Michael Brennan who normally plays minor crooks or military characters here actually stars in a film.He plays the leader of a band of robbers who are planning to hold up a van carrying half a million pounds worth of jewels.To do this his brother has to romance an employee of the jewelers.Bruce Seton plays a rather down and out character who is casing the joint.All of a sudden he is beaten up by another gang who then try to take over the robbery.As you would expect everything goes wrong and the brothers end up in the arms of the law.This film starts rather slowly and the robbery doesn't take place till 47 minutes have elapsed.The run time is listed as 72 minutes but the DVD release is only 57 minutes.Maybe that explains the holes in the plot.Generally lacks pace.
7 Reviews
Fast-Moving, Anyway
boblipton1 October 2020
It's a well-planned job to steal half a million quid in diamonds -- mastermind Bruce Seton has arranged to sell it for a hundred grand -- and it looks like it should go very well. Part of the plan calls for James Kenney to romance the jeweler's secretary, Jean Harvey. He's a good-looking youngster, no record, a retiring manner, and brother-in-law of Michael Brennan, part of the small gang. However, another, larger, more dangerous mob have gotten wind of it.
It has an obnoxious score, but everyone looks right, and they're good enough actors to keep this cheap second feature moving right along. I looked at a 55-minute version. This means that 17 minutes were cut from the original, probably to fit it into a TV one-hour slot; this probably erased some needed explanations, and probably character development, but the story moves like lightning.
It has an obnoxious score, but everyone looks right, and they're good enough actors to keep this cheap second feature moving right along. I looked at a 55-minute version. This means that 17 minutes were cut from the original, probably to fit it into a TV one-hour slot; this probably erased some needed explanations, and probably character development, but the story moves like lightning.
"George is the name. Big George."
richardchatten25 January 2020
Only one of the previous reviewers picks up on the fact that this film was made at Ardmore Studios in Ireland, and even he doesn't mention that most of the cast are Irish too (including Marie Conmee, who stood in for Burt Lancaster as the hunt saboteur a couple of years later in 'The List of Adrian Messenger'), along with the locations, which don't look like London.
Despite the tinny sound and frequently mismatched shots, quite a few of the cast (along with cameraman Stephen Dade, not that you'd know it from his work on this) are familiar from more prestigious films, notably Norman Rodway, who a few years later was playing Hotspur for Orson Welles in 'Chimes at Midnight'.
James Kenney in the lead was a regular in British films of the fifties, and is here required to pretend he likes classical music in order to lure lonely spinster Jean Harvey into the gang's orbit, in one of several melancholy subplots that the film throws in the viewers' path.
Despite the tinny sound and frequently mismatched shots, quite a few of the cast (along with cameraman Stephen Dade, not that you'd know it from his work on this) are familiar from more prestigious films, notably Norman Rodway, who a few years later was playing Hotspur for Orson Welles in 'Chimes at Midnight'.
James Kenney in the lead was a regular in British films of the fifties, and is here required to pretend he likes classical music in order to lure lonely spinster Jean Harvey into the gang's orbit, in one of several melancholy subplots that the film throws in the viewers' path.
Efficient heist thriller which generates some dramatic tension and benefits from authentic settings and characters.
jamesraeburn20039 January 2017
Warning: Spoilers
A small time thief called Harry (Michael Brennan) plans his one last job and the biggest he has ever attempted; a £500,000 diamond heist from Beaumont's jewelers. He has recruited Nimmo (Bruce Seton) to do the planning and his young brother-in-law Johnny (James Kenney) to cultivate the friendship of Beaumont's secretary Jean Roberts (Jean Harvey), a shy, single, middle-aged woman in order to learn when the diamonds are being dispatched. However, Harry's wife Cathy (Pauline Delaney) is deeply unhappy about him involving her kid brother in the raid and makes her feelings clear about it but to no avail. Unknown to Harry, the leader of a rival gang known as Big George (Charles Mitchell) has found out about the job he's pulling and, angry at the thought of others muscling in on his territory, he abducts and roughs up Nimmo and allows Harry and his accomplices; Johnny, Kegs (Norman Rodway) and Danny (Lawrence Crain), to go ahead and ambush the jewelers' van while he abducts Harry's young daughter Ann. He then ambushes Harry and his men with the view of stealing the loot from them. But, a police siren distracts them and Harry escapes with his daughter in George's car - running him down in the process - to his hideout. Meanwhile, Johnny who replaced Nimmo as the driver of the getaway car has also escaped and runs back to Cathy who tells him where Harry is likely to be hiding out so he can rescue the child and leave Harry to take his chances and make a run for it alone with the diamonds...
Efficient b-pic heist thriller from producer Bill Luckwell, a quota quickie specialist who produced seventeen of them in ten years! - that succeeds in creating some dramatic tension in the scenes involving Kenney and Harvey; in which Johnny succeeds in convincing Jean that he as a younger man would actually fall in love with her and wins her affections as part of Harry's plot to rob the diamonds from her employer. It is implied that Johnny really is falling in love with her as he tells his brother-in-law that he wants out since she, Jean, is "really nice." Yet, he goes ahead with the plan as Harry threatens him telling him that the boys could get really nasty. His scenes with Harvey do stir the emotions and it is something a little different for a British b-pic to have a plot involving a younger man romantically involved with an older woman - even if, ultimately, he was only using her. Reviews for this film seem hard to come by and it is only very briefly mentioned in Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane's marvelous book, The British 'B' Film, who call it an "impoverished crook drama." Admittedly, one can see it was made on what must have been a shoestring, but it has an air of authenticity about it thanks to good performances from Kenney, Brennan and Seton who convince as working class villains from humble backgrounds and its settings in terraced houses neighbouring bombsites conjure up a feel for post-WW2 austerity Britain and it suggests that the film's characters probably turned to crime due to a lack of opportunities or, quite simply, would not accept a life doing dead end jobs for a pittance.
This film is available on DVD as a double feature with Henry Cass's 1960 b-pic thriller The Hand on the Renown Pictures Ltd brand.
Efficient b-pic heist thriller from producer Bill Luckwell, a quota quickie specialist who produced seventeen of them in ten years! - that succeeds in creating some dramatic tension in the scenes involving Kenney and Harvey; in which Johnny succeeds in convincing Jean that he as a younger man would actually fall in love with her and wins her affections as part of Harry's plot to rob the diamonds from her employer. It is implied that Johnny really is falling in love with her as he tells his brother-in-law that he wants out since she, Jean, is "really nice." Yet, he goes ahead with the plan as Harry threatens him telling him that the boys could get really nasty. His scenes with Harvey do stir the emotions and it is something a little different for a British b-pic to have a plot involving a younger man romantically involved with an older woman - even if, ultimately, he was only using her. Reviews for this film seem hard to come by and it is only very briefly mentioned in Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane's marvelous book, The British 'B' Film, who call it an "impoverished crook drama." Admittedly, one can see it was made on what must have been a shoestring, but it has an air of authenticity about it thanks to good performances from Kenney, Brennan and Seton who convince as working class villains from humble backgrounds and its settings in terraced houses neighbouring bombsites conjure up a feel for post-WW2 austerity Britain and it suggests that the film's characters probably turned to crime due to a lack of opportunities or, quite simply, would not accept a life doing dead end jobs for a pittance.
This film is available on DVD as a double feature with Henry Cass's 1960 b-pic thriller The Hand on the Renown Pictures Ltd brand.
Lowest budget thriller ever?
Leofwine_draca3 April 2015
AMBUSH IN LEOPARD STREET is an ultra-low budget British crime thriller in which a gang of crooks gather together to plan the perfect robbery. This must be one of the lowest budgeted films ever as almost the whole film takes place in a couple of rooms with the characters jawing away. The robbery, when it finally takes place in the last section, is also entirely lacklustre and lacking in impact.
Of course, a low budget doesn't necessarily mean poor quality, but that is the case here. The problem with AMBUSH IN LEOPARD STREET is that nothing much really happens and there aren't even any of the regular British faces to enjoy in the cast list. The best 'star' the film can muster is Michael Brennan (who played the pub landlord in LUST FOR A VAMPIRE and appeared in a string of bit parts throughout the '60s and '70s) but the rest of the faces were unknown to me and their acting hardly of note.
The only thing the film has going for it is a sudden and unexpected moment of violence towards the climax but even that's brief and not handled as well as you'd expect. Still, for nostalgic fans of mid-century British fare, AMBUSH IN LEOPARD STREET does provide a nice snapshot of the fashions, attitudes and long-forgotten streets of the day.
Of course, a low budget doesn't necessarily mean poor quality, but that is the case here. The problem with AMBUSH IN LEOPARD STREET is that nothing much really happens and there aren't even any of the regular British faces to enjoy in the cast list. The best 'star' the film can muster is Michael Brennan (who played the pub landlord in LUST FOR A VAMPIRE and appeared in a string of bit parts throughout the '60s and '70s) but the rest of the faces were unknown to me and their acting hardly of note.
The only thing the film has going for it is a sudden and unexpected moment of violence towards the climax but even that's brief and not handled as well as you'd expect. Still, for nostalgic fans of mid-century British fare, AMBUSH IN LEOPARD STREET does provide a nice snapshot of the fashions, attitudes and long-forgotten streets of the day.
Poverty Row
mappman7284 October 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Poverty Row film making at its most poverty stricken. Everything from script, direction, sets, and acting reeks of desperation. However, it's not entirely without interest. One of the actors is Norman Rodway, a few years before making his Royal Shakespeare Company debut and achieving cinematic immortality as Hotspur in "Chimes at midnight". (A future wife, Pauline Delaney, is also in the cast). Another performer is Michael Brennan, usually way down the cast list, but this time making the most of his chance at a leading role, even if it is a C picture. Visibly less happy are Bruce Seton and James Kenney, both wondering why they are here.... A couple of interesting names behind the camera - literally in the case of DoP Stephen Dade who shortly after this would be climaxing his career with the Technicolor and Technirama glories of "Zulu". Slightly less memorable is editor Norman Cohen, who went onto direct respectable versions of "Dad's Army" and "Till death us do part" before his early death. One other intriguing point - why was a very cheap film ostensibly set in London filmed at Ardmore Studios in Ireland?
"It will take more than Big George to stop me now"
hwg1957-102-26570413 April 2021
Warning: Spoilers
A crime film that portrays the planning of a jewellery heist and how it goes wrong. Preparations include one of the gang becoming (very) friendly with a worker at the jewel company to get information. It is a low budget film but that basic look adds to the atmosphere of insignificant people trying to escape their meagre lot by illegal activity. All the characters are downbeat which gives the movie a decidedly noir feel. The acting is solid so you do feel sympathy for the characters. The force of the law gets the criminals but you pity them more than condemn them. 'Ambush in Leopard Street' is not as bad as some reviewers have claimed. There is more to it than meets the eye or ear. Whether is by design or accident it still is worth a look and listen.
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