Uneasy Terms
1948 film by Vernon Sewell

Uneasy Terms is a 1948 British crime thriller film directed by Vernon Sewell and starring Michael Rennie, Moira Lister and Faith Brook. It was written by Peter Cheyney based on his 1946 novel of the same title.
Premise
Slim Callaghan is a private eye whose client Colonel Stenhurst, is murdered, leaving behind a trail of suspects. Viola, the eldest of the Colonel's three stepdaughters, is the prime suspect, but after wading through clues and romance, Callaghan corners the real culprit.
Cast
Michael Rennie as Slim Callaghan
Moira Lister as Corinne Alardyse
Faith Brook as Viola Alardyse
Joy Shelton as Effie
Patricia Goddard as Patricia Alardyse
Barry Jones as Inspector Gringall
Marie Ney as Honoria Wymering
Paul Carpenter as Windy Nicholls
Nigel Patrick as Lucien Donnelly
Sydney Tafler as Maysin
J.H. Roberts as Sallins
Joan Carroll as Matron
Production
Cheyney was a best selling author at the time. Vernon Sewell wanted to make a film of Cheyney's Dark Duet but was assigned Uneasy Terms instead, the first in the Slim Callahan novels.
Sewell said Cheyney "had complete charge of casting and costumes, and script of course. He had choice of the world's stars." According to Sewell Cheyney insisted on Michael Rennie who the director thought "wasn't right for it". Swell also said that Cheyney also did not write the script. "I'm left on the, sometimes on the set with no script at all!
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Uneasy Terms” is 1948 film by Vernon Sewell. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Uneasy, Terms and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7884160. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Uneasy Terms” 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.