BREAKAWAY

UK, 1956, 72 minutes, Black and white.
Tom Conway, Michael Balfour, Honor Blackman, Brian Worth, Bruce Seton, Freddie Mills, Alexander Gauge.
Directed by Henry Cass.

This is a brief film about industrial espionage during the 1950s. The film opens in pre-Berlin Wall Germany, a visit to the Russian sector of the city, an Englishman meeting an old professor who gives him a formula for metal resistance, necessary for development of aircraft for supersonic flights.

He is pursued by thugs, his fiancee abducted, he fleeing in a car and hiding out with a former boxer friend, now a bartender. The owner of the club where he works is actually interested in getting the formula and employs the thugs. He has also abducted the fiancee.

Duke Martin has been sitting next to the Englishman on the flight from Germany, sees him at the airport, is following in his car and comes across the accident, finding the fiancee’s purse. He is accompanied by his offsider, chauffeur, valet, Barney, played by Michael Balfour, a presence in many British films of the time, providing the lighter touch and contrasting with the suave Duke who is played by Tom Conway, some years after his stint as The Falcon.

Duke Martin is a private detective, picks up a lot of clues, goes to a rendezvous at the club where the is one was expected and encounters her sister, played by Honor Blackman, several years before she became Pussy Galore with James Bond but whose prominence was achieved in the television series of the early 1960s, The Avengers.

Also involved is an industrialist who is interested in the formula. The Englishman’s brother is also a scientist and interested in the formula. There are various fights, pursuits in an airport, the film that the Englishman took being developed (a cameo by Arthur Lowe), various disguises for the film, fights, a set up and the police arriving.

Tom Conway and Michael Balfour had played the same characters in another thriller, Barbados Quest/Murder on Approval (1955).