Piccadilly Third Stop

Wolf Villa has done quite a reasonable job with this story of a disparate gang of miscreants who all decide to relieve an embassy safe of £100,000. "Dominic" (Terence Morgan) is the brains behind the motley alliance who are there because they need to raise cash, fund an expensive wife or just because they like the thrill. It takes far too long to get going. Too much time is sent on the meandering love lives with the gullible "Fina" (Yôko Tani) and Mai Zetterling ("Christine") fanning the flames. Dennis Price features sparingly as the gambling kingpin "Edward" and William Hartnell really does demonstrate well how wooden an actor he is as the safecracking "Colonel". Once we get over the hurdles of the first half hour, though, the pace picks up and the last twenty minutes or so make for quite a decently tense crime story with an ending that I actually quite liked. Not a great film, but a perfectly watchable feature for Saturday afternoon cinema.