GamerTab That was an excellent one.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

mark.waltz 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.

Chase_Witherspoon A trio of prisoners, aided by outsiders, plan and execute an elaborate escape plan from under the nose of militant prison guard (Jeffries) and the gardening fanatic warden (Denham). Sellers is superb as the mischievous Dodger, with David Lodge and bumbling Bernard Cribbins his cohorts on the inside. Criminal mastermind Soapy Stevens (Hyde-White) who engineered Sellers' incarceration is top of the wanted list, and Sellers is determined to get him his comeuppance. Also hilarious is Irene Handl and Liz Fraser as the 'girls', using their collective skills (brains and beauty, respectively) to aid and abet Sellers' escape plan.Jeffries is the real sleeper here; his comical, gestapo like prison captain, continually tortured by Sellers' antics, earns him the ire of the usually passive warden Maurice Denham (Denham more concerned with the quality and size of his garden produce than Jeffries' constant bleating about Sellers). The bane of his existence, Jeffries promises to catch Sellers out, but of course, he only ends up with egg on his face, again and again. Poor Lionel.Liz Fraser is a voluptuous beauty, and her thick cockney accent and dumb-blonde demeanour make her the ideal vice. Her knack for these type of parts earned her recurring roles in several "Carry On" films later in the sixties, a series that excelled at 'accentuating' her talents, you might say. The mercurial Bernard Cribbins, a relative newcomer in this picture, also had the good fortune to team up in a couple of "Carry On" films, as well as several other Sellers' vehicles.Not just a Sellers picture, all the cast succeed with their timing and delivery, but it's Lionel Jeffries who showed here his diverse ability to express humour, in addition to the straight roles he played throughout his long and distinguished career. Slapstick and farce, simple to enjoy, highly recommended.

moonspinner55 Three cell-mates in a leisurely-run prison plot to temporarily escape their confines, steal a shipment of gems belonging to an Arabian Sultan, and return to jail in time for the warden to sign their release. Silly, basically inconsequential, but often very funny, well-performed British comedy featuring Peter Sellers as the leader of the cheerfully crooked trio, Wilfrid Hyde-White as a con artist posing as a priest. Amiable accouterments, such as a lively credits sequence and a terrific score from Ken Jones, adds to the fun, though Lionel Jeffries overdoes the buffoonish bit as the heartless new prison chief. **1/2 from ****

grstmc 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.