Le piège infernal

Diminutive funnyman Freddie Starr will no doubt always be associated with slapstick antics and pratfalls but his career also contains a few unexpected bursts of genius. In the sixties he bothered the beat clubs of Britain as the lead singer of the rockin' combo, and Joe Meek protoges, Freddie Starr & the Midnighters. Then in the seventies, at the peak of his comedy career, he gave a powerful performance in one of British cinema's most cruelly neglected crime flicks.

Any film brave enough to feature Yank actor Stacy Keach as a Londoner with Starr as his sidekick, has got to be worthy of praise. The Squeeze (1977) is a hard-boiled cockney crime caper directed by Michael Apted, reknowned documentary maker and helmer of the latest Bond movie. The film, described by the Daily Mail as 'a package tour of thuggery', stars Keach as Jim Naboth a drunken ex-cop who can not keep his 'private dick' business together and regularly wakes in the gutter after endless binges. Starr is Teddy, Naboth's shoplifting mate who attempts to keep him on the wagon.

Just released from a drying-out clinic, Naboth is no sooner back on the bottle than he discovers his ex-wife Jill (Carol White) and daughter have been kidnapped. The abduction has been master-minded by Irish villain Vic Smith in an attempt to force Jill's new lover (Edward Fox) into revealing route plans for his compny's fleet of security vans. Carrying out the dirty deed is Smith's right-hand man Keith (David Hemmings), a leering thug who enjoys tormenting and humiliating his prisoners.

Naboth stumbles in a drunken haze through the London underworld and endless seedy nightspots, shadowed protectively by Teddy. Despite a succession of beatings and batterings Naboth finally rescues his ex but not before the capital is littered with blood-slattered blaggers, disgarded 'shootahs' and trashed transit vans. All this from the pen of writer Leon Griffiths the creator of knockabout 'mockney' masterpiece Minder, a show which rarely portrayed east-end crims in such a brutal fashion.

Despite matching other UK crime classics, such as Get Carter, Villain and The Long Good Friday, for sheer quality The Squeeze remains (generally) unknown, unavailable on video and destined to lurk between tatty TV movies and cheap titillation on Channel Five's late-night slots.

Keach is fantastic throughout and Starr plays an oddly maternal character, constantly protecting Naboth, feeding him and even cleaning him up when he finds him surrounded by winos and knocked out on cheap booze. Despite this challenging role, Starr never attempts to wring some comedy from the part and it is surprising his later acting career led to no more than a disappointing BBC drama.

Add to these performances an authentic selection of bleak London locations and you have a gritty, urban drama that is rougher than a pair of sandpaper underpants. >

This is a cracker of a movie. There are good performances all round, and some stylish direction from former documentary film-maker Michael Apted. Watch out for some shaky camera work in some scenes. He later on gave us Gorillas in the Mist, among many others. The main surprise in this, is how great Freddie Starr performs in his only film role. And it was certainly an inspired piece of casting-whoever is responsible, I take my hat off to you. Though it looks low budget, there are quite a few top weight actors in it, even by 1970s standards such as Edward Fox, and the late David Hemmings. Sheila White, the poor cow of the '60s does a fine job as the kidnapped wife of Fox's character.

It's not hard to see why Stacy Keach is so good as a man fighting substance abuse. He later on had his own troubles when he was caught entering the UK with drugs in 1984. Some years before, he portrayed a low grade boxer in Fat City with a young Jeff Bridges.

This was made in the '70s, it's quite violent and rough around the edges. You have been warned. Enjoy it anyway.

The British 1976 crime drama, an early work of director Michael Apted ("Gorky Park", "Blink", "The World Is Not Enough") Stacey Keach plays an alcohol-addicted London ex-cop who becomes involved into a kidnapping drama and tries to free the daughter of a friend from a brutal gangster mob.

Stacey Keach's performance is brilliant, and Michael Apted is not only focussing on the thrilling crime plot but also on the portrait of a self-destroying loser nature and alcoholic. The rest of the cast is also outstanding, featuring Edward Fox as despaired father of the kidnapped daughter and David Hemmings as brutal gangster boss. There are some scenes of typical seventies' sex, hard violence and breath-taking action like a money transporter robbery at the end.

David Hentschel's electronic progressive rock score in the style of Goblin, Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons Project supports the dark atmosphere and hard action of this thrilling and sometimes disturbing crime drama. A great, little forgotten movie.

Stacy Keach. David Hemmings. Edward Fox. Stephen Boyd. Carol White. And Freddie Starr. Made in 1977 by Michael Apted, they rarely show films like The Squeeze on telly anymore and at time of writing, it's yet to even receive a DVD release. And this is outrageous really because, grim and seedy as you like, it remains one of the most underrated and authentic Brit-crime thrillers to ever leave its grubby prints on the screen.

A large part of that authenticity lies with its gritty locations: a cigarette smoke-fugged London Underground, dismal pubs and Soho 'massage parlours', and a pre-gentrified Battersea and Clapham, vividly portrayed in birds-eye view. Familiar currency to a certain iconic 1970s British cop show...

Unlikely duo (British comedian and actor) Freddie Starr, and (American Actor) Stacy Keach; team up in this eccentric 1970's Brit Gangster-Kidnap-Heist. In combination with Edward Fox, David Hemmings, and Stephen Boyd; this ensemble deliver a movie that successfully encapsulates both the time and the place (Central London UK). Leon Griffith's intelligent Screenplay, and David Hentschel's driving musical score, create a 'perfect-storm' of a movie-drama that it's mega-budget movie peers, could only dream of. Punching way above it's weight, this overlooked Gem comes with the Highest Recommendation.