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

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (September 2026): Kino have transferred their fourth 'Brit Noir Collection' to Blu-ray consisting of three films; The Teckman Mystery / Time Is My Enemy / and They Can’t Hang Me. We reviewed the Network DVD of The Teckman Mystery in 2016, HERE. .All three films on Blu-ray are from new 4K restorations by StudioCanal. The Teckman Mystery, the longest of the three at about 90 minutes, is alone on a single-layered disc in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio. Time Is My Enemy (about 64 minutes) and They Can't Hang Me (about 75 minutes) share a dual-layered disc, and both have a very high bitrates. Time Is My Enemy is framed in the older Academy ratio of 1.37:1, fitting for the smaller Vandyke production, while They Can't Hang Me matches The Teckman Mystery at 1.66:1, the widescreen format British studios were quickly adopting in the mid-'50s. The black-and-white images look clean and stable, with no significant damage left. Contrast is well-judged across the set. The Teckman Mystery has the most polished look, with Jack Hildyard's (The Message, The Beast Must Die, Casino Royale, Modesty Blaise, Circus World, Cleopatra, 55 Days at Peking, Suddenly, Last Summer, Jet Storm, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Summertime, Hobson's Choice, The Sound Barrier) photography showing smooth gray scale, rich blacks and pleasing detail in faces, costumes and the London location work. Time Is My Enemy, the lowest-budget of the three, is a touch grainier and less refined, but its boxier frame suits its cramped, shadowy interiors, which hold up well with deep blacks and no obvious crush. They Can't Hang Me looks crisp and sharp, and Stanley Pavey's (The Projected Man) wider compositions have solid depth and textured grain. There's no sign of excessive noise reduction or edge enhancement on any of them, and the grain looks natural and film-like. These 1080pP transfers are a real upgrade over the older, softer versions these titles have circulated in. All good.

NOTE: We have added 104 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use DTS-HD Master dual-mono tracks (24-bit) in the original English language. The dialogue is clear and consistent throughout, with no audible hiss, crackle or dropouts. That matters, because so much of the pleasure here is in the clipped, period British delivery: plummy officers, cockney crooks and Yolande Donlan's American briskness in They Can't Hang Me. The scores come through with appropriate, if modest, depth, and are at their most effective in Stanley Black's (The Young Ones, The Trollenberg Terror, Blood of the Vampire, The Long and the Short and the Tall, Happy Ever After, Bottom's Up!, Valentino, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, War-Gods of the Deep, 1960's Hammer film Stop Me Before I Kill! etc.,) propulsive music for They Can't Hang Me. Clifton Parker’s (Scream of Fear, Sink the Bismarck!, Curse of the Demon, HMS Defiant) score on The Teckman Mystery supports the film well with brooding tension. The tracks have the limited range you'd expect from mid-'50s British studio recordings, but they are faithful and free of distortion.  Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A'-locked Blu-rays.

The Kino Blu-ray set offers three substantive audio commentaries. Film historian Daniel Kremer takes on The Teckman Mystery, film historian Laurene Lerman covers Time Is My Enemy, and film historian/writer Julie Kirgo and writer/filmmaker Peter Hankoff team up for They Can't Hang Me. Always a pleasure to follow along with commentarists who really know their stuff - very true here. There is also a selection of trailers for related Kino titles: Detective Story, It Always Rains on Sunday, Man Afraid, Singapore, Touch of Evil, and, on the second Blu-ray, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, It Always Rains on Sunday, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Quatermass Xperiment (The Creeping Unknown) and The Tattered Dress. The second group ties in nicely with the set. Both The Day the Earth Caught Fire and The Quatermass Xperiment are rewatchable Val Guest films, and Kind Hearts and Coronets features Dennis Price's most famous role. The set is packaged in a standard Blu-ray case housed inside a handsome slipcase.

The Teckman Mystery is the lightest and most Hitchcockian of the three. Durbridge and James Matthews adapted it from Durbridge's 1953 BBC serial. John Justin's Philip Chance is an author commissioned to write a biography of the late pilot, an innocent drawn into a web of deaths, cover-ups and shifting loyalties. His growing romance with Teckman's sister Helen (Leighton - 7 Women, The Holly and the Ivy, The Good Die Young, Home at Seven, From Beyond the Grave,) gives the film its central ambiguity: Leighton's cool, elegant reserve makes it hard to say whether she's a victim, an accomplice or both. Roland Culver's Major Harris and George Coulouris add the requisite shadowy authority figures. Toye was a former dancer and choreographer, and she keeps things moving with Durbridge's trademark cliffhanger rhythm. Contemporary critics found it short of Hitchcock and sometimes "arch," and fair enough. But its brisk twists and appealing leads make it an entertaining opener. Time Is My Enemy is the grubbiest and most purely noir. It's adapted from Ella Adkins's play Second Chance, and it plays on the post-war fear that the past can't stay buried. Barbara (Asherson - The Others, Theatre of Blood, Rasputin: The Mad Monk, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Pool of London) has built a secure new life with publisher John Everton (Patrick Barr), until Radley reappears demanding money to keep her first marriage secret. Price, forever remembered as the charming murderer of Kind Hearts and Coronets, strips the charm down to pure oily menace. His Radley is a petty, desperate man whose blackmail spirals into robbery and murder. Asherson is sympathetic as a woman cornered by her own history, and a lively supporting cast of Susan Shaw, Bonar Colleano, Alfie Bass and Duncan Lamont's dogged policeman fills out the seedy world Radley slinks through. Chaffey, years before Jason and the Argonauts, shows a tight grip on B-movie suspense. The plotting gets muddled late on, but the film's moral queasiness lingers. They Can't Hang Me closes the set with the most ambitious and topical story. Guest took the project over at the last minute and rewrote Leonard Mosley's novel himself. Pitt, a senior civil servant convicted of murder, offers to expose a spy smuggling atomic secrets out of Britain in exchange for a reprieve. Terence Morgan's (The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, Captain Horatio Hornblower) Inspector Brown has only days to verify the tip before the handler escapes, which turns the film into a race against both the calendar and the hangman. Morell (Stolen Face, The Camp on Blood Island, The Giant Behemoth, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Cash on Demand, The Shadow of the Cat, The Plague of the Zombies, The Mummy's Shroud, The Vengeance of She, Quatermass and the Pit  - TV serial,) brings authority and moral ambiguity to Pitt, a man trading his country's secrets for his own neck, and Donlan (Jigsaw, Expresso Bongo, The Devil Bat,) adds a brisk, modern American note as Jill Wilson. Contemporary critics singled out the "unusually intelligent script." Taken together, the three films trace a neat arc across mid-'50s British genre filmmaking: the amateur sleuth mystery of the Durbridge tradition, the lower-middle-class crime melodrama, and the procedural spy thriller that would flower in the '60s. All three share a fascination with identity and exposure: false deaths, hidden marriages, secret loyalties. All three put women at the center of the danger as well: Leighton's enigmatic sister, Asherson's trapped wife and Donlan's plucky civilian. All three films are shot in black and white, and together they show the range of mid-'50s British studio craftsmanship, from polished A-picture gloss to lean B-movie economy. The Teckman Mystery is the handsomest. Jack Hildyard, only a few years from his Oscar for The Bridge on the River Kwai, gives Shepperton's sets a smooth, elegant sheen and lights Leighton with the soft glamour of a proper leading lady. He also takes the camera out into real London: Kensington streets, Tower Bridge and the windswept expanse of Northolt Aerodrome ground Durbridge's far-fetched plotting. Time Is My Enemy comes from the much smaller Vandyke Productions and looks it, but in a way that suits its material. Geoffrey Faithfull's photography keeps things cramped and shadowy, with dim rooms, narrow stairwells and the comfortable suburban home Radley invades. They Can't Hang Me, also shot at Shepperton, splits the difference. Stanley Pavey's crisp, efficient images favor the clean lines of Whitehall offices, police headquarters and prison corridors, matching the procedural momentum of Guest's direction. On the soundtracks, The Teckman Mystery leans into the light, romantic suspense of the Durbridge serials. Time Is My Enemy uses music more sparingly and relies more on the ambient sounds of its London settings. Stanley Black's score for They Can't Hang Me is the most propulsive, driving the countdown to Pitt's execution. Susan Shaw (Fire Maidens of Outer Space, The Good Die Young, The Intruder,) a Rank starlet who was also in  It Always Rains on Sunday and Pool of London, brightens Time Is My Enemy as Evelyn Gower. It's fitting casting, since her husband, Bonar Colleano, is also in the film. Reginald Beckwith (Bottoms Up, The Ugly Duckling, The Horse's Mouth, Curse of the Demon, The Titfield Thunderbolt, Whispering Smith vs. Scotland Yard, Another Man's Poison, Circle of Danger, Thunderball, Night of the Eagle, The Day the Earth Caught Fire,) a dependable comic character actor familiar from Genevieve, brings a touch of dry, fussy humor to They Can't Hang Me as Harold, lightening Val Guest's tense Cold War countdown. All three share the crisp, clipped dialogue of British studio recording at the time. Brit Noir Collection IV is another rewarding volume in Kino Lorber's Blu-ray series. The three films are modest in ambition but rich in period atmosphere: the Durbridge-penned twists of The Teckman Mystery, the grubby post-war blackmail of Time Is My Enemy and the Cold War procedural of They Can't Hang Me. None is a lost masterpiece, but all three have fine casts, efficient direction from Wendy Toye, Don Chaffey and Val Guest, and vivid glimpses of a London still marked by the war. StudioCanal's 4K restorations, presented in 1080P with high bitrates and 24-bit lossless audio, give them the best presentation they've ever had on home video, and the three new commentaries add real value for fans of British genre cinema. Fans of the earlier volumes won't hesitate. For anyone interested in the less-traveled corners of '50s British noir, this is an easy recommendation.

Gary Tooze