When Louis’ mother married for love, she was ostracized from the high-born d’Ascoygne, and he had no shoot at a dukedom. Unless, that is, he took a few shots at the dukes. Louis decides, all to avenge his sainted mama’s honor, to kill the eight d’Ascoynes who stand between him and the title. All the victims are played by Alec Guinness — including Lady Agatha, the suffragette and hot-air balloonist, about whom Louis versifies: “I shot an arrow in the air/ She fell to earth in Berkeley Square.” Robert Hamer’s deliciously mannered comedy has the first example I know of the serial killer as hero. Price’s Louis is a creature of delicate taste and a gift for turning every atrocity into an aphorism. “I was sorry about the girl,” he muses after killing a d’Ascoyne’s mistress as collateral damage, “but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably during the weekend already undergone a fate worse than death.”
