Crosstrap

"Crosstrap" was a lost film for years. Quite recently rediscovered, viewing it leads one to conclude it would have been as well if it had stayed lost. One of the many short B feature crime movies being churned out at the time in the UK, this is one of the poorer examples. A cast of mainly seasoned pros can't overcome miscasting, clumsy direction, and a lack of any real tension for most of the running time in a movie which is meant to be a thriller. Plot wise, it's a sort of proto "Straw dogs" with a young couple menaced by criminals in the remote British countryside. Arriving at a cottage he's rented, where he hopes to write his book in some peace, an American novelist and his fairly new bride soon find they have fallen among not one gang of ruthless thieves but two. One gang, who have staged a robbery in which a murder was committed, are using the cottage as a base while they wait for their getaway plane to arrive; the other gang, lurking outside in the dark, are after the loot for themselves. One major casting problems of the film is Laurence Payne as Duke, the womanising leader of the heist gang. Payne, once familiar to my generation as TV's Sexton Blake in the 1960s, just can't convince as a ruthless master criminal. His lecherous pursuit of the writer's rather chubby and frumpy wife, at the expense of his glamor puss moll (portrayed by Zena Walker) also appears rather strange. Bill Nagy, a Hungarian born actor (who often played Americans) made a career in British movies and TV in the 50s and 60s, and was capable of delivering interesting characterizations even with routine scripts, but here he's just wasted in a stock "henchman with a gat" role. The film does pick up a bit near the end with some quite well done action/violence scenes.

Gary Cockrell ("Geoff") and his wife Jill Adams ("Sally") retreat to an isolated rural house so he can concentrate on finishing his magnum opus. Once there, however, peace and quiet is the last thing they get. The discover a corpse in the bathtub and are soon inundated by Laurence Payne ("Duke") and his gang of hoodlums who have been using the remoteness of the house as an ideal base to fence their stolen goods. It's got quite an irritating jazz-style soundtrack, the ambitious attempt to film outdoors makes the lighting dingy and the over-complicated plot is far too clunkily scripted to keep your attention from straying elsewhere. Payne and Adams - alongside Zena Marshall "Rina" try their best, but it's all just too feeble and the ending is daft.

Married couple Gary Cockrell and Jill Adams rent an isolated cottage so that he can finish a book. What they don't know is that a gang of crooks headed by Laurence Payne has been using the place as a hideout and a place to store loot.

Payne's got a lot to contend with, a rival mob outside as he waits for a plane in the morning to get away and a moll played by Zena Marshall who ain't happy with his attentions to Adams.

Marshall steals this film whenever she's on screen a woman you do not scorn. Sadly though this one is one of those quota quickies or at least has the look of one from the old days in the 30s in Great Britain.

A young couple arrive at their dream weekend away house only to find they're in the middle of a case of handbags at ten paces between two rival gangs. As a plot, it could have worked so much better if the script, direction, editing, incidental music etc etc were handled with more care and attention, but after all this is a quickie churned out from Twickenham studios, with the urbane Laurence Payne, who appears to be the B films answer to James Mason, in the lead role.

As mentioned in previous reviews, Payne's character takes a sudden interest in Jill Adams, all sensible shoes and cardie, while Zena Marshall (soon to set the screen on fire with her turn in 'Dr No'), is relegated to the part of scorned lover.

A young couple have a nasty surprize to find the isolated cottage they have rented to be occupied by a murdered man and a violent gang of jewel thieves led by woman chasing psycho Duke, ably played by talented actor and author Laurence Payne. His first critically acclaimed crime novel, The Nose On My Face was published in the same year as this film was made. Jill Adams, brunette rather than her usual blonde, is the hostage he lusts after, despite having a moll in the form of glamorous Zena Marshall. Crude though it is in both characterisation and direction, Crosstrap in some ways prefigures the kind of Brit gangster movie of later decades especially when a rival gang lays siege to the cottage with ensuing mass shootout.

Based on a novel by John Newton Chance a now forgotten author who churned out dozens of crime potboilers over decades, it is at least never dull. Enjoyed most of all the driving jazz score, which couldn't get out of my head, from Steve Race, a once familiar figure on BBC television and radio.