Gaolbreak – 1962 | 60mins | Thriller | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Undistinguished Butchers b-feature that is essentially an hour-long tv crime drama complete with an obligatory happy-ending and moralising finale. A newsagent and family matriarch (Avice Landone), along with her two sons, Eddie (Peter Reynolds) and Ron (David Gregory) plan a jewellery raid on behalf of crooked antique dealer Martinetti. When Ron is arrested by the police and sent to jail, his mother and brother scheme to break him and fellow crook, Len (David Kernan), out of prison so they can take part in the difficult safe-cracking job at Barrington’s auction house.

After finally aiding a trio of inmates to escape over the prison wall, the fugitives hole up at a doctor’s hospital ward under the guise of typhoid patients. Complications arise when Len becomes restless about his pregnant girlfriend Carol, and persuades an orderly to deliver a message to her, subsequently revealing their hideaway to the police. The gang manage to slip away in an ambulance before the police arrive, and proceed to the auction house to commit the robbery. Despite their use of a short-wave radio to monitor the police frequencies the raid is ultimately foiled.