The Wooden Horse

The Wooden Horse
DVD cover
Directed by	Jack Lee
Produced by	Ian Dalrymple
Written by	Eric Williams
Starring	Leo Genn David Tomlinson Anthony Steel
Music by	Clifton Parker
Cinematography	C.M. Pennington-Richards
Edited by	Peter Seabourne John Seabourne
Production company	London Films
Distributed by	British Lion Film Corporation
Release date	16 October 1950 (1950-10-16)
Running time	101 mins
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Box office	£266,545 (UK)

The Wooden Horse is a 1950 British Second World War war film starring Leo Genn, David Tomlinson and Anthony Steel. It was directed by Jack Lee. It is based on the book of the same name by Eric Williams, who also wrote the screenplay.

The film depicts the true events of an escape attempt made by POWs in the German prison camp Stalag Luft III. The wooden horse in the title of the film is a piece of exercise equipment the prisoners use to conceal their escape attempt as well as a reference to the Trojan Horse which was also used to conceal men within.

It was shot in a low-key style, with a limited budget and a cast including many amateur actors.

The somewhat fictionalised version of the true story is set in Stalag Luft III — the same POW camp where the real events depicted in the film The Great Escape took place, albeit from a different compound – and involved Williams, Michael Codner and Oliver Philpot, all inmates of the camp. In the book and film, the escapees are renamed "Flight Lieutenant Peter Howard", "Captain John Clinton" and "Philip Rowe".

The prisoners are faced with the problem of digging an escape tunnel despite the accommodation huts, within which the tunnel entrance might be concealed, being a considerable distance from the perimeter fence. They come up with an ingenious way of digging the tunnel with its entrance located in the middle of an open area relatively near the perimeter fence and using a vaulting horse (constructed largely from plywood from Canadian Red Cross parcels), to cover the entrance.