The Big Job (film)

The Big Job
UK theatrical poster
Directed by	Gerald Thomas
Produced by	Frank Bevis Peter Rogers
Written by	John Antrobus Talbot Rothwell
Starring	Sid James Dick Emery Joan Sims Sylvia Syms Jim Dale Lance Percival Edina Ronay
Music by	Eric Rogers
Cinematography	Alan Hume
Edited by	Rod Nelson-Keys
Distributed by	Warner-Pathé Distributors
Release date	1965
Running time	85 min.
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Big Job is a British comedy film which was released in 1965. It stars Sid James, Dick Emery, Joan Sims, Sylvia Syms, Jim Dale and Lance Percival.

The Big Job shares its cast and production team with the Carry On films, but the film is not officially part of the Carry On series. The film was photographed in black and white, while the Carry On films from the mid 1960s are in colour.

England, 1950. A gang of robbers led by the self-proclaimed George 'The Great' Brain (Sid James) rob a bank, stealing £50,000. However, due to a mix-up, they are pursued and caught by the police. He manages to stash away the money in the trunk of a hollow tree, before he is collared. The gang are then sentenced to serve fifteen years in Wormwood Scrubs prison.

Upon their release in 1965, the gang go back to the spot where they had left the money, only to find it is now a new town, and a housing estate has been built around the tree. To their chagrin they find that the tree is now in the grounds of the local police station, invitingly close to the wall. George and his gang take up rooms in a nearby house rented by a widow and her daughter. In order to provide a respectable front, George is forced to marry his longtime girlfriend Myrtle Robbins (Sylvia Syms) who is not so enamoured about the idea of recovering the loot, and wants George to settle down with her.

The incompetent criminals fail in their numerous attempts to get over and under the wall, all the while trying to conceal their true activities from their landlady, her daughter and a local police constable (Jim Dale) who also stays there. Eventually when the men have botched an attempt to tunnel into the grounds, the frustrated women hatch their own plot to gain the money.