Based on a true story (believe it or don't!), The Wooden Horse is set in a wartime German prison camp. It being the duty for every British POW to attempt escape, internees Leo Genn, David Tomlinson and Anthony Steel hit upon a daring scheme. Building an outsized, boxlike vaulting horse, purportedly for exercise purposes, the trio begin digging a tunnel beneath the horse-right under the noses of their German captors. As one of the first of the British "prison camp getaway" genre, The Wooden Horse establishes many of the form's cliches, including the rule-bound German soldiers whose grasp of the obvious is appalling. Eric Williams adapted the screenplay from his novel The Tunnel Escape.

The Wooden Horse is a 1950 British Second World War war film starring Leo Genn, Anthony Steel and David Tomlinson and directed by Jack Lee. It is based on the book of the same name by Eric Williams, who also wrote the screenplay.[2]
The film depicts the true events of an escape attempt made by POWs in the German POW camp Stalag Luft III. The wooden horse in the title of the film is a piece of exercise equipment the prisoners used to conceal their escape attempt.
It was shot in a low-key style, with a limited budget and a cast including many amateur actors.

The film was the third most popular film at the British box office in 1950[4] and led to a series of stories about POWS, including Albert R.N. (1953), The Colditz Story (1955), The One That Got Away (1957), The Camp on Blood Island (1958), and Danger Within (1959).

Release Date: August 28, 1951

Distrib: Snader Films