How come I've never seen this gut busting, ball grabbing, bum clenchingly great film before ?!? A clear precursor to French Connection and Dirty Harry and a lost British classic.

Never Let Go is about the auto wrecking/salvage business, I guess called auto "breakers"/salvage in the UK, but an illegal aspect of it. When a late model car is wrecked it's title is saved and the car's engine number, chassis number, and body serial plates are transferred to a stolen car which is then resold under the wrecked cars title. Lionel Meadows (Sellers) is the kingpin of an auto theft ring. Titles are collected from wrecks by MacKinnon (Bailey), make, model, and year are put on a list. This list is given to Lionel who then gives the list to his boys who then steal the exact matches. These cars are then driven to Reagan's (Stock) auto body shop where the serial numbers are changed and the cars repainted to match the wrecked titles. The altered cars are then driven to Meadows Garage and sold.John Cummings (Todd) is a milquetoast barely making ends meet as a London cosmetics salesman. One night he stops at Berger for a few hours to do some paperwork before heading home. While inside his car is pinched by Tommy Towers (Faith) who drives it to Reagan's (Stock) auto shop, where it will be altered.John is devastated, he didn't get it insured for theft, just third party risk. John's wife wants him to forget about trying to get the car back. She's becoming distressed about his actions, actions which she, in a backhanded way, ignited. She told John that he was always chasing pipe dreams that he never caught and made reality. That sets John off, determined to "never let go" until he gets his Anglica back.John's obsession and alienation from his wife increases steadily throughout the remainder of the film. This change is convincingly well acted by Todd who goes from soggy milquetoast to hard crust burnt toast. Peter Sellers though is practically unrecognizable. His Meadows character looks like his pudgy evil twin. He's frighteningly different, very twisted from the comedic Sellers we are used to. He sports a push-broom mustache. He is petty, vicious, vile, and has the facade of an outwardly polite charmer. Meadows pseudo smiles, only with his mouth not his eyes. He's a fastidious over the top neat freak, complaining about Jackie's untidiness, placing coasters under drink glasses and ranting about lit cigarettes left on veneer. He also has a sexual sadistic kink with his mistress Jackie. He's a pressure cooker slowly building as things in his little world go awry. He has startlingly violent outbursts. Like a safety valve he's letting off steam, but it's not helping, you know there will be the inevitable explosion as he rages on about the "little nob, lipstick salesman" , and how he's going to "kill him. put him in his car, and burn it!"Never Let Go builds nicely to an inevitable showdown punctuated by John Barry's score. It's what a noir should be, about interesting small time characters and simple conflicts that spiral bizarrely of control. Bravo 9/10

Never Let Go is directed by John Guillermin who also co-writes the story with producer Peter de Sarigny. Alun Falconer adapts to screenplay with music by John Barry and cinematography by Christopher Challis. It stars Peter Sellers, Richard Todd, Elizabeth Sellars, Adam Faith and Carol White.John Cummings (Todd) is a struggling cosmetics salesman who buys a Ford Anglia car from crooked criminal Lionel Meadows (Sellers). When the car is stolen, Cummings, without insurance, finds his job on the line and his marriage facing crisis. Refusing to accept it as just one of those unfortunate things, Cummings starts digging for answers and finds himself in a world of violence, apathy and suicide.As the classic film noir cycle came to an end, there was still the odd film to filter through post 1958 that deserved to have been better regarded in noir circles. One such film is Britain's biting thriller, Never Let Go. Its history is interesting. Landed with the X Certificate in Britain, a certificate normally afforded blood drenched horror or pornography, the picture garnered some notoriety on account of its brutal violence and frank language. By today's standards it's obviously tame, but transporting oneself back to 1960 it's easy to see why the picture caused a stir. The other notable thing to come with the film's package was the appearance of Peter Sellers in a very rare serious role. In short he plays a vile angry bastard, and plays it brilliantly so, but the critics kicked him for it, and his army of fans were dismayed to see the great comic actor playing fearsome drama. So stung was he by the criticism and fall out, Sellers refused to do serious drama again. And that, on this evidence, is a tragic shame.What about my car? Out of Beaconsfield Studios, Guillermin's movie is a clinically bleak movie in tone and thematics. Todd's amiable John Cummings is plunged into a downward spiral of violence and helplessness by one turn of fate, that of his car being stolen. As he is buffeted about by young thugs, given the run around by a seemingly unsympathetic police force, starts to lose a grip on his job and dressed down by his adoring wife, Cummings begins to man up and realise he may have to become as bad as his nemesis, Lionel Meadows, to get what he rightly feels is justice. But at what cost to himself and others? The classic noir motif of the doppleganger comes into play for the excellently staged finale, made more telling by the build up where Cummings' "growth" plays opposite Meadows' rod of iron approach as he bullies man, woman and reptiles. Visually, too, it's classic film noir where Challis (Footsteps in the Fog) and Guillermin (Town on Trial) use shadows and darkness to reflect state of minds, while the grand use of off kilter camera angles are used for doors of plot revelation. Layered over the top is a jazzy score by John Barry.It's not perfect, Sellers' accent takes some getting used to here in London town, Adam Faith is not wholly convincing as a bully boy carjacker and there's a leap of faith needed to accept some parts of the police investigation. But this is still quality drama, it's nasty, seedy and expertly characterised by the principal actors. In this dingy corner of 1960 London, film noir was very much alive and well. 9/10

Director John Guillermin and producer Peter de Sarigny concocted this rather thin story about a married family man (and rising cosmetics executive!) in a rough British neighborhood who has his car stolen one night by a ring of young turks; the hooligans are working for a dapper racketeer (Peter Sellers, talking through clinched teeth)--and when the obsessed businessman gets the police involved, the snarling crime boss vows to take him down. Woebegone melodramatic vehicle for the miscast Sellers, who never quite figures out how to get into this (admittedly impossible) character. Richard Todd does well as the protagonist, though his home-life scenes with spouse Elizabeth Sellars are pure cliché (she tells him at one point, "If you walk out that door, I won't be here when you get back!"). Not especially well-made, with a laughable editing technique to cue us in to whom the characters are thinking about (featuring close-ups of Peter Sellers turning around slowly, as if someone is creeping up behind him). The film does pin down a certain time and place in 1960s England, but the script--with its slow-acting police inspectors--is irritating rather than intriguing. *1/2 from ****