The Halfway House

CinemaSerf

When a group of weary travellers arrive at a rural inn, they immediately feel that something is amiss. It's run by "Rhys" (Mervyn Johns) and his (real life) daughter "Gwyneth" (Glynis Johns) who somewhat curiously never casts a shadow. The whole place looks like it's been stuck in a time-warp as the storm rages outside. Now, as the story develops we discover that each of the guests have their own skeletons in their closets, but the hostelry in which they shelter seems to be possessed with a sort of benevolence that manifests itself in different ways to help (nor not!). Made during the latter stages of the Second World War the story offers us a degree of poignant retrospective, paralleling some of the tales with the trauma many will have experienced during that conflict. It also features a charming and entertaining degree of chemistry between the father and daughter too. The individual stories themselves are maybe a bit too undercooked, but it has a decent cast of familiar British faces - Tom Walls and Esmond Knight amongst them - to deliver them solidly enough, and to help create a mysterious and poignant atmosphere for this quirky ninety minutes of wartime optimism.