Strongroom (Sewell) BFI Blu Ray
One of the great pleasures of British and American B pictures of the fifties and early sixties is their economy. Because they were often film noirs or crime thrillers a physical drive had to be sharply emphasised. They’d an exciting story to tell as quickly as possible with no messing around with lengthy expositions of character and atmosphere. With micro-budgets and a micro-running time, often under 60 or 90 mins, they said a lot, very expressively: avoiding any A picture information overload but also providing enough detailed information, as if a fully loaded gun, for the job in hand.
With the BFI’s Strongroom and its extra film The Man in the Back Seat we have two powerful examples of terrifically tight story telling.
Three crooks rob the strongroom of an airtight vault and lock the manager and his secretary inside. But it’s a bank holiday weekend and being there for three days means they will suffocate. The crooks plan to leave the keys to the vault in a telephone box and anonymously ring the police. However the crook given the task is killed in a road accident. Desperate to avoid a murder charge the boss of the gang insists they go back to the bank, cut through the door and supply the captives with oxygen.
On this simple plot premise of survival and rescue Strongroom elicits a great deal of suspense. Audience sympathy is balanced on saving the lives of both parties. And the gang leader Griff (Derren Nesbitt) is the stressed ‘saviour’ of the film. Nesbitt (an actor with haunting eyes and calm intelligence) gives a compelling performance.
Assisted by Vernon Sewell’s direction and John Trumper’s editing this well scripted story grips like a vice as detail piles upon detail in Griff’s and his accomplice’s attempt to rescue the victims in the vault. Not forgetting the intense scenes with the bank manager (played by Colin Gordon) and his secretary (Ann Lynn, whose looks reminded me of Monica Vitti) trying to devise a survival strategy and economise on their supply of air.
A striking undercurrent in Strongroom is how repressed feelings of class anger and formally rigid work behaviour are ripped open. Griff mockingly talks of the establishment as “People like that. They will be talking about this for years.” Whilst being trapped in a vault not only creates a claustrophobic anxiety but reveals how constricting the rules between employer and employee have been
(A quasi sexual tension occurs as they tentatively explore their emotions whilst also trying to figure out how they can survive).
The dénouement of Strongroom is shocking and its final shot is unforgettable. Taking a mere 80 mins to get there and leave you stunned. Not a masterpiece. But a masterly crafted film.
Clocking in at only 57 minutes is Sewell’s The Man in the Back Seat made in 1961 a year earlier than Strongroom. It again stars Dereen Nesbit on chilling form as Tony and an effective Keith Faulkner playing Frank, Nesbit’s criminal side kick from Strongroom, who rob a bookmaker of his takings as he leaves a local dog racing track. He’s savagely attacked. The case containing the money is chained to his wrist. The crooks drive home to find tools to break the chain. This is done. They then continue driving through the night and decide to dump the bookmaker near a hospital, but subsequently many other things go unexpectedly and horribly wrong.
Rather than refer to The Man in the Back Seat as an extra on this blu ray disc I think the BFI should have designed a sleeve illustration that equally billed it with Strongroom. For The Man in the Back Seat is as taut as Strongroom and in some respects has more of a raw edge. Its feverish intensity, highlighted by night shooting, pushes the drama into a dreamlike territory. Sewell effectively blends a road movie noir fatalism with a hint of the emerging kitchen sink realism of 60’s British cinema – most notably in the interior flat scenes that introduce us to Jean (a young Carol White) the innocent wife of the sidekick.
Again we have cynicism and class anger from Tony (“He’s only a bookie, most of them are crooked”); frustration from Jean about Tony’s influence on her husband and finally a suggested reversal of power when Frank drives manically on after being disturbed by seeing, through his rear view window, what may be the ghost of the man who was in the back seat of his stolen car.
This ‘ghost sighting’ resulted in the film being included in the Aurum Film Encyclopaedia of Horror (1993 edition). Yet for me it’s not a supernatural moment but a fleeting hallucination resulting from a very stressed and botched assault and robbery: another turn in the noirish screw that determines the robbers’ fate, as powerful as the fateful endgame of Strongroom but more tragic and more cruelly absurd if finally as equally sad as the outcome for those you lock inside a vault.
Alan Price©2026
Strongroom (Sewell) BFI Blu Ray
One of the great pleasures of British and American B pictures of the fifties and early sixties is their economy. Because they were often film noirs or crime thrillers a physical drive had to be sharply emphasised. They’d an exciting story to tell as quickly as possible with no messing around with lengthy expositions of character and atmosphere. With micro-budgets and a micro-running time, often under 60 or 90 mins, they said a lot, very expressively: avoiding any A picture information overload but also providing enough detailed information, as if a fully loaded gun, for the job in hand.
With the BFI’s Strongroom and its extra film The Man in the Back Seat we have two powerful examples of terrifically tight story telling.
Three crooks rob the strongroom of an airtight vault and lock the manager and his secretary inside. But it’s a bank holiday weekend and being there for three days means they will suffocate. The crooks plan to leave the keys to the vault in a telephone box and anonymously ring the police. However the crook given the task is killed in a road accident. Desperate to avoid a murder charge the boss of the gang insists they go back to the bank, cut through the door and supply the captives with oxygen.
On this simple plot premise of survival and rescue Strongroom elicits a great deal of suspense. Audience sympathy is balanced on saving the lives of both parties. And the gang leader Griff (Derren Nesbitt) is the stressed ‘saviour’ of the film. Nesbitt (an actor with haunting eyes and calm intelligence) gives a compelling performance.
Assisted by Vernon Sewell’s direction and John Trumper’s editing this well scripted story grips like a vice as detail piles upon detail in Griff’s and his accomplice’s attempt to rescue the victims in the vault. Not forgetting the intense scenes with the bank manager (played by Colin Gordon) and his secretary (Ann Lynn, whose looks reminded me of Monica Vitti) trying to devise a survival strategy and economise on their supply of air.
A striking undercurrent in Strongroom is how repressed feelings of class anger and formally rigid work behaviour are ripped open. Griff mockingly talks of the establishment as “People like that. They will be talking about this for years.” Whilst being trapped in a vault not only creates a claustrophobic anxiety but reveals how constricting the rules between employer and employee have been
(A quasi sexual tension occurs as they tentatively explore their emotions whilst also trying to figure out how they can survive).
The dénouement of Strongroom is shocking and its final shot is unforgettable. Taking a mere 80 mins to get there and leave you stunned. Not a masterpiece. But a masterly crafted film.
Clocking in at only 57 minutes is Sewell’s The Man in the Back Seat made in 1961 a year earlier than Strongroom. It again stars Dereen Nesbit on chilling form as Tony and an effective Keith Faulkner playing Frank, Nesbit’s criminal side kick from Strongroom, who rob a bookmaker of his takings as he leaves a local dog racing track. He’s savagely attacked. The case containing the money is chained to his wrist. The crooks drive home to find tools to break the chain. This is done. They then continue driving through the night and decide to dump the bookmaker near a hospital, but subsequently many other things go unexpectedly and horribly wrong.
Rather than refer to The Man in the Back Seat as an extra on this blu ray disc I think the BFI should have designed a sleeve illustration that equally billed it with Strongroom. For The Man in the Back Seat is as taut as Strongroom and in some respects has more of a raw edge. Its feverish intensity, highlighted by night shooting, pushes the drama into a dreamlike territory. Sewell effectively blends a road movie noir fatalism with a hint of the emerging kitchen sink realism of 60’s British cinema – most notably in the interior flat scenes that introduce us to Jean (a young Carol White) the innocent wife of the sidekick.
Again we have cynicism and class anger from Tony (“He’s only a bookie, most of them are crooked”); frustration from Jean about Tony’s influence on her husband and finally a suggested reversal of power when Frank drives manically on after being disturbed by seeing, through his rear view window, what may be the ghost of the man who was in the back seat of his stolen car.
This ‘ghost sighting’ resulted in the film being included in the Aurum Film Encyclopaedia of Horror (1993 edition). Yet for me it’s not a supernatural moment but a fleeting hallucination resulting from a very stressed and botched assault and robbery: another turn in the noirish screw that determines the robbers’ fate, as powerful as the fateful endgame of Strongroom but more tragic and more cruelly absurd if finally as equally sad as the outcome for those you lock inside a vault.
Alan Price©2026
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film