Don't listen to the negative reviews

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

This British suspense film is fantastic on every level. Two employees are closing up a bank before a long holiday weekend when in pop three masked robbers. They force the bank employees downstairs and get them to open the "strongroom" where all of the money is. The robbers get their money, bind and gag the two employees, and then something happens they didn't plan on. Two cleaning women appear upstairs. The robbers know they can't get away in the time it will take for the bank employees to escape and alert the cleaning women, so they panic and throw the employees into the airtight strongroom and make their getaway.On the way back to their hideout, the leader, Griff (Darren Nesbitt), comes up with a plan to rescue the bank employees, who will suffocate by midnight if not found. He and one of the robbers will go back to the hideout, while the third drives to the train station, calls the police from there and tells them of the robbery, and then drives back to the hideout. Griff figures the police will get nothing from tracing a call to such a busy public place, they get to keep the money, and the bankers are saved.It is all looking good until the police show up at the hideout - which is actually just an apartment. They are not there to arrest the two robbers. Instead they are there to tell them that their companion died instantaneously in an auto accident while driving towards the station. You see, one of the robbers is the dead robber's brother and next of kin. Thus the now dead robber could never have made the call. And worse the keys to the strongroom are in the morgue with the third robber's body.These two guys don't mind stealing, and they don't mind threatening to get what they want, but they do not want a murder rap. At the same time the two bank employees are trying idea after idea to either break free from the strongroom or at least get an air hole to the place. Plus they both have to deal with the fact that although they are both expected at events later in the day, nobody has noticed their absence enough to inquire as to what happened to either of them, so there are the expected tales of regret that people often tell when they feel they are at the end of life.How will this all work out? Watch and find out. It really is a gripping thriller and extremely well acted.

This crime or film noir from the golden days of British film-making (Yes, the '50's/'60's B-flicks), proves good plot and script, however lesser-known a movie is, is still effective even today.The two crooks, played by Nesbitt and Faulkner and another hold up a bank - they're not vicious in any real way, however wrong they are. The stuffy bank Manager, Colin Gordon and his secretary played by Ann Lynn are locked in the 'Strongroom' or vault if you want to call it that, by the two crooks, with the intent that they will hand the keys in at a police station and let the cops know the two bank workers are in there - all the time running out of air - but that's excused as it's done and dusted, isn't it, that they will soon be released? Wrong! Faulkner's brother, also a member of the gang is tasked with this - he's seen driving off to do just that, but of course - he has an accident and dies! Faulkner and Nesbitt receive a knock on the door from the police - unknowing of what's happened at this stage, panicking slightly. But then the news of Faulkner's brother's death is given. A little panic of both his brother's death and what'll happen to the bank workers by Faulkner surfaces but he knows he has to keep his mouth shut.Faulkner has tried to retrieve his brother's belongings angrily as he's promptly told by the police the dead brother's items can't be returned not for weeks - which of course includes the Strongroom keys! The remaining duo decide to get hold of the usual bank busting equipment, Oxycetelene gear etc., and try their best to break through to the suffocating bank workers. In the meantime, an astute person has noted that part of the dead brother's belongings are a Strongroom key, after Faulkner's rantings lead them to suspect something was wrong.The police then hurry to the bank after contacting an experienced locksmith as to what bank/door it belongs to.They're about to make their pinch, when the boys tell them that they're trying to free the workers. Reluctant at first, they understand and let them continue - they get the door open - a huge look of relief from them is shown at what appears as the very last scene but at this point their relief is shattered as a police officer states :'This one is DEAD sir!' The look from Nesbitt and Faulkner sums up the impending doom for the pair, as hanging is still a capital offence at that time in the UK. However, it beckons from us up to and after the credits still a legal position that they may get a manslaughter charge - but the film doesn't give them the chance they thought they had.Excellent and good performances all round and sadly not shown enough.

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...