Vintage comedies, Cold War conspiracies, a detachable penis and Margaret Rutherford.
60 | An Inspector Calls Chalk up another one for Sim (surely the star with most appearances in the list) as he plays the eponymous policeman in this film version of J B Preistley's celebrated play. In black an white this works splendidly well (we can't really imagine it making the same impact in colour) and Guy Hamilton creates a starkly claustrophobic atmosphere even before Inspector Poole arrives. But when he does, the real drama starts as each member of the rich Birling family is shown to have contributed in some way to the recent death of a servant of the family at her own hand. And then of course the mysterious Inspector leaves, and who was he? The devil? God? Eh? Eh? Sim proves conclusively once again that while he was perfect in comedy he could be devastating in drama and that his deserves to be well on top of the order of merit of British actors on film and with a great big gap under his name before whoever clambers to be second to the great man. |
59 | The Gold Rush We weren't going to get through the list without an entry from Chaplin, we suppose, and here it is. Speaking perfectly frankly, Chaplin has never really been our cup of tea. Too much pathos, too mush sentiment, too clever by half. We have always fallen on the Laurel and Hardy side of the fence as we much prefer to watch "Fresh fish! HONK!" to a tramp eating his shoes. But The Gold Rush we can make an exception for. The sentiment is there (and how!) but the gags work well and the impression for once is that this is a comedy and not a tragedy with the odd falling over scene. There's no doubting it's technical brilliance either and its originality and innovation, which don't matter much to us without the laughs, but there's plenty of those as well so, in it goes. |
58 | The Quiet Man More Irish stereotypes on parade here but in such affectionate fashion that it hardly matters. John Ford's homage to rural Ireland may include the odd unsavoury reference to the IRA but on the whole it is concerned mostly with John Wayne's return home to the poverty stricken countryside his parents obviously felt compelled to leave. Don't be fooled though, we really love this and if we can set our cynicism aside so can you all. The climactic fight with Victor 'not Irish at all' McLaglan – who was nominated for an Oscar for this – to the strains of the Fox Chase is one of the great sequences of all time. "Here's a good stick to beat the lovely lady with!" |
57 | Murder Ahoy! Like the spy thriller, the murder mystery didn't generate much interest amongst the voters and the inclusion of this must owe much – everything – to the presence of the great Margaret Rutherford in one of her four MGM outings as Miss Marple. Rutherford wobbles her way through the suitably ludicrous plot with gusto, resembling the good ship Battledor, upon which her investigation is set, more than a little. Of the four made this is often credited elsewhere as the weakest of the series, but then those didn't have Lionel Jeffries in and this does, so that can't be right. There are also the star's off-screen husband Stringer Davies on show as well as William 'kindly old man' Mervyn and an embryonic Derek Nimmo. Murder Ahoy! may not involve the twists and turns of The Usual Suspects, for example, but the scene where Miss Marple tests the snuff for poison is worth the price of admission on its own and of course people voted for the former and not the latter. So there. |
56 | The Man Who Fell to Earth What a lot of pop stars in just-about-getting-away-with-it acting roles there are in this list! I wonder which one we shall be meeting next? That'll be Mr Thin, then, as Dame David piles off the pounds for his tailor-made role as water-seeking, lift-fearing, penis-detaching alien Thomas "acts a bit like David Bowie, really" Newton. One of two Roeg entries in this list (with apologies to annoyed fans of Don't Look Now - there just wasn't room), and the most Roeg-ish, we think - the notorious "edited by Bruce Lee" cut-up technique is there to the fore here, but it never becomes tedious or wilfully confusing (as it can in other films), mainly because the middle distance-gazing presence of Lord Gnome somehow holds it together. The rest of the cast are top notch, too - Buck Henry, Rip Torn, and "Whatever happened to" Candy Clark all fail to anchor the TV-fixated inventor genius in reality, and slowly lose their grip on theirs. A hypnotically bizarre look at humans in general and post-'60s Americans in particular. |
55 | The President's Analyst James 'Flint' Coburn is the titular White House shrink in this dayglo swinging conspiracy comedy, summoned to relieve his boss of the trauma of office (and a few state secrets besides) via an omnipresent flashing red alarm. Soon both American and Russian agents are after him, and many violent counterculture related incidents lead Coburn to the real enemy - the all-powerful phone company, headed by the Mandelsonian Pat Harrington Jr, who imprison him in a phone box and screen their world domination plans in the form of quaint UPA-style cartoons, before a violently festive 'happy' ending that predates Brazil by nearly twenty years. What with the obligatory censorship controversies (the names 'CIA' and 'FBI' altered with bad dubbing, apparently at the authorities' behest), a murderous William 'KITT' Daniels, inevitable psychedelic nightmare/trip scenes, excellent Casino Royale/Anderson Tapes-type sets and a whole Lalo Schifrin goin' on scorewise, what's not to like? |
54 | The Bed-Sitting Room A few films in this list have apocalyptic overtones, but Spike Milligan's adapted play about the fragments of post-WWIII Britain restoring order as best they can takes a, well, different tangent to most. Filmed entirely in that golden-era sci-fi staple, an abandoned quarry, a Premiership of British comedians and character actors fill various symbolic roles while avoiding the threat of atomic mutation. Hence you get Arthur "How dare you! How very very dare you!" Lowe and family living on the tube and scavenging chocolate from the vending machines, Sir Rich Ralphardson slowly turning into the titular lodging, Roy Kinnear as a deranged rubber fetishist, and best of all, Frank Thornton as The BBC in dinner jacket remnants, providing a door-to-door broadcasting service complete with all-new national anthem. All permanently encouraged to "keep moving" by a police force of Cook and Moore in a precarious balloon-suspended car. Unlike many films of this sort, it manages to keep the head of inventive steam going for the duration, mainly because it (and the writers) are never on-kilter in the first place. There's even a rather touching ending. God save Mrs Ethel Shroake, indeed! |
53 | That Sinking Feeling Films buffs around the world – and Wigan in particular – might just as well accept that Bill Forsyth's best work was not the much lauded Gregory's Girl but this little beauty made with the Glasgow Youth Theatre. Shot entirely on location in and around Glasgow it concerns the efforts of a group of friends to score a little cash by raiding a warehouse full of sinks. It's pretty rough and ready but there are flashes of comic genius and a beautiful little ending as touching as anything seen anywhere in Hollywood or beyond. It's not seen very often and friend of Creamguide (films) David Wilkinson of Guerilla Films - www.guerilla-films.com – who was among the many who nominated this for the list – has been trying to get a DVD of it out for some time. Lets hope he manages it soon. |
52 | The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins
Look out, chaps, it's one of those portmanteau comedy jobbies - commissioned by a studio executive wanting something vague featuring "lots of comedians and saucy girls", a rag-bag of loosely-connected sketches from disparate writers, with the lack of plot papered over with one of those all-star casts that always signal turkeydom, and directed by... Graham 'the second banana's second banana' Stark? Yes, and it's a good'un, too. Not all the seven segments come up trumps, but standouts include lusty batchelor Harry H Corbett using all means necessary to get a date, only to be cruelly humiliated yet again, chauffeur Bruce Forsyth searching London's sewers for his avaricious boss' mislaid 50p piece, and Spike Milligan's demented silent film homage to Sloth ("I'd like to save you but I can't let go of my walnuts!") The best is left till last, as Galton and Simpson rework a forgotten Comedy Playhouse entry to illustrate Pride, with Ian Carmichael's regal Bentley and Alfie Bass' clapped out Morris meeting halfway down a narrow country lane and each resolutely refusing to back up for the other. When the AA and RAC turn up, taking the sides you'd expect, a measuring tape-fuelled class war ensues. Throw in Bob Godfrey's droll animated links and you've got a film tailor made for a lost TV afternoon. What a shame they don't show it any more. |
51 | The 49th Parallel War - or rather anti-war - propaganda from Powell (this time with Pressburger) and a story of a U-Boat landing in Canada whose crew struggle to reach then-neutral America. This was voted for - amongst others - by director Terry Ryan, who told us a nice story about Powell. It seems that Terry was despatched from his film school to collect Powell by car from the station he was to arrive at. This he did but on the way back Powell insisted they stop at a bookshop. When they arrived Powel strode in and looked to find his autobiography which had been recently published. At first alarmed by this flash of ego Terry then recalls how the great man picked each copy out, signed it and returned it to the shelf, leaving still unannounced. We think that’s great. (For an example of Terry’s own great work see his film version of Spike Milligan’s Puckoon when you can or buy the DVD when it comes out: it’s brilliant). |
