Serious Charge
1959 film by Terence Young
Serious Charge (U.S.: A Touch of Hell, also known as Immoral Charge) is a 1959 British film, directed by Terence Young and starring Anthony Quayle, Sarah Churchill, Andrew Ray and Irene Browne. It was produced and co-written by Mickey Delamar and Guy Elmes, and adapted from the 1956 stage play of the same name by Philip King. The film is notable for the screen acting debut of Cliff Richard in a minor role.
Plot
Unmarried ex-army vicar Reverend Howard Phillips, newly arrived in the parish, attempts to get local 19-year-old thug and petty criminal Larry Thompson to face up to his responsibilities to Mary Williams, the naive young girl he has made pregnant. When Howard threatens to tell his coffee-bar friends, Larry trashes the room and fakes a struggle. As a dishevelled Larry leaves, Hester Peters arrives, and he tells her that Howard "interfered" with him. Hester is the daughter of the parish's previous clergyman and has become infatuated with the athletic and handsome new vicar. However, having earlier seen a young girl leaving the vicarage late one night (Mary, who had sought the vicar's advice about her pregnancy), Hester jumps to the conclusion the two are romantically linked and chooses to believe Larry's account. Shortly afterwards, Mary chances across Larry kissing another girl, and in distress blindly stumbles across the road into the path of a car, and is killed.
As a consequence of the malicious accusation, Howard is subjected to suspicion and abuse by his parishioners, including having his car's tyres slashed and receiving poison pen letters.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Serious Charge” as 1959 film by Terence Young. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1959 film by Terence Young. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3479821. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “Serious Charge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.