Number Came Up, The Captain's Paradise, The Holly and the Ivy, Tunes of Glory, No Highway in the Sky. The Bridge On the River Kwai, Island in the Sun, Stolen Face, Hobson's Choice) romantic swells in A Prize of Gold and Wicked as They Come, which sometimes overshadow subtler effects. The score for Fortune Is a Woman was by William Alwyn (So Evil My Love, The Running Man, Green For Danger, So Evil My Love, Life For Ruth, Odd Man Out, On Approval, A Night to Remember and The Fallen Idol) - his compositions provides subtle mono underscoring that supports convoluted dialogue without the overreach. The score for The Long Haul was credited to Trevor Duncan (1958 TV series "Quatermass and the Pit", Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Chris Marker's La Jetée) - his music enhances the mono sound with driving rhythms, The Last Man to Hang by John Wooldridge (the film features heavy verbal exposition over immersive effects) and Spin a Dark Web to Robert Sharples - his compositions anchor the mono audio, blending with effects in tense confrontations but fitting the shared feature of scores that can overwhelm realistic soundscapes. The lossless audio restorations provide crisp, artifact-free playback that supports the narrative-driven films, with no significant distortions noted, ensuring an authentic listening experience that aligns with the boxset's archival focus. Indicator offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'B'-locked Blu-rays.

The extras are a stacked as per Indicator Blu-ray's standards offering a wealth of contextual supplements including new 2025 audio commentaries on every film by experts like Thirza Wakefield and Melanie Williams (David Lean - British Film-Makers,) for A Prize of Gold, Barry Forshaw (Nordic Noir,) and Kim Newman (Something More Than Night) on The Last Man to Hang, Will Fowler and Vic Pratt (authors of The Bodies Beneath The Flipside of British Film & Television) on The Long Haul, Jonathan Rigby (Euro Gothic: Classics of Continental Horror Cinema) and Kevin Lyons (editor of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television,) on Fortune Is a Woman and others, alongside archival BEHP audio interviews with key figures such as editor Bill Lewthwaite (The Day of the Triffids) from 2008, director Vernon Sewell (1994, detailing his July 7th, 1994, conversation with Roy Fowler,) producer Maxwell Setton (from April 5th, 1991, with John Legard and Dave Robson,) and costume designer Anthony Mendleson (The Boys from Brazil, A Bridge Too Far, The Black Windmill, The Magus, Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, The Mind Benders, Who Done It?, The Ladykillers, The Gentle Gunman) from 1993. Additional rarities include the 1977 Guardian Lecture with English filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player, and Communist activist and spy Ivor Montagu on 'Lenin on Film' (75 minutes, from his April 1977 National Film Theatre talk), Film Fanfare No. 5 (1956, shy of 5-minutes, with its Pathé newsreel excerpt shown in an image about a competition winner on The Last Man to Hang set,) short films like Ken Hughes' silent amateur Soho  - 1943, a dozen minutes, enhanced by a newly commissioned 2024-25 Peninsula score option recorded at Karma Studios - listing musicians Tom Blackford, David Boothby, and George Robertson (English post-rock act 'Peninsula',) plus menu options to play with the score or silent - A Test for Love (1937, 1/2 hour), The Long Night Haul (1956, 20-minutes,) and This Little Ship (1952, a dozen minutes), plus trailers, image galleries for each film, and a limited-edition 120-page book with new essays by Jonathan Bygraves, Andrew Spicer (Film Noir,) Pamela Hutchinson, Robert Murphy (The British Cinema Book,) Chloe Walker, and Bethan Roberts, extensive archival articles and interviews, new writing on the various short films, and film credits.

Indicator's Columbia Noir #7: Made in Britain Blu-ray package assembles six co-productions that blend American star power with British talent and locales, adapting popular novels into narratives of crime, ethical compromise, and interpersonal treachery, often set against post-war disillusionment and moral gray zones, though they frequently deviate from classic film noir's cynical fatalism by incorporating elements of adventure, courtroom drama, and sentimental redemption. These films - A Prize of Gold, The Last Man to Hang, Wicked as They Come, Spin a Dark Web, The Long Haul, and Fortune Is a Woman - share a transatlantic production context, with U.S. actors like Richard Widmark (Death of a Gunfighter, Time Limit, The Secret Ways, Madigan, Hell and High Water, Backlash, The Trap, Pickup on South Street, Night and the City, Panic in the Streets), Arlene Dahl (Scene of the Crime, No Questions Asked, The Black Book, Journey to the Center of the Earth,) and Victor Mature (Kiss of Death, Violent Saturday, Pickup Alley, The Last Frontier, Cry of the City, China Doll, Gambling House, I Wake Up Screaming) seeking tax incentives and roles amid Hollywood's shifting landscape, while directors such as Ken Hughes (helming two entries) and Terence Fisher (pre-Hammer horror fame) collaborate with English crews for cost-effective shoots in U.K. studios and locations like war-scarred Berlin, gritty Soho, and rain-slicked Scottish roads. Thematically, they coalesce around corruption's insidious pull, where protagonists - often outsiders or ex-soldiers like Widmark's idealistic Air Force officer in A Prize of Gold or Mature's disillusioned GI-turned-trucker in The Long Haul - grapple with greed, infidelity, and criminal entanglement, echoing the heist-driven moral slides in both films but contrasting with the more static, bias-fueled injustice in The Last Man to Hang's courtroom deliberations. Femme fatales recur as agents of disruption, with Dahl's seductive manipulators in Wicked as They Come and Fortune Is a Woman using blackmail and deception to ascend social ladders, their calculated ruthlessness paralleling Faith Domergue's (Cult of the Cobra, This Island Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea, The House of Seven Corpses) volatile mob sister in Spin a Dark Web, yet tempered by psychological backstories (e.g., trauma in Wicked) that soften noir's archetypal coldness, unlike the unrepentant predatory dynamics in Hughes' later The Long Haul, where Diana Dors' (Craze, Yield to the Night, Passport to Shame, A Kid for Two Farthings, Tread Softly Stranger, From Beyond the Grave, The Weak And The Wicked) Lynn embodies repressed passion as a catalyst for Mature's ethical downfall. In embodying film noir, the set collectively leans toward potboiler thrillers rather than pure genre exemplars, with shared deviations like softened cynicism through romance (A Prize of Gold's altruistic heist vs. The Long Haul's corrupt haulage) or psychological excuses (Wicked's trauma rationale echoing Spin a Dark Web's relational tensions), while core elements like shadowy moral turpitude and fatal pursuits shine brightest in The Long Haul's rain-drenched pursuits and Spin a Dark Web's warehouse showdowns, differentiating from the staid, talky deviations in The Last Man to Hang and Fortune Is a Woman. Overall, these films' interconnected web of transatlantic influences, recurring motifs of greed-fueled downfall, and stylistic hybrids underscore a transitional era in noir, where British eccentricity tempers American grit, yielding a cohesive yet uneven anthology that rewards for its archival rarities and glimpses of emerging talents like Ken Hughes (Alfie Darling, The Internecine Project, Cromwell, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Casino Royale, The House Across the Lake) and Hammer go-to helmer Terence Fisher (Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, The Horror of Dracula, The Revenge of Frankenstein, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Night of the Big Heat, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy, Island of Terror, The Brides of Dracula, Frankenstein Created Woman, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll.) Mark Robson's (The Seventh Victim, The Harder They Fall, Valley of the Dolls, Peyton Place, Earthquake, From the Terrace, The Leopard Man) A Prize of Gold employs vibrant Technicolor for romantic Berlin sequences before shifting to gritty heist chaos, a tonal inconsistency shared with Sidney Gilliat's (Green for Danger, Endless Night, State Secret, The Green Man,) convoluted, humor-infused puzzle in Fortune Is a Woman, where Jack Hawkins' as intrepid investigator unravels deceptions amid red herrings, outshining Vernon Sewell's (Curse of the Crimson Altar, The Blood Beast Terror, Wrong Number) competent but mismatched high-key studio work in Spin a Dark Web, which builds gradual suspense via Soho authenticity. Indicator's Columbia Noir #7: Made in Britain Blu-ray is an impressive archival effort with standouts like the rediscovery-worthy A Prize of Gold, Spin a Dark Web, and the bleakly compelling The Long Haul offsetting alternative entries like the enticing Fortune Is a Woman and fantastical character study in Wicked as They Come - excels through its robust special features and high-definition presentations, making it essential for dark cinema enthusiasts and British cinema historians despite not all films embodying pure noir essence. You can always purchase Indicator Blu-rays with confidence - this Columbia Noir #7: Made in Britain set gets a strong recommendation for its noir-vibes, definitive a/v, transitional-era insights and supplementary depth. 

Gary Tooze