Film
All Coppers Are... (also released as All Cops Are...) is a 1972 British drama film directed by Sidney Hayers and starring Martin Potter, Julia Foster and Nicky Henson.[2]
Plot
A young London policeman and a small-time crook find themselves rivals in love.[3]
Joe, the policeman, is married with a young child, but when he meets Barry's live-in partner Sue, there is an instant mutual attraction.
Joe forms part of a police line protecting an embassy from protesters and things get violent.
Mounted police arrive and push the crowd back.
Barry and a gang rob a warehouse and he is driving off with a lorry of stolen goods when Joe stops him – Barry shoots Joe with a shotgun and runs off.
Production
Peter Rodgers produced the Carry On series for the Rank Organisation and made an arrangement to produce other films for them "thrillers and romantic subjects".[4]
The original title was All Coppers Are Bastards.[5] Producer George H. Brown said "Our picture is 48 hours in a policeman's life - the mosaic of people and events with which he deals, climaxing in the kind of challenge any PC on the beat alone may have to face. And who better to write it than Allan Prior?" (Prior was a writer on the TV series Z Cars and Softly Softly.)[6] It was Prior's first feature film. "It's marvellous to be able to explore a subject in depth," he said. "You can expand by location work."[7]
"The majority of coppers are still working class lads," said Prior. "In this film we try to show that they are not of the class to have affairs but they might have a bit on the side."[7]
The technical adviser on the film was ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Ray Dagg, who said "this seems to me to be the first film to really portray with authenticity what a policeman is like."[7]
The film starred Martin Potter then best known for appearing in Fellini's Satyricon.[8] The other male lead was played by Nicky Henson, who said of the film "you could almost describe it as a sort of 1971 Blue Lamp although some people may get the wrong idea."[9]
Filming started in late May 1971. It was shot largely on location in Battersea,[10] around Nine Elms and Clapham Junction, Southwest London, and at Pinewood Studios.[7]
In October 1971 Peter Rogers wrote to an executive at Rank, "The police like this film themselves and I only hope that your enthusiasm filters down through the ranks of Rank — who are inclined to 'turn when father turns' — and then perhaps this film won't be - pissed against the wall as the others were."[11]
