Review of Crooks in Cloisters (1964) by Stuart K — 06 Feb 2015

Directed by Jeremy Summers, (The Punch and Judy Man (1963), Ferry Cross The Mersey (1965) and The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967)), this is a silly crime caper comedy about a bunch of crooks put into a fish-out-of-water scenario, it came out when the Great Train Robbery had just happened, and it sent up the robbery.

It has a good little ensemble at it's heart, and it's got good locations as well. Small time gangster Little Walter (Ronald Fraser) has just pulled off the Smallest Train Robbery in the UK, and Scotland Yard, led by D.

I. Mungo (Alister Williamson) is on their tails. So, Walter and his gang, which consist of Lorenzo (Grégoire Aslan), Specs (Davy Kaye), Squirts (Bernard Cribbins), Willy (Melvyn Hayes) and Bikini (Barbara Windsor) are forced to hide out on a remote Cornish island where an abandoned abbey stands.

So Little Walter and his gang have to live like monks until the heat dies down. They end up adapting to their new lifestyle, and then they're discovered by fisherman Phineas (Wilfrid Brambell), who helps them out on the mainland.

It's a silly film, but it's a good timepiece of Cornwall back then, and it has a cast of regulars from British TV and film at the time. You can see where the inspiration for Nuns on the Run (1990) came from watching this.

This is a prime example of the type of British film that they simply don't make anymore.