Alastair Sim is so limpid of eye, so arch in speech, and so gentle, unctuous, and tragic of demeanor, that he suggests the modern epitome of agonized courtesy: the undertaker. In this macabre farce, he is cast just one jump away: as an aesthetic assassin. It is unlikely that anybody in the history of the cinema has ever matched his peculiar feat of flipping expressions from benign innocence to bloodcurdling menace in one devastating instant. He dispatches an assortment of expendable types: headmasters, businessmen, dictators, etc., but gets snarled up while trying to liquidate a distasteful cabinet minister. With George Cole, Terry–Thomas, Jill Adams, Raymond Huntley, and a string trio of ladies right out of a George.