Themes: Prison Life, Perfect Crime, Escape From Prison
Main Cast: Peter Sellers, Wilfrid Hyde-White, David Lodge, Bernard Cribbins, Maurice Denham
Release Year: 1960
Country: US/UK
Run Time: 84 minutes
Plot
Peter Sellers stars as an inmate in a "model prison" run by Maurice Denham. Though Sellers is disinclined to escape (he's never been as comfortable in his life), he is convinced to do so by phony vicar Wilfred Hyde-White, who breaks into jail to outline a robbery scheme. Hyde-White's plan is to have Sellers and his cellmates David Lodge and Bernard Cribbins take a brief "vacation" from jail, pull off a big-time robbery, then return undetected to prison, thereby establishing a perfect alibi. Within its 87-minute time span, Two-Way Stretch takes satirical potshots at political bleeding hearts, obese Middle Eastern potentates, and regulation-bound British police officials. One cannot be faulted for wishing that Peter Sellers had stuck to engaging small-scale British farces such as this and had never ventured into such unamusing big-budgeters as The Bobo and There's a Girl in My Soup. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Lionel Jeffries - Chief P.O. Crout; Irene Handl - Mrs. Price; Liz Fraser - Ethel; Cyril Chamberlain - Gate Warder (Day); Edwin Brown - Warder Charlie; John Glyn-Jones - The Lawyer; Beryl Reid - Miss Pringle; Noel Hood - Miss Prescott; Myrette Morven - Miss Meakin; Thorley Walters - Col. Parkright; Walter Hudd - Rev. Patterson; Joe Gibbons - Dustman; John Wood - Captain; Robert James - Police Superintendent; Mario Fabrizi - Jones; William Abney - Visiting Room Warder; Maurice Denham - The Governor; Olga Dickie - Woman in Pub; Wallas Eaton - Night Warder; Eynon Evans - Solicitor; John Harvey - Governor Rockhampton Prison; Warren Mitchell - Tailor; Arthur Mullard - Fred; Larry Taylor - Warder at Rockhampton; John Vivyan - Little Prisoner; George Woodbridge - Chief P.O. Jenkins; Ian Wilson - Milkman; Edward Dentith - Detective; Andrew Downie - Warder in Prison Garden
Credit
Robert Day - Director, Bert Rule - Editor, Kenneth V. Jones - Composer (Music Score), Kenneth V. Jones - Musical Direction/Supervision, Jimmy Evans - Makeup, Geoffrey Faithfull - Cinematographer, E.M. Smedley-Aston - Producer, E.M. Smedley Aston - Producer, Roy Rossotti - Set Designer, John Warren - Screenwriter, Alan Hackney - Screenwriter, Len Heath - Screenwriter
Two-Way Stretch, sometimes titled Nothing Barred, is a 1960Britishcomedy film, about a group of prisoners who plan to break out of jail, commit a robbery, and then break back into jail again, thus giving them the perfect alibi – that they were behind bars when the robbery occurred. However, their plans are disrupted by the arrival of a strict new Chief Prison Officer.
The prison scenes were filmed at the West Cavalry Barracks at Aldershot, and the train robbery at Pirbright Arch in the village of Brookwood in Surrey.
