Touches You

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Three men on the run after a botched robbery that ended with a man being shot take refuge in a farm, being taken in by a kindly farmer who needs help with his smallholding. The men are leader Eddie Steele who is a tough and hardened criminal, Sinclair who is a poetry quoting felon unwillingly going along with Eddie and weedy Bill Grant who inevitably falls in love with the father's daughter. After the gang's guilt is discovered the film climaxes quite violently in a London gangster's house.A low budget film that just about keeps one's attention. The acting is rather bland and so are the settings. For me Jane Arden as Jane the farmer's daughter stood out in the cast. The film had promise but didn't rise above the routine. Also acting in it is Manville Tarrant which I only mention because it is such an actor-ly name.

Unknown cast but very much out of line with the rather limp fare of the era - presumably due to precautionary caution of the director or producer - the violence is graphic even when off-camera. With its BBC radio "police announcement" seeking witnesses to the crime, it conjures up a time when gun crime was comparatively rare and all the more shocking - and the certainty of the rope the grim reward. The track in to the gangster moll's face - watchful with a slight smile - as someone is beaten and probably killed just off camera was a surprising escapee from the censor's scissors. Not remotely in the same class as Brighton Rock but it's equally shocking.Thank you to Talking Pictures for showing it.

A GUNMAN HAS ESCAPED is a low budget British crime thriller released in the postwar years. The darker-than-dark subject matter may have been offputting to the jaded, war weary audiences of the time, although it's held up well for modern viewers. There are no familiar faces in the cast here, making this something of a real obscurity.The storyline is a simple one about a trio of crooks hiding out at a farmhouse. They're already the subject of a manhunt by police thanks to their murdering of a passer-by during the robbery, but the intervention of family members at the farm leads to the group falling out, somewhat inevitably. The storyline is completely predictable, but the script keeps you focused on the action, and I notice that future director John Gilling had a hand in it. The ending is fun.

This film seems to have been made on an ultra low budget. The story concerns a gang of robbers,where the leader shoots and kills a passer who tried to intervene. When they return to their hideout the leader decides that all 3 of them must do a runner.They go out into the countryside and hijack a van.They find a farm where they get work and one of the gang falls for the farmers daughter.However locals become suspicious and they have to flee.However one of the robbers wants to go back to London,and he is shot by the leader.He and the other gang member go back to London.At their hideout a lot of shooting takes place and the police finally arrive when the dust has settled.All rather second rate