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.

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.

Anyone familiar with the later work of director Robert Hartford-Davis will not be unduly surprised at the nihilism and sleaziness of his debut feature, with a noisy jazz score by Steve Race.

An early home invasion film following in the footsteps of 'The Petrified Forest', 'The Desperate Hours' and 'Private Property; complete with the creepy sexual element the latter had recently introduced to the genre. Despite the heroine remarking upon the prettiness of the countryside surrounding the holiday home upon which two rival criminal gangs converge, the bleakness of the surrounding landscape actually heightens the general grimness of the piece.

The creaky production values (not helped by the fuzziness of what may be the only surviving print) at first makes it resemble a old TV play, but it's air of ill-contained violence (and lust) - not to mention the abandon with which guns get waved about - would at the time have emphatically have made it drive-in fodder had they then had drive-ins in Britain...

This crime thriller is one of many that the British film industry churned out quickly and cheaply in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some titles managed to overcome their limitations and emerge as taut pieces of superb character drama that remain powerful some fifty years later. Alas, Crosstrap is not one of them.

Briefly, it's plot concerns a young married couple celebrating their anniversary with a return to a remote romantic haven only to find that is now being utilised by a gang of jewel thieves who take them prisoner. This gang in turn are soon under siege from a rival gang of crooks, which makes their captors more desperate and limits the chances of the husband and wife escaping with their lives even further.

Sadly, the film frequently gives the impression that it has been thrown together with little thought. Many shots just don't match up, with jarring changes between studio work and location filming, and lighting levels are inconsistent, with a character appearing in twilight, then broad daylight, then twilight again in a single sequence.

The incidental music seldom reflects the events that are unfolding on screen.

The plot seems hopelessly confused at times and largely centers on the lead villain allowing an instant and unlikely infatuation with the young woman to risk the success of the whole operation. The gang are waiting for an aircraft to arrive for them, so naturally they have chosen a densely wooded area to facilitate this move. Hmmm....

The characters themselves range from the bland to the mildly interesting, and that's about as good as this one gets, unfortunately. It might help you pass an hour, but there are much better examples of the genre out there to be found.

Gary Cockrell and Jill Adams have rented an isolated house so he can finish his latest book. They find a corpse, and then an entire gang, led by psychopathic Laurence Payne. They're waiting for a plane to take them and the takings from their most recent job out of the country. Payne doesn't want to leave any witnesses, so he plans to kill Cockrell and take Miss Adams with them for fun and games. His current mistress, the sultry Zena Marshall doesn't like this plan at all. They've got other problems: another gang has them trapped in the house, taking pot shots at anyone who sticks a head out.

It's a nicely complicated bit of thriller from a story by John Newton Chance, even if the characters are just sketches, and the day-for-night photography of Eric Cross is a bit too obvious for comfort.

Miss Marshall was born in Nairobi to French and Anglo-Irish parents. After her father's death, she and her mother moved to Leicestershire. She made her film debut as a handmaid in 1945's CAESA AND CLEOPATRA. Her career languished, but she played a Bond Girl int he first film in the franchise. She died in 2009 at the age of 84.