fillherupjacko
Night scene: A car is parked outside a shop, possibly a launderette, and two men appear to be stealing it - the car, that is. Hard to tell really. The doors are unlocked and they manage to get the car started in seconds. Maybe the owner had left the keys in the ignition? Anyway, they're off! And so are we - off round 1950s night-London in the company of Butcher's Film Distributors. After the credits, and some cheesy "News Huddlines" type music, our two heroes park up down a derelict backstreet under an ill illuminated street-lamp. Soon Johnny (Spencer Teacle) has his ear pressed rosy against a jeweller's safe. If the car was easy to get into, the shop is even easier – no locks back in dem black and white days, you see. And listening to Johnny's elderly accomplice, Sam, (future TV veteran Arthur Hewlett) you'd think that cracking a safe was a cakewalk too. "Get a move on, Johnny!" he shouts, with no small irritation – as if Johnny was fannying around with a tin opener and a can of Heinz. "Why don't you have a go if it's so simple, granddad", he doesn't reply – although he'd be perfectly entitled too. It's maybe not a good idea to keep a jackpot of diamonds (£60,000 worth) in an old safe. Things go wrong however when Sam is knocked down and killed, while making good his escape, by a rival gang, who work for someone called Ricky Barnes (Martin Benson). Before the cops can nick him (yes, they're there too) Johnny get on his toes with the loot and, despite his accomplice having been killed, appears strangely triumphant when he returns home to the girlfriend. Still, that smirk will soon be wiped off his face (or perhaps not). Sylvia, the girlfriend (Dawn Brooks, in her only screen appearance!) has bolted. Cut to Sylvia as a singing chanteuse in one of those second feature nightspots where cigarette girls wonder between tables populated by Rotary club type couples. The witch! She's only gone and sold out Johnny to sleazy crime boss Ricky Barnes. "It takes a man to handle the big stuff" apparently.Finding himself on the trot from both Ricky's mob and the cops, Johnny winds up at a clip joint called The Night Owl, run by Mary (Dorinda Stevens, who had appeared in the previous year's far more lively "The Shakedown".). She offers Johnny a bed for the night (her own), on which he promptly collapses. An open invitation for Mary to riffle through his pockets no doubt, in which she finds the gems. Naughty Mary!Butchers Film Distributors, who produced their first film way back in 1917, are remembered today, if at all, for precisely this kind of fair - second features from the turn of the 1950s. Back in the good old days of 3 channel Britain, they were regularly broadcast on TV as afternoon matinées. Nowadays, they occasionally pop up to entertain insomniacs in the small hours, presumably when there's nothing else to show. As far as Butchers goes, the classic era of their second features (if that isn't an oxymoron) was probably inaugurated with "Assignment Redhead" in 1956 and concluded, a whopping 17 films later, with "The Sicilians" in 1964. Those familiar with Butchers output will know what to expect here with "The Gentle Trap". It's a thriller, albeit a curiously inert one entirely lacking in thrills, featuring, in no particular order: double-crossing thieves – and dames! – a seedy, possibly foreign, crime boss who runs a nightclub - a wronged man (who isn't particularly wronged, when you think about it) and a bit of equally implausible love interest between wronged man Johnnie and Mary's wet behind the ears sister Jean (Felicity Young.) Starring Spencer Teacle, whose only other lead roll was a year earlier in "Cover Girl Killer", also, strangely enough, or not, alongside Young (who here plays the only decent character in the film, i.e. one who isn't either a crook or a double crosser.) Unfortunately, most of the acting in "The Gentle Trap" is as inert as the action. Spencer Teacle isn't really up to it as tough guy Johnny, and can never quite wipe the smirk off his face. The original scenario for this film was provided by Guido Coen. Eight years later Coen came up with some far more risqué fare in "Baby Love", before undertaking production duties in the inevitable 1970s sex comedy genre, e.g. "Sex Games of the Very Rich". All quite cynical when you consider the abiding theme of the film, that of trying to find a nice girl "who's never missed the last train home."
Chris Gaskin
I taped The Gentle Trap recently when BBC2 screened it during the early hours and despite reading bad reviews, I thought I'd see what it was like.A pair of burglars break into a jewellery shop and pinch some diamonds but as they are making their getaway, some gangsters ambush them. One of the pair goes on the run from the police and gang leader. He stays with two sisters and when one of them reports him, he goes on the run once again with the other sister, with the police on their trail. They catch up with them on a farm and he is caught after a shoot out at the end.The cast is lead by Spencer Teakle and he is joined by Felicity Young and Martin Benson.Though certainly not brilliant, The Gentle Trap is watchable. The UK made quite a few of these low budget crime dramas in the 1950's and 1960's.Rating: 2 stars out of 5.
