DVD Review: 'The Arsenal Stadium Mystery'

It features Arsenal's team as it was in 1938 and the live action was filmed at an Arsenal v Brentford match at Highbury just before the War. The storyline features a Charity match and subsequent re-match between Arsenal and the Trojans, a fictional amateur football team. Much of the action takes place at The Home of Football where the famous Clock has hardly changed. Filmed scenes include the training centre behind the Clock End, the dressing rooms, manager's office and treatment room. The plot, such as it is, revolves around one of the Trojan players collapsing during the course of the match and subsequenty kicking the bucket. The story then becomes a murder mystery which centres around the eccentric Inspector Slade, his bumbling assistant, a mystery woman, some rather well spoken chaps straight out of what sounds like Eton and George Allison acting his socks off as himself. Famous Arsenal players feature in the on field action and also as bit part actors elsewhere.

Inspector Slade of Scotland Yard, played by Leslie Banks not only has a hat fetish but is attempting to apprehend the murder culprit inside three days in order to avoid a clash with his upcoming theatre performance. A performance which seemingly involves a group of plods in tutus and big boots. This film is standard thirties cinema, the music is typically dramatic stuff, the haircuts are amazing and huge clouds of cigarette smoke waft across the sets.

As stories go it is hardly riveting but I found the throw-away details fascinating. Players smoke away to their hearts content in the dressing room and one player is even able to arrive in his motor car and seemingly park outside the West Stand five minutes before kick off. One scene includes a game of head tennis between Arsenal players wearing thick woolly rollneck jerseys with what looks like a medicine ball. The referee performs his on pitch duties in a blazer and there are seemingly compulsory hats throughout the crowd. The players boots are up around their ankles, slices of lemon are available at half time, boiling kettles whistle, policemen blatantly disturb the scene of a crime, there's a debagging at the Golf Club, women weep and chaps keep stiff upper lips. Solid door knockers appear on balsa wood doors that can be demolished with a shoulder charge that wouldn't have ruffled a goalkeeper in the thirties. Upturned raincoat collars abound, as do cravats and double breasted suits, there is even an advert for True Shagg. The film also features the world's most OTT hatstand, wing collars, twee button-holes and football shirts without names or numbers. I thought initially that Leslie Bank's line ‘I bet every hat in my wardrobe' was unsurpassable but George Allison topped it when he says to the team ‘don't play your game, play the attacking game.' Better still there is a clip where the announcer says ‘and at half time the score is Arsenal 1 Trojans 0' and Allison chimes in with ‘and that's just how we like it' whilst smoking his fat cigar. Classic stuff.

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery – Total running time 85 minutes is available from 18th. July, price £19.99 – Network DVD, 3rd floor Landmark House, Hammersmith Bridge Road, London W8 9DR