Box and Thomas did not start out to make only silly films. Their first success had been with a Hitchcock-style thriller called The Clouded Yellow (1951), and occasionally Rank Film would allow them to vary from formula. One of these occasions resulted in the rarely seen Checkpoint (1957), a film combining industrial espionage with the excitement of professional motor racing.
Anthony Steel stars as Bill Fraser, who is not only a top-flight racer but a leading designer of new vehicles for an Italian auto company. O'Donovan (Stanley Baker), the villain of the piece, is sent by a wealthy English auto magnate (James Robertson Justice) to tempt Fraser to switch companies. Failing that, O'Donovan's orders are to steal the blueprints for Fraser's new car. It all leads to a high-speed chase through Italy during the annual Mille Miglia.
Villain Stanley Baker is probably the cast member most recognizable by American audiences for such roles as Pvt. "Butcher" Brown in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Lt. John Chard in Zulu (1964). The rough looks of this Welsh actor kept him from romantic leads during the 1950s when the handsome beefcake look was most popular. A perfect example of the latter was lead, Anthony Steel. A popular actor at the time, he had married Anita Ekberg in Florence the year before, raising the question as to whether Checkpoint was made in Italy as a concession to the newlywed couple. They did not stay happy for long. The strain in Steel's marriage carried on into his relations with the studio, and his career and marriage collapsed in the 1960s.
The cars are as big as the stars in Checkpoint. Aston Martin racers feature heavily in the film and, at one point, English audiences were given their first look at the new Lotus Mark 10, which played the role of inventor Bill Fraser's experimental new design. The Mille Miglia, providing the backdrop to the adventure, is, as the name directly translates, a thousand-mile road race from Brescia to Rome and back again.
The Box-Thomas team continued after Checkpoint, producing box-office hits in England into the 1960s even if their films rarely played in the States. Their most popular works here were their Bob Hope-Katharine Hepburn comedy The Iron Petticoat (1956) and their color remake of The Thirty-Nine Steps (1959). The partnership ended in the early 1970s with films like Percy (1971) and The Love Ban (1973). Ralph (pronounced "raff") Thomas passed away in 2001 and Betty Box went on to write her autobiography, Lifting the Lid, published in 2000. Looking back in 1990 Thomas said, "I was a sort of journeyman picture maker and I was generally happy to make anything I felt to be halfway respectable. So my volume of work was enormous; I had a lot of energy and made all kinds of pictures. If you make all kinds, you score a hit sometimes. Some film-makers have a lot of talent and genius for it; others simply have a lot of energy and I'm afraid I belong in the latter category." Checkpoint is a good example of what "a lot of energy" can do for a movie.
Producer: Betty E. Box
Director: Ralph Thomas
Screenplay: Robin Estridge
Cinematography: Ernest Steward
Film Editing: Roger Cherrill, Frederick Wilson
Art Direction: Dario Simoni
Music: Bruce Montgomery
Cast: Anthony Steel (Bill Fraser), Odile Versois (Francesca), Stanley Baker (O'Donovan), James Robertson Justice (Warren Ingram), Maurice Denham (Ted Thornhill), Michael Medvin (Ginger).
C-86m.
by Brian Cady
