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Thanks for the memories!

Brilliant and touching

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

There's a delightful slyness to this British prison comedy that fools its audience from the start by having Peter sellers playing a character who looks like Peter Sellers! This is the first time where I see him looking and acting like he might on a daily basis, that is if he weren't well, Peter Sellers. He's a conman serving his sentence, visited by preacher Wilfred Hyde White on the pretense of saving his soul, and finding himself involved in a breakout attempt (only overnight you see...) to aide his old partner (White!) in completing a robbery, obviously establishing alibis, and foolproof. Everything is a o.k. until a notoriously tough guard (Lionel Jeffries) arrives, risking exposure and putting the caper at risk.A great series of sight gags are clever and hysterical. The cake made for a departing guard by one of the prisoner's mothers contains a file (habit the prisoner says), and Jeffries' attempts to lead the prisoners in rigorous exercise leads to him falling though the ground into an old escape tunnel. This moves very fast, features a great musical score, and makes some wise commentary about the pompousness of certain types of authority figures. I really longed to see this group of cons get away with their caper, and certainly not see Jeffries (comically cold) succeed in being successful in his style of rehabilitation.

Peter Sellers in the innocent days before Hollywood got hold of him. 'Two Way Stretch' is a bright and breezy British comedy typical of the period.He plays 'Dodger Lane', a Cockney crook imprisoned at H.M.P. Huntleigh, along with safe cracker 'Jelly' Knight ( David Lodge ) and pickpocket 'Lennie The Dip' Price ( Bernard Cribbins ). To say they are having a cushy time would be an understatement. A milkman delivers Gold Top each morning, along with food and newspapers, and their cell is, according to C.P.O. Jenkins ( George Woodbridge ) 'the best place in the nick to get a cup of tea'. They even have a cat, appropriately named 'Strangeways'. As the film opens, Dodger is recovering from a surfeit of sherry trifle. The lads are due for release in a few days' time. Then fellow crook Soapy Stevens ( Wilfrid Hyde-White ) turns up, posing as a vicar. He escaped imprisonment after their last job because he was the only one with a water-tight alibi. Stevens has learnt that a Sultan's diamonds to be conveyed through the area under army escort. Stevens wants Dodger and the lads to steal the consignment. Knowing that this time, they are the ones with the perfect alibi, they readily agree. There are just two minor problems - firstly, they need to break out of the nick, and secondly, Jenkins' replacement is none other than C.P.O. Sidney Crout ( Lionel Jeffries ), a hard-faced warder who regards all convicts as scum...John Warren ( who wrote a lot of Dick Emery's shows ) and Len Heath's script is full of wonderful comic ideas and lines, and directed with a sure touch by Robert Day. One has to wonder whether or not the B.B.C. sitcom 'Porridge' derived any inspiration from this, so closely does the latter resemble the former ( curiously, 1965's 'Rotten To The Core' starring Anton Rodgers also features crooks named 'Jelly' Knight and 'Lennie The Dip', though played by Kenneth Griffith and Dudley Sutton. Coincidence? Or was 'Core' originally planned as a sequel to 'Stretch?' ). Alongside the main cast are old favourites Liz Fraser, Irene Handl ( delightful as Lenny's toothless mum ), Warren Mitchell, Thorley Walters ( as a dimwitted army officer ), Mario Fabrizi, Maurice Denham, Beryl Reid, and Arthur Mullard. The latter gets one of the best lines. Visited by his wife and her baby, he asks how old it is. "Eight months!" comes the reply. Arthur looks chuffed at first, and then baffled: "But I've been inside for two years!".As was the case with most of the films he appeared in, Lionel Jeffries effortlessly steals the film. He is able to make you laugh by simply bellowing "On the double!" and that takes some doing.My only complaint is that the film does not really ( pardon the pun ) stretch Sellers as an actor. He is good as the lovable 'Dodger', but the role could have been played by anybody. One wonders whether Sid James could have done just as good a job.If 'Two Way Stretch' is not a part of your collection of classic British comedy films, you should put that right immediately.Funniest moment? Its got to be the scene in the yard where Crout is trying to exercise the convicts by making them jump up and down on the spot. He does not know that beneath him is part of a tunnel dug by Lennie and Jelly. He soon finds out - by falling into it!Happy New Year to you all, by the way.

I'm giving this ten out of ten, one, because it's so good, and two, because it doesn't get the appraisal it deserves! A bunch of crooks, already in the nick, plan the perfect alibi for a 'blag'. To break out, do the job and break in again is the plan of course,(especially as they're at the end of their sentences in a couple of weeks' time to enjoy the booty (diamonds)). Thinking they'll be aided indirectly by the laid back and naive George Woodbridge (The prison chief), he announces his retirement, so the boys have to think again, especially as he's replaced by the 'most vicious screw' Crout, played brilliantly by Lionel Jeffries. Peter Sellers, as 'Dodger' Lane, heads the gang aided well by both Dave ('Jelly Knight') Lodge and Bernard ('Lenny the Dip') Cribbins. The boys manage to still steal a march nonetheless helped along with the 'outside' work being done by Wilfrid Hyde-White (The excellent 'Soapy Stevens' posing as the boys' 'vicar'!), Liz Fraser and Irene Handl. The 'relaxed' attitude of the prison, run by the Governor, Maurice Denham,("Come in Chief, the door ain't locked"), plenty of ahead-of-the-time double-entendres (regarding the governor's marrow, for one!) all contribute for a really good old-fashioned British romp that set Sellers up for the king of comedy of this era. Plenty of laughs and very familiar supporting faces, including one from 'Jones' played by Mario Fabrizi who sadly committed suicide owing to not getting much work as an actor. Warren Mitchell also makes a small but worthwhile appearance. This really is worth keeping in your video/DVD collection and watching every now and then for a golden age of plot, script and character acting of the very best calibre!

This effort may not have been all that taxing on the considerable talents of the great Peter Sellers, but the character of Dodger Lane is an original, and the star gives a sly, confident performance as an unreformed "model prisoner" and untrustworthy trustee. TWO-WAY STRETCH involves a trio of prison cell-mates who help to devise a crime with a twist. All they have to do is sneak out on the night before they're due to be released, pull off their latest heist, and then return before being missed, thereby providing themselves with a foolproof alibi in addition to their ill-gotten gains. Huntleigh Prison is a very liberal institution, and Dodger (Sellers) takes full advantage of this, making his cell a home away from home. With the assistance of his two partners, Lennie Price (Bernard Cribbins) and Jelly Knight (David Lodge), he's practically running the place, and the three of them make a great comic team. They don't plan on having any trouble sneaking out of Huntleigh, but that was before the appointment of the new head guard, Sidney "Sour" Crout (played by Lionel Jeffries), a tough disciplinarian, who barks rather than speaks. Why, he even expects the inmates to actually do some work in the rock quarry . . .before the arrival of their morning newspaper. Although Crout's presence disrupts their escape plans, the intrepid Dodger refuses to give up. Also on hand is old reliable Wilfrid Hyde-White as Soapy Stevens, a crony who enlists Dodger for the heist; Maurice Denham as the hopelessly well-meaning warden; Irene Handl as crooked Ma Price; and the indispensable Liz Fraser as Ethel, Dodger's shapely girlfriend. Everything clicks and there is never a dull moment in this hilarious comedy. There's nothing profound or insightful about it but that's one of the reasons why it's good. My rating of TWO-WAY STRETCH is a definite four stars out of five.