"School for Traitors" was the fourth of the six episodes featuring Julie Stevens as nightclub singer Venus Smith, and continues the improvement as her partnership with Steed shows a great deal of warm affection. Venus is now performing (snatches of three songs) at an exclusive university where students are being blackmailed into revealing government secrets, resulting in a rash of suicides revealed to be murder. Here, Steed's superior is One-Seven (Frederick Farley, making his only appearance), who pops in at a local pub run by Higby (Reginald Marsh), one of the traitorous ringleaders, assisted by Claire Summers (Melissa Stribling, previously seen in "Hunt the Man Down"), who lures young male students into her web of deceit by imploring them to forge checks on her behalf. Venus is especially charming attempting to warn her partner by whistling (the actress clearly cannot whistle). In unusually villainous mode, Melissa Stribling, who appeared with Michael Gough, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee (all AVENGERS veterans) in Hammer's 1958 classic "Horror of Dracula," stands out among a good cast, featuring Terence Woodfield (previously seen in "Mission to Montreal") and John Standing as blackmail victims, and Anthony Nicholls ("Night of the Eagle," "The Omen") playing the head tutor. The next episode with Venus would be "Man in the Mirror."
Review of School for Traitors
