Sapphire

Director: Basil Dearden
Year Released: 1959
Rating: 2.0

A girl named Sapphire is found dead in the woods (although she wasn't murdered there) so British detective Hazard (Nigel Patrick) has work to do - it turns out the deceased was of mixed descent and she was pregnant, which makes her boyfriend David (Paul Massie) the prime suspect.  While it offers a historical look at racial tension in late 50's England - where the prospect of a white male having a black child was a career killer - it also gets a little too preachy - Hazard's afforded multiple occasions to be the preachy voice of political correctness (his partner is something of a bigot) - and it totally flubs the last third of the movie with its hysterical "big reveal."  You would have needed a crystal ball to guess the killer, with Dearden - working from a sociological script by Janet Green and Lukas Heller - leaning heavily on making you think it's one of three people (Massie, pop Bernard Miles and dancer Harry Baird).