Customer Reviews
Great Fun ! - By: P. Gibson, 01 Jun 2008 
This is one of my favourite old black & white movies. Peter Sellers is simply magic, with Lionel Jeffries, Bernard Cribbins & John Le Mesurier adding to the talent on offer in this superbly directed film written by those alll-time great writers Galton & Simpson. Even the characters' names are classic 60's - 'Pearly Gates, Nervous O'Toole, Misery Martin & Brassknuckles' They don't name them like that any more.
I have fond memories from 1963 when, as a little boy, I would sit & watch this film being made around the streets of Uxbridge where I lived, so it's very nostalgic for me to see my old 'manor' on film.
Apart from the nostalgia, I still rate this movie as one of the better films in my DVD library. A must for fans of this genre of film. I cannot think of a single criticism. If you're still in doubt, buy it. You won't be disappointed.
Great Fun - By: J. J. Bowen, 15 Apr 2005 
A great example of this type of film, with a lineage through (the original) Italian Job. Good, genuine, entertainment which shows up a lot of the dross we're inlicted with at the cinema these days.
Quintessential British comedy - By: R. A. Caton, 03 Jul 2003 This is an example of a style of comedy that was very very British & also very much of its period. We see villains presented as comic rogues & policemen as bumbling duffers led by the public school class that got their promotions on the basis of the old school tie. And this at a time which saw the rise of the Krays & their contemporaries in the real London gangland!
But we don't watch these movies for social commentary; we watch them for the superb comedic talents of the cast; the cast list reads like a who's who of British comedy, Sellers, Cribbins, Stark, Jefferies, Le Mesurier....plus the unusual sight of Bill Kerr as an Aussie crook with a brilliant plan to hoodwink both the Plod & the Underworld at the same time. This movie isn't the only slapstick villain piece from that period (mid 50's to mid 60's, from "The Naked Truth" to "Go to Blazes") but it is an extremely good one.
Buy this movie. It is a passport back to a comforting world very different from our own, when Police cars still had bells & dark blue paintwork, coppers could be spotted a mile off by the Big Boots & "'Ello 'Ello" demeanour, & villains were lovable types who wouldn't harm a fly when stealing a payroll or bullion or jewels or whatever; no-one gets hurt but there's a wonderfully comic punch up at the end.
And it's one of the last chances to see Sellers before he lost his East End accent & became lost as Clouseau.
superb film - By: mikeastons@hotmail.com, 23 Aug 2000 Peter Sellers is at his best in this film which has loads of sixties style & innocent comedy. Lionel Jeffries is fantastic as the bumbling policeman desperately trying to impress his superiors whilst failing totallly,or did he.....
