WEST 11 is an early film in the career of Michael Winner and it has an atmosphere of the general seediness that seemed to infuse all of his pictures; an early '60s Notting Hill is the most interesting past of this. Alfred Lynch plays a down-on-his-luck youth who gets caught up in the sinister schemes of Eric Portman, but rather than focusing on the crime aspects of the storyline this is more of a kitchen sink/angry young man drama with personal relationships bearing the brunt of the attention. A good supporting cast enlivens it somewhere, but I found it strictly middling.

With writers who were at the heart of the British new wave and set in a run down Notting Gill,as it was,I was expecting a touch of social realism.However what we get is a film that after much coveting of an X certificate,tends to go into lurid melodrama in the last third.However it was good to see Kathleen Harrison and Frieda Jackson,Finlay Currie and of course Diana Dors.A cast to cherish even if the film is not

This low-key British kitchen-sink movie is much better than it's lukewarm reputation might suggest. It's no masterpiece and it's certainly no "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" or "A Taste of Honey" but it's far from negligible and is worth seeing. It was directed by Michael Winner at a time when he actually made good films and stars the underrated Alfred Lynch as a feckless young man roped into a murder plot by Eric Portman's slimy and possibly bogus ex-army officer. Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall wrote the above average screenplay and it's superbly shot in its Notting Hill locations by Otto Heller. Others in a fine supporting cast include Diana Dors, Kathleen Harrison and Finlay Currie.