Piccadilly Third Stop *** (1960, Terence Morgan, Yoko Tani, John Crawford, William Hartnell, Mai Zetterling, Dennis Price, Ann Lynn, Charles Kay) – Classic Movie Review 13,661

The 1960 British crime thriller film Piccadilly Third Stop certainly has a good cast: Terence Morgan, Yoko Tani, John Crawford, William Hartnell, Mai Zetterling, Dennis Price, Ann Lynn, and Charles Kay.

Director Wolf Rilla’s 1960 British black and white crime thriller film Piccadilly Third Stop certainly has a good cast to recommend it: Terence Morgan, Yoko Tani, John Crawford, William Hartnell, Mai Zetterling, Dennis Price, Ann Lynn, and Charles Kay.

Despite that, it is a tatty, incredible British thriller, with a cheap-looking B-movie style production, poor London detail and some dithering talent, about foreign embassy thieves Dominic Colpoys-Owen and Joe Pready (Terence Morgan, John Crawford) who make up to the ambassador’s daughter Seraphina ‘Phina’ Yokami (Yoko Tani) to get in the building and at the £100,000 fortune her father has stashed in the safe of the Knightsbridge embassy. That would mean a robbery by digging through from a tunnel from the London Underground into the embassy’s cellar.

Smooth career crook Dominic has met Phina totally by chance at a party where he’s in the process of nicking some jewels. He likes the look of her, makes an assignation, and she accidentally spills the beans of the cash in the safe. Dominic is now 100 per cent more interested in the dough than the girl. He’s that kind of guy. Meanwhile he’s canoodling with broke American crook Pready’s lovely bored wife Christine (Mai Zetterling). Pready’s up to his ears in gambling debts to the horrible club owner Edward (Dennis Price) so Dominic can easily manipulate him. He’s an arch manipulator.

On the plus side, and there is a considerable plus side, Terence Morgan is super slimy and sleazy as the main-chance villain, and so is ‘Guest Star’ Dennis Price as the villainous club owner. These are impressive, confident, word-perfect, glance-perfect performances born of a lifetime of playing such roles. Then William Hartnell as the quirky retired veteran safe-cracker colonel (obviously some relative of Doctor Who) and Yoko Tani as the pathetically dependent, in-love Seraphina Yokami give extremely likeable performances. Their characters are the nearest to sympathetic ones in an entire movie cast of bad guy losers. Quite a satisfactory Brit noir world then.

And the film is short and pacy enough, especially in the US version cut from 90 minutes to only 78 minutes. Creaky and clunky though it is, it still has some charm and entertainment value. It has a deliciously stale whiff of the late-Fifties era it was conceived in, with some spectacularly dodgy attitudes to women and ‘foreigners’. Poor Yoko Tani, Mai Zetterling and Ann Lynn (as Dominic’s live-in pal Mouse) are not exactly treated kindly.

John Crawford is a downside giving an exaggerated turn as the American villain Joe Pready, Charles Kay overplays as the posh crook Toddy, and even Mai Zetterling can’t make anything much out of her unforgiving stereotype grasping female part.

It is written by Leigh Vance, with some invention but not enough inspiration. His dialogue is patchy, some good, some drossy.

Ernest Steward shoots in black and white, with occasional flashes of style and imagination to enliven dull sets or dull scenes. Thank goodness it is in black and white. Colour would ruin it.

The film was shot in April 1960 at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, England, and on location in London, including around Belgravia. Holborn tube station is used as the fictional Belgravia station on the Piccadilly line. At the tube station, Terence Morgan stands next to a poster for his film The Shakedown (1959). More location work would improve the film no end. A lot more money could profitably have been spent on the movie.

Cast: Terence Morgan as Dominic Colpoys-Owen, Yoko Tani as Seraphina Yokami, John Crawford as Joe Pready, William Hartnell as colonel, Mai Zetterling as Christine Pready, Dennis Price as Edward, Ann Lynna s Mouse, Charles Kay as Toddy, Douglas Robinson as Albert, Gillian Maude as Bride’s mother, Trevor Reid as as Bride’s father, Ronald Leigh-Hunt as Police Sergeant, Tony Hawes as Harry Prentice, Clement Freud as Chemin de Fer dealer, and Judy Huxtable as Angela Vaughan.

Piccadilly Third Stop is directed by Wolf Rilla, runs 90 minutes (UK) or 78 minutes (US), is made by Ethiro-Alliance and Sydney Box Associates, is released by J Arthur Rank Film Distributors (UK), is written by Leigh Vance, is shot in black and white by Ernest Steward, is produced by Sydney Box and Norman Williams, is scored by Philip Green, and is designed by Ernest Archer.

Release date: 6 September 1960 (London).

Digitally remastered in 2011.

The original British quad poster is designed by Italian painter Nicola Simbari (July 13, 1927 – December 11, 2012), considered by many to be Italy’s most important modern artist. 

Charles Kay died on 8 January 2025, at the age of 94. He was Count Orsini-Rosenberg in the Academy Award-winning film Amadeus.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,661

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