I love these sort of films,1950s/1960s British crime films. Some are well known but this one is fairly obscure,despite the well known director and cast.So I was glad when I caught this on a film channel. It has its faults,mainly sometimes unrealistic,but it is well made and has a great cast. 10 years after this film was made the British film industry was almost dead,why? I think because of tv and the idea that British films were dull,some were but some were great.

Surprisingly tough, given that this was made in 1963, and surprisingly good British crime movie directed by the usually reliable Ken Annakin. It's based on the novel, "Death of a Snout" and it's about Police Inspector Nigel Patrick's attempt to find out who killed his number one informant. It has an excellent cast that includes Margaret Whiting, Darren Nesbitt, Frank Finlay, Roy Kinnear, Harry Andrews and Colin Blakely and Annakin makes great use of his London locations. It may not surface very often these days but it's certainly worth seeing.

There has been a rash of well-executed safe robberies and Scotland Yard is looking the fools. They are having no luck tracking down the take or who is in charge. Harry Andrews, the Police Inspector in charge, decides that they are going to change the way they investigate. No more using informers or word from the street. He wants wire taps and a cop on every corner. Long time Detective Nigel Patrick continues to use his string of informants. The robberies seem very well planned and all go off like clockwork. Patrick has his sights set on local bottom feeder thug, Derren Nesbitt. Nesbitt is moving up in the world of late, he has a new Bentley, new clothes, a fancy apartment and is flashing around a large roll of cash. After a 300,000 pound robbery, one of Patrick's "snouts", (John Cowley) calls his house with some info on the gangs hid-out. Patrick is not home but his wife takes the information. Cowley is then grabbed up by the gang and taken for a ride. Derrin Nesbitt, who does the wet work for the gang drops in for a question and answer session with Cowley. Cowley is then disposed of by Nesbitt who drives back and forth over him with a car a couple of dozen times. Nesbitt goes to his boss, Frank Finlay, with the information he has extracted from Cowley, including the call to Patrick's wife. Finlay, the brains behind the whole robbery group is an ex Commando. He plans all the robberies like military operations. Things have been going sweet and now this cop Patrick is becoming an annoyance. Finlay sets a plan in motion to remove said annoyance. He sets up a hidden camera at a brothel and has one of the girls, Margaret Whiting, call Patrick. She is to tell him she has some info on the last robbery. At the same time Finlay has 500 pounds from that same robbery hidden in Patrick's attic.Patrick shows to talk to Whiting. Whiting hands Patrick a wad of cash and says it was from the robbery. Patrick knows it is a set up and throws the money back and leaves. Next day Patrick is called into Inspector Andrews office. Laying on the desk of course is a pile of pictures of Patrick with the cash in his hand. "These came in the mail, can you explain them?" Asks Andrews. Patrick says it is a frame job but is suspended. The Police then escort Patrick home and search his house. Needless to say they discover the planted cash. Cuffs are produced and off to jail he goes. Patrick's wife, Catherine Woodville, manages to raise the bail and get Patrick released. The now "upset" Patrick throws aside the rules and goes after the mob. He contacts the dead informant's brother, Colin Blakely. He tells him that he knows who the killers are. Blakely, a crook himself, soon grabs up the tart Whiting.He threatens to kill her 6 year old son if she does not come clean on everything she knows. She folds like a house of cards. Blakely rounds up his own mob and heads off to deal with Nesbitt and Finlay. Pipes, hammers, knives and guns are used before the mess is settled and all the nasty types rounded up or dead. Far more violent than one would expect from a UK film. I quite enjoyed it.Roy Kinnear , Peter Prowse and Micheal Coles play junior members of the mob. Patrick was in UNEASY TERMS, THE NOOSE, SAPPHIRE, SILENT DUST, A PRIZE OF GOLD, FORBIDDEN CARGO. Derren Nesbitt was in STRONGROOM and THE MAN IN THE BACKSEAT.The director was Ken Annakin who did DOUBLE CONFESSION and ACROSS THE BRIDGE. He also made the Disney film, THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. The D of P was Reginald Wyer. Wyer's films include STREET CORNER, MAN IN THE BACK SEAT, ACROSS THE BRIDGE, WHEEL OF FATE, THE WEAPON, HOME TO DANGER, DAYBREAK, SO LONG AT THE FAIR, DANCING WITH CRIME, THE UPTURNED GLASS.Well worth catching if you can find it.

Since "The informers"(based on a fine novel "Death of a snout")was made the whole issue of the police/informant relationship has been debated,set in Case Law,been the subject of numerous reviews,questions in The House etc with the result that officers are now obliged to register snouts at a central base and inform senior detectives of their existence and of every instance when they are used.Failure to do so renders them liable to the severest penalties under the Discipline Code including dismissal. Where there is a computer of course,there is a consequent security issue,so it is hardly surprising that many of the best snouts,"good 'uns",as they used to be called,were unregistered and therefore "illegal".My personal solution to this problem was to register two totally fictitious snouts and run my "good 'un" illegally and out of my own pocket."Socksie",as he was called for his aversion to washing feet that left them so ingrained with filth that he espoused the wearing of socks,was pure gold,was never sussed out and passed on peacefully at Leigh - on - Sea in 1998.Ironically his funeral was attended by several "faces" he had helped put away. Not so Inspector Johnnoe's "good 'un" who meets an untimely end causing the D.I. to do the honourable if not most sensible thing. Back in the 1950s the British public assumed that their police force caught lawbreakers using methods totally within the law.By the time "The informers" came out,cynicism had started creeping in and soon full - blooded distrust was common fired by the Hal Woolf affair,D.S. "Tanky" Challenor's antics at West End Central and the burgeoning awareness of major corruption in many big city forces. Coppers of Inspector Johnnoe's ilk were becoming an endangered species. There really were men like him,fearless and dead straight,dedicated to sorting out the villains on the ground.They had no targets to meet,no community awareness to be sensitive to,they just nicked toerags. Nobody likes snouts - "Socksie" was not a nice man - but no policeman can succeed without them.Johnnoe treads a fine and difficult line with his informant,as does every copper.Worse for him,his guv'nor does not believe in the use of snouts,making him either a puritan or corrupt himself - hard to know which is worse. Johnnoe is framed by the arch - villain after doing a little "off the books" spin of his drum and gets suspended for his trouble.Joining up with his snout's surviving brother and assorted hardmen,he gets things sorted,as they used to say. Britcop movies in general vary between the cheery cockneyness of "The Blue Lamp" and the ludicrously biased and semi - fictional "In the name of the father",via the sadistic "watch me I'm having a photogenic breakdown" nonsense of "The Offence". "The Informers",together with the criminally (ha,ha)underrated "The Strange affair" stands right at the top of the tree.It really is what it used to be like. Had somebody have done "Socksie" in back in the late 70s would I have risked life,limb and pension to revenge him?.I don't think so. Inspector Johnnoe was a better man than I.