Peter Sellers in a new and exciting role!
1960-06-02
N/A
90 min
John Cummings, an unsuccessful cosmetics salesman, has his unpaid-for car stolen by one of the hoods in the employ of Lionel Meadows, the sadistic organizer of a London car conversion racket. The car was not insured, and since the police appear indifferent to his plight, Cummings decides to find it himself -- and gets himself involved in an underworld battle.
I'm afraid that I struggled with this... Richard Todd is "Cummings", a cosmetic salesman under pressure at work and at home, who finds his woes compounded when his new car is stolen. Determined to keep his job, and to find his car, he soon finds himself embroiled in the petty criminal world of a really poorly cast Peter Sellars ("Meadows") - who really hams the part up and looks like he ought to be selling Tiramisu somewhere. What ensues is a really rather lacklustre, soap-opera style, effort from all concerned including the charming, but under-used Elizabeth Sellars as wife "Anne", Adam Faith as the pretty but useless bovver-boy "Tommy" and David Lodge as the crook's right hand man who doesn't look like he could pull the skin off a custard. The drama and the pace are all too forced, we don't really understand what is driving Todd's character (well, I didn't anyway) - his amiable, gentle persona becomes someone implausibly readily all-too-handy with a monkey wrench before an ending that was pretty scratchy. It's got a decent look to it, to be fair, but it did nothing for me, sorry.
