A lovely perfect crisp and sharp DVD transfer of this relatively obscure 1962 comedy, in excellent colour and widescreen.
It's a gentle, typically British comedy concerning a trio of bumbling, likeable crooks who decide to use a fire engine as their perfect get away vehicle! Sounds completely daft I know, but it somehow seems plausible in the context of this story. A great cast is featured with a host of familiar faces, Robert Morley, Daniel Massey, Dennis Price, Norman Rossington, and a very young Maggie Smith. Derek Nimmo appears amusingly in a cameo role as an agitated young man whose flat has been flooded and who foolishly enlists the aid of our heroes to pump out the water! Coral Browne is her usual camp self as the proprietress of an ailing fashion house which ultimately serves as a base for the bank robbery.
The film also has some very interesting London location filming, showing both the Hammersmith Flyover and the Barbican estate during the course of construction, and the period touch I always like to see, trolleybus wires over the streets in the opening scenes! Many of the exterior shots were obviously filmed on a large studio set, which I'm pretty sure was the same one used for Cliff Richard's "The Young Ones" made the same year. It looked very familiar to me.
I can't really recall any other comedy having this theme, apart from Will Hay's 1939 "Where's that fire?", not on DVD unfortunately. Another film I can recommend without reservation, 100% entertaining and nostalgia for all of us of the very highest quality.