One of seemingly dozens of PoW dramas made in the early to mid-1950s (The Wooden Horse, Albert RN), this is set in the infamous German fortress of the title. The story about the daring escapes undertaken by Allied prisoners has little time for the psychology of imprisonment (unlike the popular BBC TV series of the 1970s), but the action is still well played - tense at times, music-hall jolly at others. John Mills is perfectly cast as Pat Reid, on whose first-hand account the film is based, and Eric Portman, Ian Carmichael, Lionel Jeffries and Bryan Forbes are the other inmates of heroic hue. Director Guy Hamilton would go on to gain greater acclaim with a different kind of escapism when he directed Goldfinger in 1964.

The Germans believed that no man could escape from Colditz Castle, set as it was in the heart of the Reich, 400 miles from any neutral frontier. This film, based on Pat Reid's epic novel, tells the story of how the British, French, Dutch and Polish prisoners of war who were incarcerated in Colditz set out to prove their captors wrong.