General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Jokers

The Jokers is a 1967 British comedy thriller directed by Michael Winner, in which two misfit brothers, played by Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed, steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London not for gain but for notoriety, planning to return them a week later.¹ The screenplay is by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from Winner's original story, and the cast includes Harry Andrews, James Donald, Daniel Massey, Michael Hordern, Edward Fox, and Warren Mitchell.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Michael Winner (director and story); Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (screenplay)²
Stars	Michael Crawford as Michael Tremayne, Oliver Reed as David Tremayne, with Harry Andrews as Inspector Marryatt²
Plot	The brothers steal the Crown Jewels to make themselves famous, intending to return them a week later¹
UK release	Thursday 15 June 1967, distributed by The Rank Organisation; U certificate, color¹
Runtime	95 minutes per British Comedy Guide; 94 minutes (1h 34m) per IMDb¹^•³
Crew	Producers Ben Arbeid and Maurice Foster; composer Johnny Pearson; cinematographer Ken Hodges; editor Bernard Gribble²
Production companies	Adastra, Gildor Productions, and Scimitar Films³

Spoilers

Plot and tone

The plan hatched by Michael Tremayne (Crawford) and David Tremayne (Reed) is to take the Crown Jewels out of the Tower of London, aiming not at ill-gotten gains but at celebrity for themselves.³ According to the Harvard Film Archive's synopsis, David is a successful architect and Michael a university dropout who become fed up with society and devise the scheme, planting bombs all over town on the way from the party circuits of Swinging London to the halls of Scotland Yard.⁴ Reelstreets' storyline adds that Michael lives in his brother's shadow and, after being forced to resign from the army, joins David in the plot.⁵

Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times critic who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, reviewed the film in April 1968 as a suspense-and-comedy caper in the tradition of Rififi, Topkapi, and Big Deal on Madonna Street, though he noted the brothers use no elaborate vault equipment: they set up a series of fake bomb scares and impersonate military officers to get inside the royal vault, which sits under Army protection.⁶ He highlighted the film's pointed British satire of authority figures: the top civilian policeman (Harry Andrews) is played as a taciturn, hard-bitten incompetent, and the top military man (James Donald) allows photographers past police lines.⁶ Winner also spliced in newsreel footage of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and opposition leader Ted Heath hearing of the stolen jewels while romping around in bathing suits.⁶

Reception

Contemporary reviews were mixed. Brendan Gill's review in The New Yorker (May 13, 1967) wrote that Winner, then thirty, "makes the mistake of trying too hard to be funny at the very start," but conceded that the picture "becomes charming as well as comical"; he called the plot a "preposterous Watts Tower" cobbled up by Clement and La Frenais from Winner's original story, and praised Ken Hodges's camerawork, under which the city "becomes one of the chief characters."⁷ Gill also noted the bomb scares target beloved shrines including the Albert Memorial, the Lion House at the Zoo, and the Stock Exchange.⁷ A Film Quarterly review by Margot S. Kernan (October 1967) called the original script clever enough and the film delightful entertainment.⁸ Penelope Houston of The Spectator later described a "resilient script" with "erratic direction, in the fashionable jumping-bean, all over the place style."⁹

On aggregate sites, the film holds an IMDb rating of 6.6/10 from 843 votes³ and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer of 67% from one critic review, with an audience Popcornmeter score of 3.5 out of 5 from more than 50 ratings.⁹

Production and locations

Filming began over a weekend in Kensington and Chelsea in July 1966, with interior scenes at La Popote in Walton Street and shooting around the Albert Memorial; the Evening News reported on 19 July that Winner fused the lights in part of Oxford Street while shooting in Tiles, a basement discotheque, and London Life reported in September that lights and cameras were erected above the floor of the War Memorial Gallery in the Stock Exchange.¹⁰ The scene in which Michael Crawford is kicked out of "Sandhurst" was filmed at the Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich.¹⁰ Other locations include Carshalton in Surrey (exteriors at the Ponds, The Grove, and the Greyhound Inn)³ and London Waterloo station, where the British Railway Movie Database notes a green Class 33 diesel, a green "Warship" diesel-hydraulic, and a Class 73 electro-diesel in early blue livery, the last described as a fairly rare locomotive to be captured on film.¹¹

The Piccadilly Circus incident. While filming a night scene in Piccadilly Circus, Winner set off an unannounced smoke bomb, causing horrendous traffic jams, then sped off in a taxi with the film magazine, leaving other crew members to be arrested. According to IMDb's trivia, the incident caused such resentment that for many years afterwards permission to film there was denied; John Landis's An American Werewolf in London (1981) was the first to be allowed to do so.³

Release and legacy

The film opened in the United States on 15 May 1967, in France on 24 May 1967, in the United Kingdom on 15 June 1967, in Denmark on 3 August 1967, and in Sweden on 18 September 1967; IMDb lists a West German release of 19 May 1967 under the title Minirock und Kronjuwelen.¹²^•³ The soundtrack title song was written by Charles Mills and Mike Leander and performed by Peter and Gordon.³

The BFI places The Jokers in Winner's 1960s run of British features alongside The System (1964) and I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name (1967), all made with Oliver Reed, and BFI curator Vic Pratt has described it as one of Winner's underrated works that was overdue for a second look.¹³ The movie briefly shows Jezebel, a Dennis N-Type fire engine built in 1916 that the Royal College of Science Union at Imperial College London owns and operates.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1960s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?