User Reviews

A London locksmith called Johnny Ryan (Spencer Teakle) pulls off his once in a lifetime job, a raid on a jewelery store, in which the heist is £60,000 worth of uncut diamonds that he intends to use to fund a new life with his girlfriend, a nightclub singer called Sylvia (Dawn Brooks). However, Sylvia has betrayed him to her boss, Ricky Barnes (Martin Benson), a Soho gangster, whose thugs set up on Johnny and his elderly accomplice, Sam (Arthur Hewlett), after they have done the job. Johnny is beaten up but Sam is run over by the gang's car and later dies from his injuries. But Barnes' thugs make off with the case containing Johnny's safe-breaking gear thinking that it contains the loot but in actual fact, Johnny had stuffed it into his coat pocket. Johnny is now in a situation of grave peril as not only is he wanted by the police for Sam's murder but also by the gang seeking to get their hands on the diamonds. Johnny finds help from two sisters, Jean (Dorinda Stevens), who runs a clip joint and her sister Mary (Felicity Young). Mary is hard and deceitful and joins forces with Barnes to recover the diamonds in the hope of getting a share herself. Meanwhile, Jean is kind hearted and gentle and hatches a plan to help Johnny escape since she is falling in love with him. She smuggles him into the back of a removal van, which her Uncle (John Dunbar) is taking back to his country farm. However, Barnes and the gang are following in pursuit...

Another routine crime drama from quota-quickie specialists, Butcher's Film Distributors. Most of the reviews I have read for this film are largely scathing i.e. 'threadbare', 'shoddy' and worse still: 'everybody concerned hashes it up'. I would not go as far as that since although it is pretty run-of-the-mill stuff with little to distinguish it from countless other second features; there are some decent performances here notably from Dorinda Stevens and Felicity Young who work well together as the sisters who are two completely different personalities so the contrast is excellent. On the negative side, suspense is killed off right from the word go since as one would expect from a Butcher's b-pic, the plot development is predictable and if you have seen one you have pretty much seen them all as they always have the obligatory happy ending rather than a dramatic one. Don't expect any surprises here. The screenwriter's credit reads; Screenplay by Brock Williams, additional material by Alan Osborne, from a story by Guido Coen. For such a routine assignment did it really warrant three writers? Director Charles Saunders, a former editor who spent most of his directorial career making pot boilers such as this, carries the proceedings along at a snappy pace and the atmospheric b/w cinematography is by Ken Hodges.

All in all, The Gentle Trap has little to set it apart from the countless number of British b-pics of that time but thanks to a few good performances, competent direction and some smart camera work, it can be enjoyed as a pleasant reminder of an era of British filmmaking that has long since been forgotten.

This is a thriller from Merton Park Studios. It contains many of the cliches redolent of the genre but nonetheless it is entertaining. After all when you have Martin Benson in the cast it is always a bonus,as you know from the start who is the villain. He is generally calm and assured till the last reel.

There are two blonde sisters in this film.,One is bad and dangerous to know. The other is sweetness and light and puts herself out to help Spencer Teakle who is in a peculiar way the hero,trying to recover and keep the jewels that he stole.

In these days of films with a running time of over three hours watching films of this length are a delight.

Night scene: A car is parked outside a shop, possibly a launderette, and two men appear to be stealing it - the car, that is. Hard to tell really. The doors are unlocked and they manage to get the car started in seconds. Maybe the owner had left the keys in the ignition? Anyway, they're off! And so are we - off round 1950s night-London in the company of Butcher's Film Distributors.

After the credits, and some cheesy "News Huddlines" type music, our two heroes park up down a derelict backstreet under an ill illuminated street-lamp. Soon Johnny (Spencer Teacle) has his ear pressed rosy against a jeweller's safe.

If the car was easy to get into, the shop is even easier – no locks back in dem black and white days, you see. And listening to Johnny's elderly accomplice, Sam, (future TV veteran Arthur Hewlett) you'd think that cracking a safe was a cakewalk too. "Get a move on, Johnny!" he shouts, with no small irritation – as if Johnny was fannying around with a tin opener and a can of Heinz.

"Why don't you have a go if it's so simple, granddad", he doesn't reply – although he'd be perfectly entitled too.

It's maybe not a good idea to keep a jackpot of diamonds (£60,000 worth) in an old safe. Things go wrong however when Sam is knocked down and killed, while making good his escape, by a rival gang, who work for someone called Ricky Barnes (Martin Benson). Before the cops can nick him (yes, they're there too) Johnny get on his toes with the loot and, despite his accomplice having been killed, appears strangely triumphant when he returns home to the girlfriend. Still, that smirk will soon be wiped off his face (or perhaps not). Sylvia, the girlfriend (Dawn Brooks, in her only screen appearance!) has bolted. Cut to Sylvia as a singing chanteuse in one of those second feature nightspots where cigarette girls wonder between tables populated by Rotary club type couples. The witch! She's only gone and sold out Johnny to sleazy crime boss Ricky Barnes. "It takes a man to handle the big stuff" apparently.

Finding himself on the trot from both Ricky's mob and the cops, Johnny winds up at a clip joint called The Night Owl, run by Mary (Dorinda Stevens, who had appeared in the previous year's far more lively "The Shakedown".). She offers Johnny a bed for the night (her own), on which he promptly collapses. An open invitation for Mary to riffle through his pockets no doubt, in which she finds the gems. Naughty Mary!

Butchers Film Distributors, who produced their first film way back in 1917, are remembered today, if at all, for precisely this kind of fair - second features from the turn of the 1950s. Back in the good old days of 3 channel Britain, they were regularly broadcast on TV as afternoon matinées. Nowadays, they occasionally pop up to entertain insomniacs in the small hours, presumably when there's nothing else to show. As far as Butchers goes, the classic era of their second features (if that isn't an oxymoron) was probably inaugurated with "Assignment Redhead" in 1956 and concluded, a whopping 17 films later, with "The Sicilians" in 1964. Those familiar with Butchers output will know what to expect here with "The Gentle Trap". It's a thriller, albeit a curiously inert one entirely lacking in thrills, featuring, in no particular order: double-crossing thieves – and dames! – a seedy, possibly foreign, crime boss who runs a nightclub - a wronged man (who isn't particularly wronged, when you think about it) and a bit of equally implausible love interest between wronged man Johnnie and Mary's wet behind the ears sister Jean (Felicity Young.)

Starring Spencer Teacle, whose only other lead roll was a year earlier in "Cover Girl Killer", also, strangely enough, or not, alongside Young (who here plays the only decent character in the film, i.e. one who isn't either a crook or a double crosser.) Unfortunately, most of the acting in "The Gentle Trap" is as inert as the action. Spencer Teacle isn't really up to it as tough guy Johnny, and can never quite wipe the smirk off his face.

The original scenario for this film was provided by Guido Coen. Eight years later Coen came up with some far more risqué fare in "Baby Love", before undertaking production duties in the inevitable 1970s sex comedy genre, e.g. "Sex Games of the Very Rich".

All quite cynical when you consider the abiding theme of the film, that of trying to find a nice girl "who's never missed the last train home."

Run of the mill B&W cops and robbers caper in which the dim-witted robbers are ultimately foiled by the marginally less dim-witted cops. Small time crook Johnny - an expert safe-cracker, but otherwise clueless villain - pinches some gems but his partner is killed during the getaway. Johnny has to lie low with double-crossing jezebel Mary, and her goodie-two shoes sister, have punch-ups with henchmen from rent-a-clot, and keep out of the way of local crime boss Ricky. Those with a fondness for the ridiculous will enjoy much of the improbability: a flashy American car is spotted at the opening crime scene and is easily traced to arch-hoodlum Ricky, and Scotland Yard's finest descend on him. 'Were you driving your car last night? they demand to know. 'No', says Ricky, 'I lent it to my friend Vic.' 'Righto,' says plod, 'ask Vic to come and see me, and tell him to bring the car with him.' What a brilliant strategy - just politely ask wanted criminals to pop round to the Yard, and to bring the incriminating evidence with them! Mr Plod could have course have doubted Ricky's word, and questioned him further, but with only an hour's running time to play with, realism doesn't get much of a look-in. Also look out for the scene where Johnny, now on the run from just about the entire cast, is smuggled into a removal van, wherein he hides inside a chest. Once the van is locked, and on the road, does he emerge from the chest? Of course not, he continues to stay inside, now hiding from absolutely no-one, only climbing out once they have reached their destination. Routine show down ensues , in which Ricky shoots Johnny in the stomach and he falls down clutching his leg, girls scream in the car in order that they don't actually do anything that might help, Plod arrives and arrests Ricky, not because he holds a gun while a man lies injured on the floor, but because he is - for no reason - also holding a candlestick in which Johnny has hidden the loot, and that is the clinching evidence that Ricky might be up to no good. The Gentle Trap (irrelevant title by the way) is yet another of those harmless but forgettable quota-quickies where, if you ask no questions, it'll pass quite quickly, and life goes on. I wonder if Vic ever showed up?