Pluskylang Great Film overall

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Dirtylogy 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.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

JohnHowardReid A Robert Velaise Production for Romulus Films. Not copyrighted in the U.S.A., but a Continental Distributing release. New York opening at the Coronet: 2 April 1963. U.K. release by British Lion: 21 April 1963. Australian release through British Empire Films: 3 October 1963. Sydney opening at the Lyceum. 8,503 feet. 94 minutes. Cut to 91 minutes in the U.S.A. (Available on an excellent ITV DVD).SYNOPSIS: To the upper-crust customers of his Bond Street dress salon, Monsieur Jules is suave, elegant and impeccable. But behind the plush front and the French accent, he is Pearly Gates, the Cockney kingpin of London's most efficient gang of thieves.NOTES: Number 16 at British ticket-windows for 1963.COMMENT: An extremely funny film, for which Penelope Houston (tough editor of Sight & Sound) has, oddly enough, little but praise — praise with which I am only three-quarters in accord. She commends Cliff Owen for his "agile timing". Personally, I found Owen's timing way off, and I was constantly aware that this very funny script would have been even funnier if the direction were more slick. It is typical of Owen's incompetence that he has allowed Richard Bennett to negate so much of the material with his pedestrian score, and even Miss Houston has to admit "the director doesn't make much of the (Battersea Funfair) setting." Fortunately, not even Owen's bumbling can overshadow the adroitness of his cast: The stars are in top form, and I was still laughing over John Le Mesurier's impersonation of a good humor man an hour after I'd left the theater. (Incidentally, his name is pronounced "Le" as in French, "Mess-a-ra" to rhyme with "ma" or "car").OTHER VIEWS: A slightweight cops and robbers idea has been pepped up into a briskly amusing farce thanks to a combo of deft direction, thesping and writing. — "Rich" in Variety.The latest lark for jolly good felons is "The Wrong Arm of the Law". . . And who should be leading the culprits in this assault on the risibilities, but Peter Sellers, who has a record as long as your arm. Mr. Sellers, you may remember, started his career in comical crime under the able instruction of Alec Guiness in "The Ladykillers". . . The snafu that occurs when the criminals and the cops combine their brains and their pretensions to technical know- how makes a wildly comic climax for this film. — Bosley Crowther in The N.Y. Times.

Bill Slocum Peter Sellers comedies from before 1964 often come off to me as dingy, dated, and a bit twee. So "The Wrong Arm Of The Law" surprised me. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as easily as I did.The movie's title comes from a predicament mob boss Pearly Gates (Sellers) calls the "oldest bleeding con in the business": Dress up like coppers, catch other criminals in the act, steal their loot, and get away. After being stung eight times, Gates' own gang call on the real law for help.It's easy to confuse this with "Two-Way Stretch", another caper comedy Sellers made three years before, with both Bernard Cribbins and Lionel Jeffries in key support roles. "Two-Way Stretch" is amusing but stale; this holds up both as a story and large-scale character piece.By day, Gates sells high-end women's clothing with the help of a fake French accent, using his knowledge of the well-to-do to mastermind burglaries. Cribbins is a rival crime boss so non-threatening he shows off his family photos; Jeffries is inept police inspector "Nosey Parker", who suspects a buy-off attempt when Gates first appears in his office."I'm not trying to bribe you, mate," Gates replies. "I don't carry loose change."Also on hand to bring considerably sex appeal is cat-eyed, slinky Nanette Newman, Pearly's girl. Watching her make out with Sellers' stomach in one scene is pretty erotic stuff; she is also cleverly integrated into the rest of the story.Director Cliff Owen did mostly British TV work. He shows himself here an accomplished cinematic stylist. An opening credit sequence recalls "Catch Me If You Can". The ending is remarkably satisfying; all the story elements come together with surprising grace. You wish Sellers' later, bigger-budget comedies were as well crafted.One caveat: There are no big laughs in "Wrong Arm", just many small ones and amusing asides that keep coming. There's a gentleness reminiscent of an Ealing comedy. When the different gangs discover they're all being had by the same outside interest, they call a meeting where parliamentary rules of order are carefully observed. A pickpocket demands to be heard as the "voice of the small man".Jeffries is the best thing in the film. You know he's a wally, but you like him anyway, and feel a bit when he makes a mess of things with his superiors. "Why do they always pick on me?" he whines, not at all like the hard-case he played in "Two-Way Stretch". Sellers is very good as well, sliding effortlessly between his London and French accents.People who generally avoid Sellers films before "Strangelove" are well advised to make at least this one exception. "Wrong Arm" is a smooth treat that still stands up well, right up there with "The Ladykillers" and "I'm All Right, Jack" in quality and lighter than either.

ShootingShark Pearly Gates and Nervous O'Toole, the two biggest villains in London, suddenly start finding their blags are being rumbled by a trio of Australian con-artists posing as coppers. Unable to stop this gang, they team up with Inspector "Nosey" Parker of Scotland Yard to see if their combined forces can restore much-needed order to the criminal way of life.One of the funniest British movies of all time, written by no fewer than seven men, including two of the best comedy writing duos; Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and John Warren and Len Heath. The great charm of this picture is the way it presents London gangland as a bunch of lovable clods who don't mean any harm but who take their jobs and their workers' rights very seriously. Pearly is one of Sellers' greatest creations, who tries to encourage professionalism amongst his men (he's showing Rififi, The Day They Robbed The Bank of England and The League of Gentlemen as "training" films) and there's a wonderful sequence where he chairs a villains' union meeting, complete with agenda, motions and procedural points of order ("The Chair recognises the bird on the front row."). The real star for me though is the wonderful Cribbins as befuddled, eye-twitching Nervous, complete with brothel creepers, pork pie hat and too-small suit, chastising both his men and his kleptomaniac nephew Kevin ("Ya teeving little nit !"). Jeffries, saucy Newman and gifted Aussie actor Kerr are all terrific as well, and the whole shebang rattles along at a terrific pace with buckets of funny dialogue and inventively daft situations. Don't miss an unbilled cameo by Dennis Price, as Educated Earnest of Leamington Spa. Sadly, they really don't make them like this anymore.

bob the moo Pearly Gates is an criminal who makes a living posing as a French fashion expert selling clothes to the rich of London'' society classes. Meanwhile his gang continues to carry out his crimes. However on several occasions they get stopped by the police – who then take their stolen goods, but let them go. Gates realises that his lot are getting ripped off by an other gang posing as policemen. Assuming it is rival Nervous O'Toole, Gates is astonished to find out that Nervous' gang is getting it too. They join up with the police to set up this new gang and catch them.I taped this on the strength of the cast and it is therefore quite appropriate that the cast should make this better than it probably is. The plot is quite amusing but a little too unlikely. The police gang should have been made a little nastier rather than just stealing from thieves – as it is there is no justification for the police to team up with two gangs to put one out of business. However this is a minor quibble as the plot never needs to really stand up that much. The comic antics are OK but the script is not as hilarious as other reviewers have implied. There are several good sequences and some good lines that make it worth watching and consistently amusing but not as hilarious as one would have expected on the strength of the cast.Happily the cast do their best to lift this film above the level set by the script. Sellers is really good – switching between mock-French and cockney accents with ease and comic timing. He is ably supported by Jeffries on good form and Cribbins who is funny with a reasonable Irish accent. The opposing gang is poorly represented but support is good from Le Mesurier, Nanette Newman and a few other faces.Overall this isn't classic British comedy as the cast list would suggest, but it is an amusing caper farce with plenty of reasonable laughs along the way. The cast work hard to make the material better than it is on paper and this is well worth a watch if you like this time of film.