The Breaking Point [The Great Armored Car Swindle] ** (1961, Peter Reynolds, Dermot Walsh, Joanna Dunham, Lisa Gastoni, Brian Cobby, Jack Allen, Arnold Diamond) – Classic Movie Review 13,711

Peter Reynolds stars as the nephew of a London printer gets involved with foreign villains in the counterfeit money business, in the 1961 British crime film The Breaking Point.

Director Lance Comfort’s 1961 Butcher’s Film Service second feature British black and white crime film The Breaking Point [The Great Armored Car Swindle] stars Peter Reynolds, Dermot Walsh, Joanna Dunham and Lisa Gastoni, along with Brian Cobby, Jack Allen and Arnold Diamond.

Peter Reynolds stars as smug and shady Eric Winlatter, a youngish married man working for his uncle, Ernest Winlatter (Jack Allen), the head of a London currency printing company, who gets involved with foreign villains in the counterfeit money business.

The villains are plotting to flood the Middle East state of Lalvadore, which is sympathetic to the West, with fake banknotes to bankrupt its economy. Lalvadore would then be forced to seek assistance, forcing it behind the Iron Curtain.

The company is approached by Lalvadore government foreign diplomat Telling (Arnold Diamond), who offers a lucrative contract to print new banknotes for Lalvadore to foil the counterfeit plot. But Eric Winlatter is in deep money troubles, mostly because of his lifestyle, smart car and gambling, and the villains use his gambling debts to persuade him to help the bad guys hijack the currency shipment in return for a fistful of cash.

Joanna Dunham plays Eric’s neglected wife Cherry, who becomes suspicious and tells her fears to investigating journalist Robert Wade (Dermot Walsh), with whom she starts getting very friendly. Lovely ‘Guest Star’ Lisa Gastoni plays the alluring nightclub girl Eva, who tricks Eric into the crucial gambling debts as part of the villains’ plot. Brian Cobby makes an excellent old smoothie villain in the role of unsavoury Peter de Savory. He is so smooth that he was later the voice on the telephone of the speaking clock in the UK from 1985 to 2007.

Peter Reynolds gives a flashy, enjoyable workout to the regular unreliable, unscrupulous smoothie type. Joanna Dunham is rather good as the fed-up wife, easily persuaded to be unsupportive and then unfaithful, but Dermot Walsh phones it in rather, in an unrewarding role as the oddly sympathetic and supportive journalist.

The screenplay is by the film’s producer Peter Lambert, based on the 1957 novel by Laurence Meynell. The story is unusual and the script is commendably ambitious, but bites off more than it can chew in a British second feature running 59 minutes. Butcher’s Film Service is hard stretched to provide the production, but achieves it somehow with a couple of quid to spare. Nevertheless, it is quite involving and entertaining for an nostalgic crime movie hour. Peter Lambert’s script is talky and patchy, but there is some good talk and there are some good patches. As ever, or at least often, audience suspension of disbelief is required. It’s only a movie. Lance Comfort ensures that it moves swiftly, with a rush-on at the enjoyable, preposterous climax.

It is made at Walton Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, but the film benefits enormously from its outside filming, both in London and in many scenes in the latter half of the film shot at the then developing Gatwick Airport.

The Breaking Point was renamed The Great Armored Car Swindle for US release. The trouble here is that the van taking the money is not an armored car and there is no swindle, it is a robbery.

Running time: 59 minutes.

Release date: 20 February 1961.

Digitally remastered in 2011, and released on DVD by Renown Pictures.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,711

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com