Individual Initial Noir Ideas: Synopsis for Whole Film

It all starts when there is a burglary at a house, and Henry Screamer, the house owner, sets about hiring someone to kill the burglar, since he knows the burglar all too well. He hires Jimmy Nash, a professional killer for-hire. The agreement is set that Jimmy is to go to the burglar’s house and kill his parents, since the burglar is only a teenager. Jimmy successfully does this, but the burglar keeps quiet when Police question him.

The teenager (burglar) knows what’s happened and who did it, and while Henry is out on a shooting trip (Henry is upper-class and owns a big mansion) the teenager wrecks the library (snooker table, bookcases, table and chairs, windows and mirrors) and then sets the room alight with a cigarette lighter. The room is destroyed by the fire and Henry knows it was an arson attack. He stabs Jimmy in the stomach, telling him at the point-of-dying that he was a “useless asset”. He drives out to the river just three miles from his house in his sports-car (Austin-Healey 3000) and dumps Jimmy’s body in the river next to the road. But after leaving the site, heading home he is stopped by a policeman, who wants to know why he is driving on a country road with his lights off and at one o’clock in the morning. When asked to step-out of the car, Henry agrees but stabs the policeman beside his sports car. In turn, the policeman thumps Henry in the nose, who falls to the ground, dropping the knife. The policeman staggers back to his police car, and makes a mayday call. Henry wipes his nose with his fingertips and realises it is bleeding. A bloody nose makes Henry very angry, so he picks up the knife and staggers towards the police car, leaning on the bonnet to support himself.

In a blind rage Henry repeatedly stabs the policeman then throws the body into the river beside the road. However, as Henry leaves the scene he doesn’t realise that he has left one vital piece of evidence on the bonnet of the police car - his bloody fingerprints.

The next morning, Henry meets with a few of his upper-class friends in a café after being driven down in his £400,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom by his own personal chauffeur. They talk about burglaries, and Frag (his working-class pal and owner of the café), thinking that the dried-blood on Henry’s moustache was from a fight with a burglar, recommends a talk with a crime lord.

The talk is set-up. A time and location is agreed between the crime lord’s personal assistant and Frag, who tells Henry to be early.

Henry arrives in his car five minutes early. However, instead of meeting him, the crime lord’s top two professionals creep up on Henry’s car without him even knowing. When they suddenly appear by the car, the shock sets off a heart attack, landing Henry in hospital, when he really needs to be at home waiting for a phone call from the crime lord.

Henry finally comes out of hospital, but on leaving is confronted by the crime lord and his ‘assistants’, who urge him to get into the back of the chauffeur-driven black stretched limousine. An agreement is made and Henry is dropped off at his driveway. He thinks over their agreement as he walks up the long and winding driveway to his mansion.

The new hired killer makes a hoax phone call to the teenage burglar, pretending to be his best friend. He meets the teenager on an empty tube train and shoots him dead, but not undetected!!

Although there may not have been any people on board the carriage the CCTV camera recorded the killing. The professional, dressed in white t-shirt, black hooded jumper and blue jeans, walks home, taking a shortcut through a back alley. An undercover policeman spots him entering the alley and notifies his partner. His partner enters the alley from the other end, wearing a brown leather jacket and a dark green woolly hat. He deliberately barges past the professional and slips a copy of the CCTV camera tape into his pocket. The crime lord finds out there is still an original tape of the murder. Thinking Henry will inform the police of his connection with the hired professional killer he orders a hunt-to-kill search party, to find Henry Screamer!

Meanwhile, the Police investigation into the death of the policeman and Jimmy, both found on the banks of the same river, is ongoing and the DNA of the “bonnet-blood” is identified as Mr. H. Screamer’s blood. And after finding the teenager’s fingerprints on the cigarette lighter at Henry’s burnt out library, they begin to suspect a connection between the arson attack and the teenager’s death.

They had asked themselves why Henry’s fingerprints were on the bonnet of the police car, then worked out that he must have been the murderer of both of the ‘river bank’ victims. The undercover policemen search for Henry at the same time as the crime lord.

It is the undercover police who get to Henry’s mansion first, but find out that he has been killed whilst eating his dinner. The crime lord enters and thinks that the undercover police have killed Henry. Just then the butler comes into the room carrying a stainless steel oval shaped plate covered with a white cloth. He peels off the cloth to reveal a very bloody red knife. He says to everybody in the room “it was his time”.