The Breaking Point

THE BREAKING POINT is a quota quickie from those cheap guys at Butcher's Film Services. The director is none other than Lance Comfort, who churned out B-movie after B-movie during this era, before dying suddenly at the age of 58 in 1966. It makes one wonder whether he literally worked himself to death by giving his all to this genre of film.

In any case, THE BREAKING POINT is a fairly average movie, let down by the lack of money involved and a slightly plodding pace. The lead is played by Peter Reynolds, a rather foolish executive who finds himself with money problems and visits from a debt collector. In order to compound his problems, he gets involved with some gamblers and soon finds himself being coerced into a criminal plot.

The story behind this one is quite familiar and in fact I saw almost exactly the same thing play out in another film shown on the Talking Pictures TV channel (although I can't remember the title, as indistinguishable as they are). It's not the worst film ever, but there's a definite sense of going through the motions here, particularly on the part of the actors involved. THE BREAKING POINT just about passes muster as a time waster from the era, but there were a lot better B-movies being made too.

"Eric" (Peter Reynolds) has expensive tastes, and an unsavoury gentleman of ill-repute knows it! His gaming tables become a regular haunt for the young man, and the IOUs he has to leave behind each time start to accumulate. Soon, he's in a cul-de-sac that he can only escape by providing sensitive information about a currency job that is being carried out by his family printing business. Once he's in, there's no getting out and soon he is embroiled in a complex heist that will settle his debts but probably ruin his family life in the process. Luckily, he has wife "Cherry" (Joanna Dunham) and her pal "Robert" (Dermot Walsh) who are sensitive to his changing behaviour and soon smell a rat. Lance Comfort keeps it moving along well enough for an hour, but the story is just as flat as the acting and by the end I was willing the criminals to succeed despite it being certain they wouldn't. The denouement itself is simply disappointing and implausible in equal measure and left me wondering if this is all just really a moral message about no easy wins. Afternoon cinema fodder that you'll soon forget.

I've just watched the latest screening of this film on Talking Pictures and, considering the low budget, thought it reasonable enough. Apparently it was also known as "The Great Armoured Car Swindle". "Hi-jacking with a blonde as the bait" is the claim on a poster, exaggerating the influence of the nightclub girl on Eric, and as for the crime "that baffled Scotland Yard" there was no evidence of this in the film.

Apart from the 1960s' scenes of Gatwick Airport, the most noticeable aspects were Peter Reynolds' "elevated" hairstyle and the cumbersome camera with flashbulb he used for clandestine photography! It's been suggested that he was wearing a hairpiece, in which case it was a bad one; and if it was his real hair ...

The plot was very predictable. Reynolds portrayed a weak man well enough, though Dermot Walsh was uninspiring as the "hero"

Considering they came from a country neighbouring the USSR, some of the citizens of Lalvador seemed very English, and the plot was basic - though comparably so to those of many other films.

There are some good now & then photographs of locales on the Reelstreets website, though there are no modern ones of Gatwick - presumably because of security and access considerations.

There were tons of such productions, cheap ones of course, in the early sixties, thanks to Butchers Prod and Danzigers too, among many other lesser companies...Tons, most of them forgettable just after viewing. Montgomery Tully, Lance Comfort, Vernon Sewell were the most notorious directors for such stuff. Never long but sometimes a bit talkative, nothing to do with Warner Bros style of the forties for instance. Rarely fast paced...Mostly crime and not so many horror, leaving this to masters such as Terry Fisher, Freddie Francis.... This one is not that amazing; I expected an armored car attack scheme, rough, brutal.... Nothing of the kind actually, but it remains an acceptable time waster, mostly saved by the exciting last ten minutes and a delightful climax. The problem with this movie is that the lack of budget was terribly missing.