Comedy Film

[Inspector Abberline]

The Hound Of The Baskervilles [1978]
Directed by Paul Morrissey yes he of Frankenstein and Dracula goes carry on fame,he then turned his hand to Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound Of The Baskervilles,It's pretty much the same story we all know and have watched on countless occasions,but with the added attraction of having Peter Cook as a Jewish Sherlock and Dudley Moore as a welsh Watson.The cast is really impressive,Terry Thomas,Roy Kinnear, Max Wall,Penelope Keith as a prostitute, Denholm Elliott and Kenneth Williams and the marvellous Spike Milligan.With this sort of cast no one could really expect anything but the up most silliness I mean its really silly nearly Pythonesque in its silliness.Dudley Moore is exceptional in his daftness,the welsh accent is questionable to say the least but very funny.He also plays Sherlock's mother,sort of cross between old mother Riley and Doris Stokes and Mr Spiggott a one legged man who wants to be a mail runner for Shelock. Cook seems to be on auto pilot,pretty much sleep walking through his part,Terry Thomas is also on hand to give the film abit of much needed class,considering this was his last film performance he looks and acts surprising well,certainly not showing any signs of Parkinson's disease which would finally take him away.Moore also did the musical score,which has a very silent era piano score feel to it,which suits the film down to the ground.Denholm Elliot also appears as the chihuahua loving Stapleton,I don't think ill ever forget the scene were Elliot is holding a chihuahua while it pee's over Moore's face,If you thought some of the performances in Paul Morrissey's previous films was over the top should see Joan Greenwood as Beryl Stapleton doing an impression of Linda Blair from The Exorcist . Daft one liners and stupid accents aside,its not surreal enough to be as good as The Bed Siting Room,and not funny enough to be considered a classic,but it just may be the daftest film you'll ever see...

out 0f 5

[iank]

I haven't seen that since I was a little kid, but I still remember the chihuahua scene!

[Inspector Abberline]

Dirty Work

25 November 1933

Whats wonderful about the whole universe of Laurel and Hardy, is that reality or physics or even Darwin's theory of evolution don't have much credence in Stan and Ollys world. This means you can pretty much do anything to the characters ,drop Olly down a chimney, proceeded by half a dozen bricks which hit him on the head,nothing,when Stan sass's Olly by using one his own wise cracks "I have nothing to say" he's immediately smacked over the head with a large shovel, again nothing, in fact I've lost count of how many they've fallen into barrels or had there body parts twisted into unnatural positions. So it should be of no surprise that when they go to clean the chimney of Lucien Littlefield as Professor Noodle that he is working on the elixir of life, that will rejuvenate anyone back to there younger selves. What's also notable about this period in history is that people still had servants often see butlers, housemaids and nanny's in these film. Dirty Work is no exception meet Sam Adams as Jessup, the butler, who surely must be the most sarcastic butler the boys have ever come across, when the boys ask to see the fireplace, his response is "in that room, you'll find it standing against the wall", which is a dozy of a line. When asking where the closet is Jessop says "You will know which is the closet, it has a door on it." . Stan and Olly are always knocking heads with authority figures whether its the police or judges but they also seem to rub Butlers up the wrong way also. But the highlight of this film is the ending, after being shown what Professor Noodle's elixir can do, the boys decide to try it out themselves on a carp, which I think that anyone with an acquiring mind would do. Unfortunately for Olly Stan accidently knock's him into the water with Professor Noodle's formula. Its not so much that the gags funny, its just that if you stick a chimpanzee in a bowler hat and have Olly's voice emanating from the chimp, well he sort of kind of does look abit like Olly.

out 0f 5

[Inspector Abberline]

Rising Damp (film)
Rising Damp is definitely in my top 5 of all time sitcoms, it's dingy setting and bleak looking boarding house was different to all those middle class sitcoms that were set in suburbia, where everyone has nice house and cars and money never seemed to be an issue except in The Good Life, but they deserved it with all there pompous self suffiency and grow your own vegetables. In amongst the hilarity Rising Damp dealt with race,money,sex or lack of it and a country that was in a political meltdown. Rupert Rigsby (Leonard Rossiter) was the slightly right wing compared to Alan Guy Moore (Richard Beckinsale) and Philip Smith (Don Warrington) left wing students, but Rigsby views were derived from ignorance and not malice and he never came across as a hateful character which could not be said of the same of Alf Garnet . In fact a lot of the time you usually feel sorry for Rigsby as he desperately tries to win the affection of Ruth Jones (Frances de la Tour) but seldom manages to win her affection, or when she does submit at the end of the film , Rigsby manages to trip over Vienna his fluffy cat and falls down the stairs ,there goes his back. The film version of the series not only changes location, TV series was up north the film down south. The other major difference is the sad loss of Richard Beckinsale who sadly passed away a year earlier in 1979. Whether he was contracted to make the film before he died I don't know, It seemed strange to decide to make a movie after one of the major actors had died. Any how his character is replaced by John Harris ( Christopher Strauli) who is basically given the same lines Richard had in the tv series, I'm afraid the major problem with the film is that all Eric Chappell has done is string about four or five tv episodes into one film, there's a few original set pieces in the film but a few to many ,its a real shame they could not of come up with something new for the characters to do. That said the cast are on fine form and Leonard Rossiter is a much missed comedy actor, there's also a great performance from Denholm Elliott as a love rival to Rigsby.Not as good as the tv show but a decent enough attempt at bring the characters to the large screen.

out of 5

Rigsby: Permissive society? There's no such thing. I should know I've looked for it.



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[Inspector Abberline]

The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck (1967)
Roman Polanski's nod to Hammer Horror Gothic films that does a very good job in capturing the feel and atmosphere of some of there earlier vampire films like Kiss of the Vampire (1963) and The Brides Of Dracula (1950) .Polanski plays Alfred a very nervous and twitchy assistant to Jack MacGowran 's Professor Abronsius an old and dusty vampire hunter formerly of the .University of Königsberg. Polanski not only has captured the tone and ambience of Hammers 1960's vampire cycle but also has added some wonderfully funny and odd humour along the way also,one of the hardest genre;s to actually get right is the comedy horror,Fearless has a whimsical and silly mood which is offset by this cold and snowy eastern Europe of Transylvania .The film looks absolutely stunning,with a soft hazy nightmare quality to it.but it also has an air of absurdity as well,especially in the scenes involving the great Alfie Bass as Yoine Shagal, the innkeeper,who gets turned into a rather sleazy and creepy vampire.As with allot of Polanski movies its filled with rather outlandish characters none more than Ferdy Mayne as Count von Krolock and his very camp son Iain Quarrier as Herbert von Krolock who live in the local Gothic castle.And to top it all we get a vampire ball which is hosted by Count Krolock and attended by all the crusty old vampire and ghouls buried in the local graveyard.But amongst all the cobwebs and skeletons comes the magnificent beauty of Sharon Tate as Sarah Shagal, hardly surprising Polanski would marry her a year later,doomed as it was to end in tragedy.Fearless looks wonderful,has a great soundtrack and is sure to put a smile on your face,if it doesn't then your probably a crusty dusty old vampire.

[Inspector Abberline]

Busy Bodies (1933)
People are always complaining about Health and Safety, comparing to being politically correct (or as I like to call it not being a racist ) for some reason Health and Safety and political correctness have been demonised ,I can only assume the only people who don't like to comply with these sort of things are bigoted idiots who want to fall into a threshing machine at work or loose an eye when there working on a lathe or not wear a harness when your working on high rise construction. The facts speak for themselves, in 1974 651 people died from workplace injuries compared to 2014/15 where only 92 people died. God knows what the statistics are like for the 1930's especially in sawmills and especially in ones where Stan and Ollie work, Busy Bodies makes the Saw movies look tame in comparison. Olly is repeatedly smacked in the face with a plank, soaked by a leaky water pipe,he's hit on the head by a massive saw disc, gets his hands stuck in a wooden window frame he's working on, has his backside shaved by Stan . Has a paint brush glued to his chin and has it unceremoniously shaved off with a vice and a pair of clippers and when that doesn't work he decides to use lots of soapy water and woodwork plane . He gets whacked on the head with a sink and gets sucked into a chute sent along a conveyor belt around some more chutes and then stuck in a vent. Then launched out of the vent by a barrel and crashes to the ground taking Stan with him. In a scene not un similar to Jess Franco's Bloody Moon there car is the sawn in halve by a massive band saw. Ladies and Gentleman do we really want to live in a society where these things are common workplace occurrences.

out of 5

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

An isolated example of deadliest workplace accidents in the US from PBS:

1930s
Boulder City, Nevada
Over the five-year construction period of the Hoover Dam, there are at least 96 construction-related deaths, though accurate records were not kept. Many are caused by carbon monoxide poisoning in the diversion tunnels.

[Inspector Abberline]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

An isolated example of deadliest workplace accidents in the US from PBS:

1930s
Boulder City, Nevada
Over the five-year construction period of the Hoover Dam, there are at least 96 construction-related deaths, though accurate records were not kept. Many are caused by carbon monoxide poisoning in the diversion tunnels.

Probably of been a funnier story if say Harold Llyod had been hanging off the dame while pumping gas out of his trouser legs.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Inspector Abberline

Probably of been a funnier story if say Harold Llyod had been hanging off the dame while pumping gas out of his trouser legs.

Or if it had been helium instead of carbon monoxide and the film was an excuse for grown men to talk in squeaky voices the entire time.

[Inspector Abberline]

Whoops Apocalypse (1988)
Taking a satirical swipe at the impending apocalypse caused by the British colony of Santa Maya ( read that as the Falklands) being invaded by its next door neighbour Maguadora led by Herbert Lom as Gen. Mosquera . While the President of the USA ,Barbara Adams (Loretta Swit ) tries to negotiate a peace treaty between the two warring nations , a terrorist called Lacrobat played by Seinfelds Michael Richards is out to disrupt any peace between the two countries. Mean while back in jolly old England Peter Cook playing Sir Mortimer is convinced that pixies and goblins are responsible for Britain's problems. What may of been a scathing satirical swipe at the Falklands war and nuclear weapons now comes across slightly weak and just abit silly. Which is a shame as the film has such a great cast of characters yet the script very rarely manages to be satirical or controversial. Based on the tv series of the same name but using a different storyline and in some case different actors. Both were written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick who have excellent resumes between them , really missed there target this time. That's not to say there isn't some great gags in there somewhere, Peter Cook is excellent as an insane Conservative Prime Minister,his idea of getting the unemployed figures down by making thousands of people jump off a cliff is something which David Cameron will probably get around to eventually. But for me the true highlight is the late great Rik Mayal as an SAS soldier and his team attacking the wax museum they think Lacrobat is hiding in. Its pure Rik Mayall mayhem crossed with Monty Python gore and some great lines from Rik Mayall as he leads the most inept soldiers into battle. In fact its the only thing which really saves the film,just a shame they couldn't use Rik abit early in the film. Not a classic but it does have its moments just a shame there few and far between.

[after the SAS shoot-out at the wax museum]

Specialist Catering Commander: You ****ing bunch of dickheads. You mean to say we lost eleven men fighting a group of waxworks?

Specialist Catering Commander: Duncan! Post the heads to their widows. And get the addresses right this time.

Specialist Catering Commander: Desmond! Put your ****ing tiara on straight!

out of 5