Pink String and Sealing Wax

A Victorian melodrama with plenty of noir elements, Robert Hamer’s Pink String and Sealing Wax, a reference to a pharmacist’s traditional packaging for poisonous chemicals, is fascinating not only because it centers the stunning star potential of English actress Googie Withers but because it wonderfully juxtaposes — and links — the drama of a strict, puritanically Christian family with the brawls and cat fights of drunks and whores at a seaside Brighton pub. Withers plays Pearl Bond, the precocious wife of an abusive, alcoholic husband who plays with other men to escape her oppressive marriage. One of Pearl’s admirers, David Sutton (Gordon Jackson), works in the pharmacy owned by his strict Christian father (Mervyn Johns); when David brings her to the pharmacy one night to treat a wound inflicted by her husband, she discovers a cabinet filled with poisonous substances. Homicidal drama ensues.