Strongroom (1962)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

London in the mid 50s. Three thieves have plotted a bank robbery. They slip into the building expecting to find it empty but two of the staff have stayed late and in order to keep them out of the way the robbers tie and gag them, then lock them away in the bank's strongroom -- that's a "vault" to you and me.A long weekend lies ahead. There isn't enough air to sustain two captives in the air tight vault.To ensure the rescue of the captives before their oxygen runs out, one of the thieves is detailed to drive the bank manager's car to a distant phone booth, call the police, tip them to the situation, and tell them the keys to the vault will be found in the phone booth. The police will then retrieve the keys, release the two captives, and no murder charge will be hanging like a black cloud over the miscreants.Well, these three crooks are no brighter than they have to be. The guy with the keys, the one driving the manager's car, totals the vehicle and is killed before he can make the call, which is very foolish of him. It leaves the two remaining thieves in an uncomfortable situation. If they don't release the captives, they'll die. But they don't have the keys to the vault because the dead man had the keys in his pocket. A visit to the mortuary and a threat of violence to the coroner do them no good. It's Friday afternoon, and nobody will be at the bank until Tuesday, by which time the two captives will no longer need air.I think that's about as far as I'll go with the plot. It's not an unfamiliar narrative, either in feature films or television series, but the reason it's familiar is that it works. It's innately suspenseful. Will they get the two innocents out alive? And if they do, what will it cost them. Meanwhile the clock is ticking.It's an inexpensive film. Sometimes I could almost believe they had only one set and just rearranged the furniture. The acting is at about the same level as an ordinary person might achieve with one or two days' tutoring. I've given better performances myself, most notably in the undersung art house classic "Traxx." It's true. I was the drunken cowboy in the whorehouse. My kid was the little Oriental boy who was startled by a door being burst open. Two of the performers do stand out, though. The head honcho of the gang of three is a young man with a most peculiar face -- not ugly, just unusual. You'll see what I mean if you watch the movie. The other memorable character is the blond secretary who is locked away with the manager in the bank's vault. She has an attractive face, although it consists mostly of nose.There's nothing outstanding about the movie. The narrative works because it's irresistible, but the performances are about what you'd find in a high school play in East Orange, New Jersey. Well, there are some grace notes. A cleaning lady hums a snatch from a Beethoven symphony as she mops the floor. Note, in particular, the coroner or whatever he is. The guy huffs and blubbers his way through a tense scene, and he's hilariously bad. The investigating detective is given the best line of dialog. When the mortician complains that one of the thieves threatened to kill him in an argument about the keys, the policeman gets to ask, "Well, did he?"

The supreme accolade for a 'B' film is that so many cinemas should choose to show it as a main feature, and it gets translated into at least one foreign language - the case with this production.You can't help noticing how tiny the budget must have been. Just a handful of modest room-sets, no location work, no special effects, no big-name stars (even Derren Nesbitt was probably not bankable as early as this). Yet its smallness is its strength. We are able to focus on an average English town living the second-division life. A group of three gangsters, somewhat out of their depth, try to exploit the quiet holiday period to pull-off their one and only robbery before going straight. According to plan, one of them bluffs his way into a bank, wearing postman's uniform, before letting-in the other two, and they tie up the manager and his secretary who are alone in the building. But they hadn't thought about the office cleaners who would naturally come on duty at a quiet time like this, so the gang has no choice but to lock their two captives in the strongroom that they've just burgled.Driving off, they realize that the unfortunate couple will soon run out of air, so they have to devise a plan to enable the cops to get hold of the strongroom keys in time to rescue them. Otherwise the robbery charge they were risking could turn into a murder charge (which could still have meant the gallows in 1962).This is where the suspense begins, with alternating scenes of the manager and secretary trying to break out of their prison, and the gang trying to engineer their release without giving themselves up. There is great ingenuity in the plotting of this drama, far above the standard 'B'-film level. It is truly involving to watch a mortuary attendant announcing that they'll have to wait for the keys until he gets the coroner's report, while the two captives are only minutes from suffocating. And the same when the manager's friends briefly wonder why such a punctual man should have missed their lunch-date, but eventually decide it's not worth investigating. It is these little sub-plots that drive the story to such effect. But the surprise-ending is too masterly to be disclosed here.Derren Nesbitt, a dead ringer for Richard Burton, both in looks and in the blend of charm and menace, is brilliantly cast as the dominant gang-member, persuading a nervous young Keith Faulkner not to cut-and-run and just leave the captives to their fate. There is no leading lady in the full sense, but Ann Lynn as the secretary makes the most of her few opportunities. (She was just divorcing Antony Newley at the time, over a little local difficulty called Joan Collins.) The script is generally convincing, except for the gossip between the two young charladies, which comes a little too close to a pastiche of downmarket girlie-chat (though the topical references to consumer advertising are significant), and the mortuary attendant is rather too plodding as the official who insists on following regulations.

I first read about this film about fifteen years ago, but it never seems to have had a release on the home video market, and it's taken until now before I finally was able to catch one of its rare outings on television.Considering it was a low budget affair made over fifty years ago, I thought it stood up very well as a tight drama and it managed to hold my interest throughout. But let me be clear: there are no big action scenes, no explosions, no car chases or bouts of fisticuffs in this crime thriller. There's no big crowd scenes and there's not even any incidental music. This is a film which succeeds through its sheer good telling of a story, through good characters, a strong cast and a clever, gradual cranking up of the tension from the very start to the very finish.The plot is relatively simple: Three crooks (played by Derren Nesbitt, Keith Faulkner and Morgan Sheppard) realise their plan to rob the local bank. To give themselves the best chance of getting far away before the alarm can be raised, they strike just as the bank is about to close up on a Friday evening leading into a holiday weekend where the business isn't due to re-open until the following Tuesday. Hoping to catch the bank manager (Colin Gordon) alone, they have little choice but to execute their plan whilst another staff member (Ann Lynn) is also working late.Their meticulously-planned scheme works perfectly – almost. Although they get away with the money, an unexpected event means that the crooks have to lock the bank manager and his female assistant into the bank vault (the 'strongroom' of the title) in order to evade immediate detection.Both the prisoners and the crooks subsequently realise that the air in the sealed vault will be exhausted well in advance of the bank's scheduled re-opening for business. What follows then is a grim tale of humanity as the prisoners desperately seek a way out of their predicament and the crooks have to wrestle with their own consciences as precious time ticks away.Nesbitt steals the show as the driving force of the villainous trio, a charismatic man who sees himself more as a roguish Robin Hood figure than a genuinely evil person and who meets resistance from his fellow conspirators when he suggests they risk their liberty and their newly acquired riches in order to go back and save the two bank employees from suffocating.Another highlight is Colin Gordon's performance as the bank manager, a rather stuffy and professional man whom the situation forces to open up to his younger female colleague and also lumbers him with the unwelcome responsibility of trying to play the hero.The juxtaposition of scenes of desperate plight with others depicting authority figures dallying and dithering plays out like a grim, serious version of Robb Wilton's famous 'fire station' comedy sketch and serves to maintain the tension while the plight of the bank robbers also takes some unexpected twists and turns. Even the very climax has one last crucial contribution to make.Yes, there are a few things in the film which don't make too much sense. Could Nesbitt's character really not call the police to tip them off that there were people trapped in the vault? Or could he have called somebody else and told them if he was worried about the police tracing the call?But when the end product is so good, I'm prepared to overlook a few shortcomings. Laced with lots of cameos by some of the best character actors of the day, Strongroom is a stark reminder to modern filmmakers that you don't have to be spectacular to succeed with your audience. I'm so glad this film was let out for air and wasn't kept locked away in a vault where nobody would ever find it again!

Seriously underrated little noir and, in some ways, a repeat of the 1960 movie "The Man In The Back Seat" which also starred Nesbitt and Faulkner as two crooks for whom fate deals a dirty hand. Both movies are excellent (and both directed by the equally underrated Sewell) and both have very neat twists in the tail. These two linked movies are unusual in that, given the era they were made in, the viewer is NOT subjected to "happy endings". As "Strongroom" was made in 1962, it might make for an interesting legal discussion as to whether either or both of the miscreants would hang or not......once again, Faulkner plays the conscience to Nesbitt's more hard-headed felon. I doubt whether that would count for too much with a contemporary criminal court jury, however. Faulkner is a fine foil to Nesbitt - they make a fine team in both movies...not sure why he gave up films. If anyone does, let me know...