West 11 (1963) | Michael Winner’s dissolute crime thriller puts a seedy-looking Notting Hill centre stage | Movie Talk | What's on TV

22-year-old Joe Beckett (Alfred Lynch), a seasoned citizen of London’s bedsitter belt, is the renegade son of middle-class parents and, to use his own description, ‘an emotional leper’. He decides that he needs a violent shock to shake him back into life. As a result, he accepts a commission to carry out the murder of a total stranger for an ex-army con man (Eric Porter) he meets in a coffee bar…

And early feature from Death Wish director Michael Winner, this gritty crime thriller sets its story of alienation and amorality amid the faded grandeur and seedy clubs of early-1960s Notting Hill (looking authentically decrepit).

Scripted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall (Billy Liar, Whistle Down The Wind) from the novel, The Furnished Room, by Laura del Rivo, Alfred Lynch (The Hill, Manhunt) leads the starry cast that includes Diana Dors (looking fabulous), Finlay Currie, Freda Jackson and Patrick Wymark, while the excellent jazz score is composed by the legendary Stanley Black and performed by Acker Bilk.

West 11 http://youtube.com/v/LQoKk-haeAk