Clash by Night [Escape by Night] *** (1963, Terence Longdon, Jennifer Jayne, Harry Fowler, Peter Sallis, Alan Wheatley, Vanda Godsell, John Arnatt) – Classic Movie Review 11,221

Terence Longdon, Jennifer Jayne, Harry Fowler, Peter Sallis, Alan Wheatley, and John Arnatt star in the 1963 British black and white crime thriller Clash by Night. Crooks hijack a bus transporting criminals to jail to rescue one of their gang.

Typical Sixties B-movie villains hijack a busload of six criminal passengers en route to jail to get their dangerous gang boss leader Bart Rennison (Tom Bowman) released, and the rest of the prisoners and warders are locked in a paraffin-soaked barn, in director Montgomery Tully’s small-scale, swift-moving, short-running (75 minutes) 1963 British black and white crime thriller Clash by Night [Escape by Night].

The crooks threaten to set the deserted farm straw-filled barn alight if the warders and the five other prisoners attempt to escape before morning, but it is Guy Fawkes Bonfire Night and if a firework would strike the barn, they would all burn to death inside. To give himself time to get away, the gang boss tells everyone that two gang members will stay behind outside to guard the barn, so they can’t leave.

It stars Terence Longdon, Jennifer Jayne, Harry Fowler, Peter Sallis, Alan Wheatley, Vanda Godsell and John Arnatt as Inspector Croft.

Perhaps director Tully can’t manage that extra punch that would elevate it very much beyond its TV late-night movie graveyard status, but nevertheless he does well with the material, keeping it interesting and suspenseful.

Clash by Night is always involving and often exciting, while the efforts of the much more than reasonable cast really do give it quite a lift, and it is for these iconic, hard-working Sixties actors that this low-budget filler is perhaps most memorable and entertaining. Terence Longdon, Harry Fowler, Peter Sallis, and Alan Wheatley, especially, all make their mark.

Terence Longden, in a rare star role as an honourable man who killed an intruder trying to rape his wife, and Harry Fowler, as a cheery small-time burglar, form an appealing double act that is the heart and soul of the film. Alan Wheatley finds depth and sympathy in his former army officer turned insurance man sent down for embezzling his clients’ funds. Peter Sallis is remarkable, miles from his usual territory, as the paranoid, mother-fixated child killer Victor Lush. John Arnatt is suitably bothered, baffled and bewildered as the gruff CID Inspector Croft, keen enough but plodding one step behind the regular police. Mark Dignam as the bible-bashing prisoner Sydney Selwyn and Robert Brown as prison guard Mawsley may not have much to do but are indispensable to the general fabric.

The screenplay by Maurice J Wilson and Montgomery Tully is based on the 1962 novel Clash by Night by Rupert Croft-Cooke. It is a very good screenplay, despite a few plot wobbles and implausibilities, largely character driven, concentrating on the lives and fates of the prisoners, with some excellent dialogue. It’s quite talky in places, but the conversations are enjoyable and revealing, and the script often has something on its mind. It has a moral dimension. What is crime? What is justice? There are layers of criminality. Degrees of culpability. Some criminals shouldn’t be in jail. Some people at large probably should be in jail.  It’s all the luck of the draw, chance in life, and your character: who you are destined to be.

It more or less all runs on the escape night of the title, but there is a prologue with a car driver (Ernie Peel) having bad night betting on the dogs and a villain (Stanley Meadows) offering him a large tip after he drives a bus carrying prisoners to prison. There are also a couple of flashbacks clueing us into the backstories of two of the prisoners, telling how Terence Longden saved his wife (Jennifer Jayne) and how Alan Wheatley’s uncaring, money-grubbing wife (Vanda Godsell) basically doesn’t give a damn about him when he’s in trouble. Vanda Godsell is tremendous in her one little scene here, diamond hard, ice cold.

The fiery finale is particularly well done, a credit the cameraman Geoffrey Faithfull, though he works hard throughout to enliven the mostly studio-bound scenes.

In the US its name was changed to Escape by Night to avoid confusion with Fritz Lang’s classic 1952 Barbara Stanwyck noir melodrama Clash by Night. However, even more confusingly, three other films called Escape by Night were released previously: Escape by Night (1937) with William Hall and Anne Nagel, Escape by Night (1953) with Andrew Ray and Sid James, and Escape by Night (1960) with Leo Genn and Giovanna Ralli.

Also in the cast are Arthur Lovegrove, Mark Dignam, Richard Carpenter, Stanley Meadows, Robert Brown, Hilda Fenemore, Tom Bowman, and Ray Austin.

It is shot at MGM British Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England.

Alan Wheatley (19 April 1907 – 30 August 1991)

Alan Wheatley and John Arnatt are both fondly remembered for playing the Sheriff of Nottingham. Arnatt played the Deputy Sheriff of Nottingham in the fourth and final season of Richard Greene’s 1955-60 TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, filling in for Alan Wheatley, who played the regular sheriff. In 1967 Arnatt played the High Sheriff of Nottingham opposite Barrie Ingham’s Robin in A Challenge for Robin Hood. Wheatley played the sheriff in 54 episodes between 1955 and 1959 but eventually withdrew from it.

Alan Wheatley’s last cinema role was Major Ronald Grey-Simmons in Clash by Night and in later years he worked mostly on radio, as actor, narrator and poetry reader. His final role was in 1991 in a BBC Radio 4 adaptation of A Day by the Sea, with his old friends Wendy Hiller and Michael Hordern.

The cast

Cast: Terence Longdon as Martin Lord, Jennifer Jayne as Nita Lord, Harry Fowler as Doug Roberts, Alan Wheatley as Ronald Grey-Simmons, Peter Sallis as Victor Lush, John Arnatt as Inspector Croft, Hilda Fenemore as Mrs Peel, Arthur Lovegrove as Ernie Peel, Vanda Godsell as Mrs Grey-Simmons, Richard Carpenter as Danny Watts, Mark Dignam as Sydney Selwyn, Robert Brown as Mawsley, Stanley Meadows as George Brett, Tom Bowman as Bart Rennison, Ray Austin as the intruder, William Simons as guard outside barn, and Geoffrey Denton as station sergeant.

Clash by Night [Escape by Night] is directed by Montgomery Tully, runs 75 minutes, is made by Eternal Films, is released by Grand National (UK) and Allied Artists (US), is written by Maurice J Wilson and Montgomery Tully, based on the novel Clash by Night by Rupert Croft-Cooke, is shot in black and white by Geoffrey Faithfull and Alan McCabe, is produced by Maurice J Wilson, and is scored by John Veale.

Release date: 1963 (UK) and August 29, 1964 (US).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,221

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