Strongroom

During a bank robbery the manager and a cashier are locked in the strongroom while the robbers get away with the money. The plan was for the two of them to be released shortly afterwards; when that fails and it becomes clear the air inside is running out, the gang go back to the bank to get them out before the police arrive. Vernon Sewell’s eighty minute British film builds its tension inside a closed room and on the running of the clock, with the robbers seeing the size of their own crime as they stand on the edge of an outcome they never wanted. What ruins the plan is a simple accident: the man whose job was to alert the police is killed in a car crash, and with the air in the strongroom running down, finding the keys falls to the robbers themselves. Derren Nesbitt, Colin Gordon and Ann Lynn star; Theatrecraft produced the film, Bryanston distributed it and it was released in May 1962.