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The second Dick Barton movie from Hammer Films (which was also the first sequel ever done by Hammer) is a far better thriller than its predecessor, even if it is a little too much the stuff of radio thrillers. The direction by Godfrey Grayson is much more forceful and focused than the work of Alfred Goulding on the first movie, and there is a minimum of comic relief to distract us or interrupt the action. Beyond the presence of a very young Patrick Macnee as the doomed agent (a dozen years before beginning his stint as John Steed on The Avengers), there are also some fascinating touches to the production. The score by Rupert Grayson and Frank Spencer in one scene includes the same kind of dense violin "sting" that John Barry would make his trademark in the James Bond movies and other thrillers more than a decade later, and in one assassination scene, we get a glimpse of what has to have been one of the earliest onscreen uses of a silencer on a gun. The thriller plot itself would be worthy of The Avengers or Ian Fleming's later work, involving a kidnapping, a murder, and a plan to destroy England. Though it was the second of the Dick Barton movies to be made, and was shot in 1948, Dick Barton at Bay was the third and last film in the series to be shown, released in 1950.