Until 1967 homosexual acts between consenting adults were illegal in Britain. In the USA this film was banned, and it played an influential role in liberalizing laws regarding homosexuality. Jack Barrett (Peter McEnery) is found hanging dead in his jail cell. He was incarcerated for allegedly embezzling money from his company, which he admitted to the police. However, the truth is he took the money because he was being blackmailed for being a homosexual. After the suicide, Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde), a married lawyer, with the help of Barrett's gay friend Eddy Stone (Donald Churchill), tries to find others who are being blackmailed. Is Farr doing this to pay the blackmailers money in return for the incriminating evidence against him (innocent photographs of Farr and Barrett) or does he want to stop the blackmailers from targeting other homosexuals? The educated police Detective Inspector Harris (John Barrie) considers the sodomy laws nothing more than an aid to blackmailers and helps Farr. The blackmailers vandalize Farr's property, writing "Queer" on his garage doors in an attempt to intimidate him. But Farr helps the police catch them and promises to give evidence in court, even if it means destroying his career. At the end of the film, Farr talks to his wife Laura (Sylvia Syms) and burns the picture that originally incriminated him.
"Victim" was the first English language film in history to use the word "homosexual". It is the first mainstream film to portray sympathetically and realistically homosexual society, at a time when homosexuality was still a crime, when to be gay was a matter of secrecy and shame. Janet Green and John McCormick wrote the screenplay. Philip Green composed the music and Basil Dearden directed.
