11 Harrowhouse

A lesser-seen movie coming up on FXM Retro is 11 Harrowhouse, which you can catch tomorrow at 11:55 AM.

Charles Grodin plays Chesser, and his character provides the narration as well. In the opening, he describes some people who tried to pull off a daring diamond heist at some point in the past, something much more daring than Chesser would ever think of trying in those moments he imagines himself to be like the Alec Guinness character in The Lavender Hill Mob. Those diamond thieves wound up paying for it with their lives, and little does Chesser knows he's about to get on the illicit side of the dimaond industry...

Chesser is a diamond broker traveling between the US and London, where the exchange is at 11 Harrowhouse (hence the title) and run by Meecham (John Gielgud). One day, Chesser and his girlfriend Maren (Candice Bergen) get an invitation to cisit the estate of the wealthy Massey (Trevor Howard). Of course, there's business involved. Massey has a big uncut rock that he wants cut, and he wants Chesser to do it. Chesser isn't quite exactly skilled in cutting diamonds, more in buying and selling, but this provides Chesser a chance at a big payday, so he bluffs it as agrees.

Of curse, he doesn't realize it's a ruse, as two guys waylay Chesser and Maren on their way back to London, finding and stealing the diamond. Massey ofers Chesser a chance to make it up -- but that chance involves robbing the surplus from 11 Harrowhouse! You see, De Beers in South Africa and the dealers around the world control most of the world's diamond supply, and they keep the supply artificially low to keep the price up. There's a lot of supply in the vaults at 11 Harrowhouse that would be worth billions on the market (well, never mind the possibility of a diamond glut).

Chesser has never tried a heist, but it's not as though he's got options, so he tries to learn as much about the security system as he can. Fortunately, he's got a new friend in the form of vault worker Watts (James Mason). Watts is dying of cancer, so he doesn't have to worry about any consequences of getting caught -- he'll be dead soon, anyway. But if he can get away with it, he'll be able to leave his family financially secure. So with that, they get the idea to run a small hose through the electrical conduit, and vacuum out the diamonds into a truck across the street! It's an audacious plan, but it might just work.

Of course, something is going to go wrong, and that something is that Massey is never going to let Chesser get away with it. Having gotten the diamonds, Chesser and Maren now have to run for their lives....

11 Harrowhouse is a fun little heist movie. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but it's not as if there's really anything wrong either. It's just solid entertainment, with a nice amount of humor to lighten the proceedings. I have no idea why this movie isn't better known than it is.

The bad news is that the movie seems to be out of print on DVD (although available on Amazon's streaming video). The print FXM ran (at least on DirecTV; I don't know if this is an FXM problem or a DirecTV issue) was both letterboxed and pillarboxed. If you have a big enough TV, that shouldn't be too much of an issue, but I don't. Even with that said, the movie is well worth a watch.