Crosstrap

Trailer—Crosstrap

source: Crosstrap

Gary Cockrell and Jill Adams have rented an isolated house so he can finish his latest book. They find a corpse, and then an entire gang, led by psychopathic Laurence Payne. They're waiting for a plane to take them and the takings from their most recent job out of the country. Payne doesn't want to leave any witnesses, so he plans to kill Cockrell and take Miss Adams with them for fun and games. His current mistress, the sultry Zena Marshall doesn't like this plan at all. They've got other problems: another gang has them trapped in the house, taking pot shots at anyone who sticks a head out. It's a nicely complicated bit of thriller from a story by John Newton Chance, even if the characters are just sketches, and the day-for-night photography of Eric Cross is a bit too obvious for comfort. Miss Marshall was born in Nairobi to French and Anglo-Irish parents. After her father's death, she and her mother moved to Leicestershire. She made her film debut as a handmaid in 1945's CAESA AND CLEOPATRA. Her career languished, but she played a Bond Girl int he first film in the franchise. She died in 2009 at the age of 84.

A young couple have a nasty surprize to find the isolated cottage they have rented to be occupied by a murdered man and a violent gang of jewel thieves led by woman chasing psycho Duke, ably played by talented actor and author Laurence Payne. His first critically acclaimed crime novel, The Nose On My Face was published in the same year as this film was made. Jill Adams, brunette rather than her usual blonde, is the hostage he lusts after, despite having a moll in the form of glamorous Zena Marshall. Crude though it is in both characterisation and direction, Crosstrap in some ways prefigures the kind of Brit gangster movie of later decades especially when a rival gang lays siege to the cottage with ensuing mass shootout. Based on a novel by John Newton Chance a now forgotten author who churned out dozens of crime potboilers over decades, it is at least never dull. Enjoyed most of all the driving jazz score, which couldn't get out of my head, from Steve Race, a once familiar figure on BBC television and radio.

Obviously produced on a no expense budget (roughly £5 I would say) there is little to commend this film for. Everything is simply awful.

A young couple, Geoff and Sally, arrive at a country cottage to get away from it all and find a dead man in the bathroom. Then gangsters who have pulled off a jewel robbery appear and use the cottage as a hideout until their plane arrives. Another group of gangsters are also in the area looking for the diamonds. Mayhem ensues until eventually most of the cast are killed or injured. A lot going on but not much excitement really. Laurence Payne is not really convincing as Duke the head of the jewel gang. Bill Nagy, Robert Cawdron and Zena Marshall solidly play his cronies and as the couple caught up in the criminals' scheme Jill Adams and Gary Cockrell are adequate. The script needed more plausibility and definitely more tension.

Thought to be a lost film for a good few decades, this apparently acquired an underground reputation as a minor gem of 1960s' British cinema, but now it has been re-discovered and made available, it appears as though its 'sight unseen' reputation has evaporated. An ASDA Smart Price reworking of Key Largo, it's the tale of a happily honeymooning couple who run into trouble when they fetch up at the same rural cottage a group of thugs are using for a hideout, and it's pretty bloody awful. Various characters stagger around in the dark being shot at over a stash of cash, the smoking hot Zena 'Dr. No' Marshall's gangster's moll somehow loses the attention of her meal ticket to the chunkier Jill Adams, lots of slaps look like they really hurt, Bill Nagy annoys so much you can't wait for him to die, and finally a plane blows up. Crosstrap was directed by Robert Hartford-Davis, and has a body count comparable to that of the Peter Cushing death-fest Corruption (1968), even though it's nothing like as explicit. And Laurence 'Vampire Circus' Payne is amusingly miscast, as his eyebrow-raising playboy routine transposed onto a crime boss-*-sex pest called Duke ends up feeling like a 'dark side of the moon' version of Roger Moore, which is just as weirdly off-balance as it sounds.

This crime thriller is one of many that the British film industry churned out quickly and cheaply in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some titles managed to overcome their limitations and emerge as taut pieces of superb character drama that remain powerful some fifty years later. Alas, Crosstrap is not one of them. Briefly, it's plot concerns a young married couple celebrating their anniversary with a return to a remote romantic haven only to find that is now being utilised by a gang of jewel thieves who take them prisoner. This gang in turn are soon under siege from a rival gang of crooks, which makes their captors more desperate and limits the chances of the husband and wife escaping with their lives even further. Sadly, the film frequently gives the impression that it has been thrown together with little thought. Many shots just don't match up, with jarring changes between studio work and location filming, and lighting levels are inconsistent, with a character appearing in twilight, then broad daylight, then twilight again in a single sequence. The incidental music seldom reflects the events that are unfolding on screen. The plot seems hopelessly confused at times and largely centers on the lead villain allowing an instant and unlikely infatuation with the young woman to risk the success of the whole operation. The gang are waiting for an aircraft to arrive for them, so naturally they have chosen a densely wooded area to facilitate this move. Hmmm.... The characters themselves range from the bland to the mildly interesting, and that's about as good as this one gets, unfortunately. It might help you pass an hour, but there are much better examples of the genre out there to be found.

There seems to be quite a few of these British potboilers revealed to be lost golden nuggets, unfortunately this one should have remained buried. Laurence Payne so fabulous in "The Tell Tale Heart" excels as the debonair "top man" to a motley group of criminals - he is the reason to watch. When a couple rent an isolated house so the husband can finish his novel they come across carnage as firstly finding a body in the bath, then they are over run by a gang of crooks and with references to "them" and "they" realise there is another gang hiding outside!! Payne finds an immediate attraction in the young married woman which doesn't make any sense considering his "moll" is the very seductive Zena Marshall who is willing to do anything he asks!! The cottage is being used as a hideout and also where money and property can be stashed from the robberies committed - they are all waiting for a plane due to fly them to the Continent.... But get ready for an ending full of fireworks as Payne discovers that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".....

CROSSTRAP is one of those potboiler thrillers that Britain churned out throughout the 1950s and in the early 1960s. It was once a lost film but the good folk at Renown Pictures have once again made it available for public viewing. It has a standard plot in which an innocent pair of newlyweds arrive at a remote farmhouse only to discover a dead body and a gangster plot to boot. This one was directed by Robert Hartford-Davis, a man with an interesting career in the horror genre; highlights include THE BLACK TORMENT, CORRUPTION, and THE FIEND. This is one of his lesser outings. The plot is too familiar and the events depicted not entirely realistic. The cast is okay, but actors like Bill Nagy are wasted and Laurence Payne has little to do as the 'leader of the pack'. In the end it all boils down to a lot of running around and attempted peril, but only mild interest.