General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

The Olsen Gang Outwits the Police

The Olsen Gang Outwits the Police (Danish: Olsen-banden på spanden, literally "The Olsen Gang on the Spot") is a 1969 Danish crime comedy directed by Erik Balling and the second film in the Olsen Gang series about the bumbling criminals Egon Olsen, Benny Frandsen, and Kjeld Jensen. It premiered on 3 October 1969 at the Palads cinema in Copenhagen and was produced by Nordisk Film.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Danish premiere	3 October 1969, Palads cinema, Copenhagen¹
Director and writers	Directed by Erik Balling; screenplay by Erik Balling and Henning Bahs³
Series position	Second of the 14 Olsen Gang films (1968–1998)⁴^•⁵
Lead cast	Ove Sprogøe (Egon), Morten Grunwald (Benny), Poul Bundgaard (Kjeld), Ghita Nørby (Bodil), Preben Kaas (Dynamit-Harry)³
Music	Bent Fabricius-Bjerre, including the song "Lykken er ikke gods eller guld" sung by Poul Bundgaard²
Award	Bodil Award 1970 to Preben Kaas for Best Supporting Actor¹
IMDb rating	6.4/10⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Egon Olsen leaves prison intending to go straight, helped by the social worker Bodil Hansen (Ghita Nørby), who has written a thesis about him and finds him a job at a toy factory. Benny and Kjeld join him there, but all three are fired after Egon, distracted by Bodil, loses his concentration. The gang then takes work as cleaners at the National Bank, where they witness a robbery in which the crown jewels are stolen in cello cases by the American gangster Serafimo Mozarella (Harold J. Stone) and his men. The police suspect the Olsen Gang, which flees and then steals the loot back from the real thieves. When Egon tries to hand the jewels over, the police chief denies that any robbery took place, so the gang must clear its own name.⁸^•⁹

The jewels are locked in an extremely reinforced cello case that only the explosives expert Dynamit-Harry, Benny's alcoholic brother, can open. Harry instead blows up a car and a shed, quarrels with Egon, and walks out. The film ends with the detective Mortensen (Peter Steen) arresting Egon for car theft, explosives, and other offenses, but not for the jewel robbery.⁸

The opening bank robbery, in which Egon arrives with a water pistol and an elephant hat only to find another robber ahead of him, is presented as a wry allusion to the earlier Danish film Tænk på et tal: its makers, Anders Bodelsen and Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt, appear as bank employees, and Paul Hüttel plays the robber in both films.¹

Production

The film was made at Nordisk Film with Bo Christensen and Sten Hasager as production leaders, Jørgen Skov as cinematographer, Ole Steen Nielsen as editor, and Henning Bahs also designing the sets. Aage Lundvald drew the poster.² Bent Fabricius-Bjerre composed the score; his theme for the Olsen Gang series is often called the most famous Danish film theme ever written.⁷

Filming locations included Vridsløselille State Prison in Albertslund, the Copenhagen Politigården police headquarters, the National Bank of Denmark, Kastrup Airport, and Langebro, along with various Copenhagen streets.¹^•⁸

Place in the series

An atypical entry. Commentators describe the film as markedly different from the rest of the series: the gang spends roughly half the film in honest work, and the story of a gang wrongly accused and trying to clear itself differs from the first film and from all twelve that followed.¹⁰^•⁴ The Danish Film Institute's Cinemateket program notes that the plot is a direct continuation of the first film's chase for the red suitcase.⁷

The film introduces Dynamit-Harry, played by Preben Kaas, who received the 1970 Bodil Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role; the character returned in Olsen-banden går amok (1973).¹¹ The series was known for imaginative gags and special effects involving explosives, particularly in the films featuring Dynamit-Harry.¹²

Foreign versions and release

The film was dubbed for East Germany by DEFA-Studio für Synchronisation under the title Die Olsenbande in der Klemme ("The Olsen Gang in a Fix") and released there on 23 July 1971; the DEFA database lists it at 104 minutes on 35 mm film.³ Norway remade the film as Olsenbanden og Dynamit-Harry (1970), giving Dynamit-Harry a more prominent place in its title than the Danish original.¹³

Runtime and availability

Sources disagree on the film's length: danskefilm.dk and danskfilmogtv.dk list 107 minutes,¹^•² Scope and Philm.dk list 111 minutes,¹⁴^•¹⁰ the DEFA database lists 104 minutes,³ and Prime Video lists 1 hour 46 minutes.¹⁵ The film was released on DVD on 13 August 2003 and has been shown repeatedly on Danish television, most recently on TV2 Charlie in December 2025.²^•¹ It streams on Nordisk Film+, which carries all 14 films of the series.⁵

References

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