Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Karlee The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

bkoganbing Upon seeing a film entitled The Wooden Horse, one including myself might think it was about some fake object like the famous Trojan wooden horse that was used to smuggle in people or objects like weapons. The horse we're talking about in this film is the kind used in every gymnasium in the world.But this one aids indirectly in the smuggling out of prisoners from a German POW camp called Stalag 3. It's quite simple, it's too long a dig from the prisoner barracks to outside the camp for a tunnel. So the horse is placed over a midway point and diggers are smuggled in and out. It also serves as a place where fresh air can come into the men working in the tunnel. It's quite an ingenious scheme and Leo Genn, Anthony Steel, and David Tomlinson are the three that escape. The rest of the film plays a lot like The Great Escape as the three escaped prisoners try to make it to the neutral country of Sweden.Though The Wooden Horse doesn't have the budget that The Great Escape did it tells its story in a fast moving and compact fashion with no frills. Location shooting in Denmark and Germany make it quite authentic. The British occupation zone was in the northern part of the new Federal Republic of Germany and many extras were hired among the locals. And the film holds up well after sixty years.I'll bet Kurt Thomas never thought of a gym horse being used this way.

Gordon-11 This film is about British prisoners of war from the World War II escaping from a camp in Germany.I find "The Wooden Horse" disappointingly boring. The subject could have been thrilling, suspenseful and adrenaline fuelled, but "The Wooden Horse" is told in a very plain way. It's a collection of plain and poorly told events, with no suspension and thrill. The first half plainly tells how the prisoners of war dug a tunnel, but the events are so plain, with not enough blunders and close shaves to make me on edge. The latter half of the film is even worse, they are just moving from one place to another without any cat and mouse chase. And could the characters talk a bit less and have more action in an action film! I am disappointed by "The Wooden Horse", it wasted the potential to be a great film.

Spikeopath Playing out as a sort of pre runner to The Great Escape some 13 years later, this smashing little British film plays it straight with no thrills and dare do well overkill. First part of the movie is the set up and subsequent escape of our protagonists, whilst the second part concentrates on their survival whilst on the run as they try to reach Sweden. The film relies on pure characters with simple, effective, and yes, believable dialogue to carry it thru, and it achieves its aims handsomely. No little amount of suspense keeps the film ticking along, and as an adventure story it works perfectly for the time frame it adheres to, so a big thumbs to the film that may well be the first of its type? 7/10

richard-meredith27 In 1943, a group of RAF Officers, including Eric Wiiliams, decide to escape from a POW camp using a Gymnastic Vaulting Horse in the courtyard. In 1950, it was decided to film his account, and it kick-started a peculiar British Film Genre- the Military Prison Camp story that reached its apogee in Danger Within (1959).The Wooden Horse is one of the quietest films I have ever watched. There are no great dramatic moments, but a steady storyline eventually builds to a climax that has more tension because the story doesn't give way for unlikely drama, jump cuts or jacked up (somethings about to happen!) music. It is utterly of its time and works beautifully.Leo Glenn, Anthony Steel and David Tomlinson lead a curiously low key cast of extras and (I suspect) non-actors. Without exception, all are constantly mono-tonal and quiet. They keep emotion out of their roles. As so many were, until recently, ex-service, I suspect they recreated their war time roles as 'Officers and Gentlemen'.This unemotional approach does not detract from any dramatic tension. On the contrary, unlike most Wartime Escape Films, the story doesn't end at the barbed wire: and that fact alone keeps me glued to the end.