The Big Job (film)

Plot

Britain, 1950. A gang of robbers led by the self-proclaimed George the 'Great' Brain (Sid James) rob a bank, stealing £50,000. However, due to a mix-up, they are pursued and caught by the police. He manages to stash away the money in the trunk of a hollow tree, before he is collared. The gang are then sentenced to serve fifteen years in Wormwood Scrubs prison.

Upon their release in 1965, the gang go back to the spot where they had left the money, only to find it is now a new town, and a housing estate has been built around the tree. To their chagrin they find that the tree is now in the grounds of the local police station, invitingly close to the wall. George and his gang take up rooms in a nearby house rented by a widow and her daughter. In order to provide a respectable front, George is forced to marry his longtime girlfriend Myrtle Robbins (Sylvia Syms) who is not so enamoured about the idea of recovering the loot, and wants George to settle down with her.

The incompetent criminals fail in their numerous attempts to get over and under the wall, all the while trying to conceal their true activities from their landlady, her daughter and a local police constable (Jim Dale) who also stays there. Eventually when the men have botched an attempt to tunnel into the grounds, the frustrated women hatch their own plot to gain the money.

Cast

Critical reception

Time Out wrote, "this 'unofficial' Carry On reproduces the familiar formula of its virtually institutionalised predecessors."

Filming locations

Interiors: Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire

'The Crown' public house, Silver Hill, Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire......(The bank)

Fulmer and Bracknell.......(Residential and town streets)

Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire......(Country lanes)