Based on a true story (believe it or don’t!), The Wooden Horse is set in a wartime German prison camp. It being the duty for every British POW to attempt escape, interneesĀ hit upon a daring scheme. Building an outsized, boxlike vaulting horse, purportedly for exercise purposes, the trio begin digging a tunnel beneath the horse-right under the noses of their German captors. As one of the first of the British "prison camp getaway" genre, The Wooden Horse establishes many of the form’s cliches, including the rule-bound German soldiers whose grasp of the obvious is appalling. Eric Williams adapted the screenplay from his novel The Tunnel Escape.
Leo Genn, David Tomlinson, Anthony Steel, David Greene, Peter Burton
1950, B&W, 98 minutes