The March Hare (1956)

The March Hare: Directed by George More O’Ferrall. With Terence Morgan, Martita Hunt, Bernard Rook, Wilfrid Hyde-White. Sir Charles Hare, a young Irish baronet, gambles his all on one of his horses at Ascot. But the horse is ‘pulled’, and Sir Charles is forced to sell his Irish estate. His aunt, however, has some surprises in store for him.

“Normally it took John Ford to make a film set in Ireland as phoney as this!u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere must have been quite an audience for films about gee-gees for Eastmancolour (sic) and CinemaScope (beautifully shot by Jack Hildyard) to have been lavished upon this gallumphing nonsense so soon after Ealing Studios squandered Technicolor on u0026#39;The Rainbow Jacketu0026#39;; complete with an excruciating u0026#39;Oirishu0026#39; score by Philip Green. (At least horse racing and the wide screen make a good fit; although the final race meet is over surprisingly quickly.)u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eStringer Davis plays a doctor in a rare appearance in a film without his wife Margaret Rutherford; while Charles Hawtry turns out to have only a very brief role indeed. Raymond Glendenning as himself sports his luxuriant real moustache while Reginald Beckwith also has a weird little one in his brief cameo as an insurance broker.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003ePeggy Cummins hardly looks a day older than in u0026#39;Green Grass of Wyomingu0026#39; several years earlier; but sadly discards her trousers for party frocks (along, thankfully, with her American accent) after returning from finishing school. Thereu0026#39;s quite a bit a sex talk between her and Terence Morgan, but heu0026#39;s such a wet blanket it comes across as creepy rather than saucy…”