User Reviews

So tells Renee Houston, the Tallulah Bankhead like Scottish actress who steals his film, to George Rose as the mastermind behind a dog track racing heist. Indeed, he is a small man, even going so far as to strike Houston for her brave words against him. This film starts off with the crime with a group of crooks successfully escaping from the arena but having two separate in order not to be caught. Reporter Ken Taylor, on Houston's Trail, is desperate to get a serious story and he finds more than he bargained for as he boards the bus that includes Houston, her agent, a constantly drunken lush and pretty Petula Clark whom he first encounters when she intrudes on his phone call in a tight booth. When Rose and his cohort home he basically bribed into joining him on the run are exposed, the passengers on the bus end up in the middle of nowhere inside a barn where the blessing of a sick baby happens to be the possible way that Rose will be captured.

Pretty standard British new wave, this is still far in advance to similar heist films made in the United States at the same time. The location photography is brilliantly photographed with the detail so crisp that you literally can see the cracks in the buildings and far more detail then you would otherwise. Other than Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing", I can't think another American heist film that had the same type of realism that this has although the comedy involving the drunken character gets to be a bit too much after a while. Taylor and Clark do seem mismatched, but Houston's character is so well-developed that you can't help but be entranced by her. In spite of it's predictability, it's quite fast-moving and fully enjoyable,

I've seen a number of British b-movies from the 50s that feature an American star and were distributed stateside by Lippert Pictures. This film, although made in Britain with an all-British supporting cast, stars American actor Kent Taylor (an actor in the Robert Taylor mode, for those not familiar with him---probably best known to audiences under 50 for his Al Adamson and Filipino horror films) and was directed by longtime Republic pictures director R. G. Springsteen--it was released in the USA by Republic. The film begins with a dog-track robbery, then veers off into the story of one of the robbery's participants, his girlfriend, and her sister (played well by Petula Clark who, unlike in her French crime film DAGGERS DRAWN, does not sing here), and then by a cleverly plotted coincidence newspaper reporter Kent Taylor, who was in the police station after the crime was committed, gets brought into the story, although he is following something else. I won't give too much away, but in the classic "petrified forest" tradition, much of the film takes place in a limited setting with a limited number of characters--a tempermental actress, her manager, a drunk, a young mother, Kent Taylor, Petula Clark, and others who shall remain nameless as I won't be a spoiler. Each character is well drawn, there's even some comic relief, and Mr. Taylor brings his usual class to the film. There are no great surprises here, but it's an entertaining way to kill 75 minutes for the fan of b-crime and mystery films. Director Springsteen went on to direct a number of Western tv shows in the late 50s and early 60s and then a number of A.C. Lyles productions in the mid-60s--a personal favorite of mine is HOSTILE GUNS with George Montgomery and Tab Hunter. His final film is the obscure TIGER BY THE TAIL starring Christopher George from 1968, which I've always wanted to see. The few references I've seen to this film are due to Petula Clark's being in it. She is excellent, and while watching it I completely forgot that she was Petula Clark, singing star, because she played the character so well. My only complaint is that Kent Taylor seems a little too old to be attempting to romance her (KT was 48 at the time, PC was 23). Other than that, this is solid b-movie entertainment. My copy was taped off CBN in 1984...hope you can find one. If ONLY tv still showed films like this!