Crossroads to Crime ** (1960, Anthony Oliver, George Murcell, David Graham, Miriam Karlin, Ferdy Mayne) – Classic Movie Review 13,348

Gerry Anderson’s 1960 British crime film Crossroads to Crime stars Anthony Oliver as a police constable who works undercover to bring down a gang of lorry hi-jackers.

Producer/ director Gerry Anderson’s 1960 British crime film Crossroads to Crime stars Anthony Oliver as a police constable who works undercover to bring down a gang of lorry hi-jackers. Co-stars George Murcell, David Graham and Ferdy Mayne play the crooks and Miriam Karlin plays the transport café manageress.

Anthony Oliver plays Police Constable Don Ross who is on foot patrol when he chances on a gang of lorry hi-jackers operating from the back of a transport café. After seeing Diamond (George Murcell) and Johnny (David Graham) drive off in a car with the café manageress Connie Williams (Miriam Karlin) apparently being held hostage in the back seat, Ross jumps onto the vehicle and clings to its side.

Thus Crossroads to Crime gets off to quite a spectacular start for this, well let’s say, interesting Brit crime thriller. Okay, then, rough and ready Brit crime thriller.

PC Ross recovers from his injuries after being chucked off the car and sets out to investigate the café and its link to a spate of vehicle thefts along the A1 road. When Ross’s boss Sergeant Pearson refuses to investigate, Ross goes rogue and confronts Diamond, and forces him to offer bribes in exchange for his silence.

Gerry Anderson once described it as ‘possibly the worst film ever made’. He recalled: ‘When the film finished and the lights came up, there was complete silence. Then Nat Cohen [head of distributors Anglo-Amalgamated] turned round slowly and said: “Well, I’ve seen worse.”‘

Crossroads to Crime is a merely mediocre, largely unconvincing British cops and robbers crime thriller but it is not anything like the worst film ever made. I’m agreeing with Nat Cohen. I’ve seen worse. I wouldn’t call it competent exactly, with its messy screenplay by Alun Falconer lumbered with some rotten dialogue (though not all of it), and its clumsy editing job that swaps over from place to place, losing momentum and tension, and finally leaves lots of loose ends. It feels like it was shot as a much longer film and then hacked down ruthlessly to just an unsatisfactory 57 minutes. Yet I wouldn’t call it incompetent either. Professionals are at work, fighting valiantly against the odds.

Anderson cast Anthony Oliver as Ross after being impressed by hm in the West End stage production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, but he makes a fairly dull hero here, though okay. And Patricia Heneghan is strident and unpersuasive as his wife Joan Ross, their boring bickering domestic scenes creating a problem for the film.

But many of the actors come to the rescue. George Murcell makes a good tubby tough-guy villain as Diamond, Miriam Karlin is great value as the mouthy manageress, Arthur Rigby is ideal as dim but kindly Sergeant Pearson, with the impressive Ferdy Mayne a smooth, silky, very unpleasant villain, the hi-jackers’ affluent ringleader Miles, slapping Karlin hard across the face to bring her into line. Tough stuff.

The outside filming a great help too. It was shot in and around Slough and Maidenhead in five weeks in May and June 1960. APF’s own studios and a nearby café, both on the Slough Trading Estate, appear as the gang’s warehouse and the transport café. Given the low budget of £16,250, it doesn’t look too bad at all.

It was made as a B movie by Anderson’s production company AP Films, which made British children’s puppet TV series. It was APF’s first film production as well as its first production with live actors. It was the only film Anderson ever directed.

Anderson sought work from Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy of Anglo-Amalgamated, who commissioned him to make the film while he was struggling to find a distributor for his British children’s sci-fi TV series Supercar (eventually commissioned by Lew Grade of ATV). Made on a low budget of £16,250, the 57-minute film was shot mostly on location in May and June 1960. [Anglo-Amalgamated’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries (1960-1965) had a typical £22,000 budget for an episode, and were mostly shot in their Merton Park studio.]

It was distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated, but the unimpressed Cohen and Levy did not give Anderson any more work. The film was released in October 1960 as the second feature to Joseph Losey’s The Criminal with the tag line: £20,000 the Prize and Death the Price.

The film was later incorporated into the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series (also distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated) and re-edited with new Edgar Wallace opening titles, though it has no connection with Edgar Wallace. A Region 2 DVD was released by Network Distributing in 2013 in a print that uses the Edgar Wallace Mysteries titles.

Surprisingly, given the film’s robust, even violent tone. the British Board of Film Censors certified the film U on 26 July 1960 after expletives were dubbed over during post-production: ‘bloody’ was replaced with ‘ruddy’. Oh, and references to ‘quid’ were changed for American audiences, though Karlin still refers to her ‘plates’ as her feet.

George Murcell (30 October 1925 – 3 December 1998)

George Murcell was married to British actress Elvi Hale from 1961 until his death in 1998.

David Graham (11 July 1925 – 20 September 2024)

David Graham recalled: ‘I went to this cinema in Kilburn and I sat squirming through this film. It was so bad it became a classic, possibly! As I got up to go a voice behind me said “What a fucking awful picture!”‘

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,348

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