Strongroom – 1962 | 80 mins | Thriller | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Second-feature crime drama directed by Vernon Sewell in a taut no-nonsense style.

Three small-time crooks, Griff (Darren Nesbit) and Warren brothers Len (Keith Faulkner) and Alec (William Morgan Sheppard), plan a bank heist over Easter bank-holiday weekend. What they do not anticipate is the arrival of two cleaning ladies during the robbery, which forces them to lock the bank manager, Spencer (Colin Gordon), and his secretary Miss Taylor (Ann Lynn) in the airtight safe. After making their getaway the thieves are struck with a crisis of conscience and realise that should the two bank employee’s suffocate they’ll face a murder charge. The trio devise a plan that two of them should return home whilst the third anonymously contacts the police from a phone box – and leaves the keys in the box.

When two policemen turn up at the flat, Griff and Len momentarily suspect they’ve been rumbled, but the police have only come to inform Len his brother has died in a car accident. Realising that two people are still trapped in the vault with time running out – the remaining two thieves return to the bank vault to cut an air hole in the safe door. Meanwhile, the police have recovered the missing vault keys and are desperately tracing their identity.