Strongroom (1962) – Film Review

Director: Vernon Sewell
Cast: Derren Nesbitt, Colin Gordon, Ann Lynn
Certificate: PG

By Sarah Morgan

A few years ago, I was asked to contribute to Offbeat, a book containing essays about long-forgotten or ignored British movies from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s.

Among those I submitted was my thoughts on Strongroom, a B-movie crime thriller I discovered on a classic film channel. Its taut plot and brilliant performances blew me away. I subsequently discovered that such luminaries Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Edgar Wright are also fans, so I find myself in good company. What’s more, it’s been deemed worthy of a HD restoration and Blu-ray release by the BFI – and quite rightly too.

The story follows three young men who run a scrapyard, but decide to boost their coffers by staging a bank robbery on Easter Saturday, believing that their crime won’t be discovered until after the bank holiday, giving them ample time to cover their tracks.

They need the manager’s keys to pull it off, so enter the building before he can lock up. Only he and his secretary remain and it looks as if the heist will be a success – until the cleaners arrive unexpectedly. In a panic, the trio shove the manager and his assistant into the vault and lock the door before making their escape. Eventually they realise the duo will suffocate if they’re not freed soon, so come up with a plan to leave the keys in a phone box after informing the police of their whereabouts.

“A canny police detective”

However, when the man entrusted with the job is killed and the keys are confiscated at the mortuary, it’s up to the two remaining villains to figure a way of freeing the captives, while a canny police detective begins his own investigation…

Derren Nesbitt, so often a sinister presence on screens small and large during the 1960s, heads the cast as one of the robbers, alongside Keith Faulkner. In a surprise move, it’s Nesbitt who’s the more sympathetic of the pair. While Faulkner is all for leaving the manager and his secretary to die, it’s Nesbitt who persuades him to mount a rescue, albeit because he knows that if they don’t and they’re later caught, they will face the death penalty.

Colin Gordon and Ann Lynn are equally impressive as the captive duo who, although they’ve worked alongside each other for years, clearly have never had a proper conversation until their situation forces them into it; both are surprised to find common ground.

Strongroom director Vernon Sewell wrings every last drop of tension out of Richard Harris (no, not that one) and Max Marquis’s clever screenplay, and no matter how many times I see it, the ending still leaves me feeling as if I’ve been punched in the stomach – I don’t want to say more for fear of spoiling it.

The release is packed with special features, not least another Sewell film made a year earlier. The Man in the Back Seat runs just shy of an hour, and appears to have been a kind of trial run for Strongroom.

“A robbery that goes wrong”

Once again Nesbitt and Faulkner star as robbers – this time their target is a racetrack bookie – but Nesbitt plays the crueller one of the pair, with Faulkner as his friend who is tormented by what they’ve done.

Carol White, before finding fame in Cathy Come Home and Poor Cow, plays Faulkner’s wife, while the screenplay is co-written by Eric Paice and Malcolm Hulke, adapted from an Edgar Wallace tale. The pair wrote as a team before Hulke found cult popularity via his scripts for The Avengers and Doctor Who. The Man in the Back Seat is worth a look in its own right, so is a welcome addition to the disc.

Other special features on the Strongroom DVD include a variety of short films, such as the excellent The Awakening Hour, which depicts a robbery that goes wrong against the backdrop of early morning London.

Sarah Morgan( Writer )

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

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