Thanks to a recent DVD sale at Barnes and Noble, I ended up with two impulse DVD purchases. (It had to be a good sale for me to buy the pricey Criterion edition of any movie. A very few merit the bucks added to the basic costs we usually see on DVDs today.) Both films featured ongoing fictional characters. The first, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse), is a 1933 film by Fritz Lang shown (and here is a credit to Criterion) complete and in its original aspect ratio. Censored and trimmed in its earlier releases, it features not only the ongoing villain Dr. Mabuse (pronounced mah-boose-uh) but also a police inspector who appeared in Lang's classic M (which, by the way, I also recommend enthusiastically, but I bet you've already seen that film; if you haven't, see if your library can get you a copy).

But the prize viewing for me was another film I bet you're not likely to have seen: Green for Danger. The ongoing character is detective Inspector Cockrill, created by Christianna Brand. Cockrill appeared in six mystery novels, but the most successful (in part because of the 1946 movie) was Green for Danger. I'd last seen it a couple of decades or more ago and enjoyed the heck out of it -- but I wasn't sure when I bought it whether it'd hold up today.

It's terrific fun -- and a terrific mystery, with all the clues clearly in place (but, though I did recall how the murder came about, I still didn't solve it second time through). The film (screenplay by the men who wrote the screenplay for The Lady Vanishes) made a star out of Alastair Sim [photo here from a book on film comic performers] -- with good reason. Again, ask your library about borrowing it, if you enjoy sprightly British detective films.