No Road Back ** (1957, Skip Homeier, Paul Carpenter, Patricia Dainton, Norman Wooland, Margaret Rawlings, Eleanor Summerfield, Alfie Bass, Sean Connery, Philip Ray) – Classic Movie Review 8032

Six years after his first London stage appearance in South Pacific, Connery, aged 27, makes his film debut proper as Spike in a small part in director Montgomery Tully’s 1957 British black and white B-movie crime melodrama No Road Back, which otherwise would be condemned to be forgotten.

Margaret Rawlings plays Mrs Railton, a blind, deaf club-owner who tries to save her son John (Skip Homeier) from being framed for robbery by bad guy Clem Hayes (Paul Carpenter)’s gang of gem robbers, with whom she is mixed up with as a fence.

The mawkish, dated story, based on Falkland Cary and Philip Weathers’s stage play called Madame Tictac, is stickily told in a stagy, cheap-looking production, and the modest acting and flat handling do not help to save it.

Also in the cast are Patricia Dainton, Norman Wooland, Eleanor Summerfield, Alfie Bass, Philip Ray, Thomas Gallagher, Carl Conway, Robert Bruce and Ricky Arden.

No Road Back is directed by Montgomery Tully, runs 83 minutes, is made by Gibraltar Films, is released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Charles A Leeds and Montgomery Tully, is shot in black and white by Lionel Banes and Leo Rogers, is produced by Steven Pallos and Charles A Leeds, is scored by Philip Martell and John Veale, and is designed by John Stoll.

It was shot at Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England.

Connery previously has an Undetermined Role (uncredited) in Lilacs in the Spring (1954).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8032

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