Give Us Tomorrow

A grim and gritty home invasion thriller from director Donovan Winters, best known for his exploitation fare. This one lacks a real budget and as is invariably the case with films like this, the script isn't really succinct or involving enough to keep it going from beginning to end. As such, while the opening sequences are suspenseful and the climax packs a certain punch, there are long stretches during the middle part that don't really offer much to the seasoned veteran of this genre. On the plus side, actors like Derren Nesbitt and Sylvia Syms are more than welcome and add a little character to the proceedings, but otherwise this is very much slim pickings.

GUT manages to be one entertaining if shoddy film, where half thanks is half given to Derren Nesbitt as a two bit bankrobber, who along with his teen accomplice take a family hostage. The man of the house, a branch manager who's forced at his end, by an other duo of crims, to open a vault. Only Nesbitt and co are betrayed, where soon a hostage situation develops, where soon cops are soon on the scene, and the film plays off like a shoddy version of Desperate Hours. The acting is appalling, save for Nesbitt, and the well bred and strong willed woman of the house. Check out her first response after her initial reaction, when the crims first bust in. I couldn't believe it, when recounting it. The actress playing the daughter is the worst, unbelievably bad, stoic, only registering a score of limited emotions, in what is a shocking piece of acting, though it's not all a loss, as we get to see some of the innocent virginal daughter's goodies. But the bad acting only adds appeal here, but it's just great watching Nesbitt, as well as watching him and the bank manager's wife, square off many times, where he really lets loose on some profanity and insult, truly giving a performance you wouldn't run any other way. They should of ran an acting classes for the others. The opening music score is really good too, played against the driving POV of our baddies, circling the intended house. Oh, have I also mentioned it's unintentionally funny in a lot of parts (eating bacon and eggs in a ski mask for one) where again you have Mr Nesbitt to thank for that one. Another plus, that makes this one a nice sit in, especially fans of Desperate Hours, or other hostage, negotiator films. Actually Nesbitt's dying scene was horribly familiar, to Rourke's in DH.

The final film to date by actor/writer/director/disgruntled British airways customer Donovan Winter, Give Us Tomorrow was a film not well liked by its distributor, the mighty EMI, who eventually dumped it on the lower half of a Brit exploitation double-bill with Pete Walker's Home Before Midnight. At a stretch you could describe Give Us Tomorrow as a variation on grindhouse fave Fight For Your Life, but with the British class system standing in for racism. A long driver's POV shot of a affluent yet lifeless suburb, the kind that inoffensive 70's sitcoms are usually set in , opens the film. The quiet is soon shattered by the vehicles occupants, two balaclava wearing criminals old lag Ron and a bored, dole queue escapee teenager.

Part of a bank robbery gang Ron and the unnamed kid proceed to hold the family of a bank manager at gunpoint, a blackmailing move to ensure the rest of the gang's raid on his bank goes smoothly. Naturally it doesn't and although the gang get away with the cash a foolish have a go hero employee lays dead in their wake. By the time Ron and the kid have put 2 and 2 together and realized the gang have made off with the loot the police have surrounded the house and a full on hostage situation is on the cards.

Ron passes the time by swearing and getting drunk, the bitter working class crim it transpires has a huge chip on his shoulder about the class system and wastes no time giving his middle class captives a piece of his mind. The other side of the coin is the bank manager's wife, snooty suburban housewife Wendy the sort who'd cross the street to avoid people like Ron, or would just be alarmed if she saw someone like Ron walking down her street at all. You know there's going to be trouble when she tut tuts him for putting a dirty bag on her table and flinches when he calls her 'luv'. Common sense dictates that Wendy should just keep her head down, but if anything the deep class prejudices these two have for each other only causes them up the ante in their snob/slob attitudes. As hard as Winter tries to inject social comment into all this much of Give Us Tomorrow is pretty funny, thanks mainly to the inspired ravings of vulgarian par excellence Ron. Whether its his obscene revision of the saying 'an apple a day keeps old age at bay', or asking Wendy if she wants to "knock off a quick one", one man Derek and Clive record Ron leaves no stone unturned.

Though Give Us Tomorrow goes for a straightforward thriller atmosphere, Winter still finds time to shoehorn some sexploitation elements into the mix. The film exhibits a particularly John Lindsay eye for Wendy's daughter Nicola whose introduced dressed as a schoolgirl and in one of the films many shameless moments caresses her breasts in front of the dole queue kid kidnapper "don't you think I have nice breasts". Another morally dubious touch is the rough ride offered to the child actor playing the family's pre-teen son who throughout the film is treated in a manner of a rag-doll, enduring being locked in a closet, being shouted by actors in balaclavas and having shotguns pointed in his direction. The poor kid must have had nightmares for weeks after, but the film probably learnt him a few new words for his vocabulary, albeit ones beginning with the letters 's' and 'f'.

The dole queue kid and Nicola serve as the film's 'middle ground' characters. She isn't quite ready to become the suburban automaton her parents are and has a rebellious streak (e.g. flashing her breasts at working class criminals) while he's not the beyond redemption SOB his quasi-father figure Ron is. Funnily enough take away the balaclavas and police outside and what you could have here is a tragic-comedy about a boy and girl from different sides of the tracks trying to introduce their polar apposite parents. At his most depraved Ron exploits the noticeable chemistry between his 'boy' and Nicola by offering them the chance to pop off upstairs, knowing the two of them ending up in bed together will be his ultimate class revenge on her parents. As Ron gloats at their horrified reactions, upstairs the posh girl cum budding nympho moans out laughable nonsense like "don't hurt me, oh, oh, I love you", within knowing earshot of mum and dad, which is very naughty young miss.

Amidst this backdrop of class-warfare and sleaze Derren Nesbitt and Sylvia Syms give star turns as class nemesis' Ron and Wendy, two characters whose attitudes will probably be as familiar to the films homegrown audience as the people playing them. An experienced practitioner of heavy roles since the 1950s, Nesbitt is at his height of nastiness in Give Us Tomorrow breathing life and soul into the film with his fully realized role as a psycho-yob futilely spilling out all his rage and frustrations on a family who are either indifferent or just plain terrified. You can almost forgive Nesbitt for making that film about the milkman, well almost.

Despite its enclosed setting and lengthy running time Give Us Tomorrow does, unlike Winter's Deadly Females and Escort Girls, actually move at a relatively fast pace. Kept on track by a bad taste combination of unintentional humour, a constant stream of crudities, a requisite amount of sex and violence and in fairness generating a fair deal of tension from the tried and tested kidnap drama/B movie clichés Give Us Tomorrow may well be Winter's most consistently entertaining film. As unsubtle as a film whose opening scene has a masked man bursting into a schoolgirl's bedroom and pointing a magnum at her head can be, its certainly an apt parting shot from one of Wardour Street's most infamous, vocal and toughest characters.