Monthly Archives: November 2023

22Nov / 2023

Withnail and I (1987, dir. Bruce Robinson)

⭐️⭐️⭐️½

52-week film challenge, film 43

We’re up to Doctor Who #8 on our filmic celebration of “Doctor Who”’s 60th anniversary. For those who aren’t fans of the TV show, Paul portrayed the 8th Doctor in a TV-movie in 1996, which technically I could have reviewed — I most definitely have thoughts on it — but I thought I’d get back to “proper” movies, and this is the one he’s best known for.

It’s an intriguing and wryly funny film written and directed by Bruce Robinson, based loosely on Robinson’s own life in Camden Town in the late 1960s. It centers around two currently-unemployed actors (Richard Grant as Withnail, and McGann as “I”, who is named “Marwood” in the script but is based on Robinson himself).

As we meet them, they are busy cross-feeding each other’s worst traits: Withnail is prone to abusing drink and drugs, Marwood is prone to bouts of paranoia. They live in a filthy flat and wait for the phone to ring, living off unemployment compensation and indulging their vices.

On a particularly going-spare sort of day, Marwood convinces Withnail to call up his eccentric Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) and ask for the use of Monty’s country cottage in Penrith in the Lake District for a recuperative getaway. Let’s just say things don’t go quite as planned for Withnail, Marwood, or Monty.

The film has gained a cult reputation for its realistic look at the late 60s from a particular angle, and also because of a gay subplot that never really gets fully resolved (by design). It’s a very black comedy, but there are some very serious moments as well.

Grant’s flamboyantly seething performance as Withnail is meant to be the star of the film, but McGann’s Marwood is a good foil, alternating between hopeful optimism and dark paranoia, the latter of which gets encouraged by various incidents. Both men seem unprepared for coping with the real world, let alone rural England, and each is dependent on the other to try.

Our “heroes” arrive at last at the “cottage.”

The film effectively shows the two leads in rapid descent in Act One, but Act Two is where the movie picks up steam, as the pair leave the flat, encounter the rural locals, and don’t get on too well with them. Luckily, Monty arrives by surprise (a great excuse for Marwood’s paranoia to fall into a near-breakdown), but his presence brings both relief (he brought supplies!) and tension (he had a reason for coming) that fuels the third act.

Without giving too much away, there’s a comedic return to London and then some good fortune comes Marwood’s way — an acting job in Manchester — and thus the team has to split up. What becomes of the alcoholic Withnail is left open, but it doesn’t look like it will be anything good.

The boys’ idea of “fishing”

This is a movie that could only be made based on true-life adventures of the writer-director, because no scriptwriter would have planned for this level of emotional complexity — or, for that matter, this much colloquial English and plot-moving voiceovers — in a mainstream film. Indeed, a lot of the time the story seems like it would have made a good play, given how dialog-driven it is.*

*and as I was writing this review, I discovered that it has indeed finally been turned into a play which will premiere in Birmingham in May of 2024. Called it!

All of the main characters are based on real-life people, with “Withnail” being based on a friend and housemate of Robinson’s who was indeed alcoholic. “Uncle Monty” is based loosely on Franco Zeffirelli, with whom Robinson worked as Benvolio in the 1968 film Romeo and Juliet.

A very English movie.

The film turns really dark late in the second act, and then (thankfully) lightens up and brings back the comedy. When the the lads make it back home, they find their drug dealer (Ralph Brown) and friend (who is called “Presuming Ed,” played by Eddie Tagoe) squatting in their flat, waiting for them to return.

Producer Paul Heller was able to raise some of the money needed for the film, but turned to Handmade Films (George Harrison’s company) to secure the rest of the funding. Richard Starkey (Ringo) gets a special thanks in the credits, but with no explanation as to why.

Presuming Ed (right) is worth the wait.

This film, once viewed, certainly stays with you, as there really is nothing much like it. I am still thinking about McGann’s superb performance in a long scene where Marwood must talk his way out of a challenging situation, and spins a tale that might well be more true in some ways more than he actually realizes himself.

It’s a film you will remember, fondly or not, since the truth of it rings through — even though Robinson compressed events from across two or three years into two of three weeks in the screenplay. It truly could only have been made in England.

Disrupting a tea room. Very funny stuff.

Maybe another reason this film is so memorable, apart from its honesty, is that it can easily be seen as the first slacker “buddy movie,” a lifestyle that would come into mainstream consciousness in the 90s with films like Trainspotting and TV shows like “The Young Ones,” and which plenty of young people here in the impoverished 2020s can still relate to. It has certainly influenced a number of films, such as Pineapple Express, to name but one example.

If you like your comedy to be as black as your soul, you’ve found your new favourite movie. As a time capsule of a certain time, place, lifestyle, and one man’s memories and adventures, it’s a unique film. That both would go on to worldwide fame along very different paths makes you realise how incredibly well-cast Withnail and I is, too. Take a chance, try something out of your usual. Oh, and for the love of all that’s holy do not drink lighter fluid, no matter how desperate you become.

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19Nov / 2023

The Airzone Solution (1993, dir. Bill Baggs)

⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 42

For those who haven’t read the previous few entries, we’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the TV show “Doctor Who” by reviewing movies in November that feature actors who played the title role in the show. We’ve already covered the first four Doctors, and now I’m doing a bit of a cheat to get to Doctors 5, 6, and 7 (with an extended cameo by Doctor 3) in one fell swoop with The Airzone Solution, a direct to video “movie” made during the early-90s hiatus of the TV show by a friend of mine, Bill Baggs.

I should mention that one or two other friends of mine are (briefly) in it, but that won’t influence the review. In brief, it’s a competently-made ecological thriller set in the year 2091 (where retro old-school IBM type personal computers and 3.5″ floppies have made a comeback!). It gives the three main actors and some of the supporting cast (also from “Doctor Who”) something different to showcase another side to their acting abilities.

It’s quite watchable still, largely because writer Nicholas Briggs was incredibly prescient about predicting both widespread mask wearing and increasing ecological disasters, both of which have since happened/are happening; his only mistake was in combining them into one problem, and setting his story too far into the future (optimist!). He also nailed corporate responses to these sorts of problems, which if anything have only gotten even more entrenched and tone-deaf.

Publicity picture. L-R: McCoy, Pertwee, Baker, Davison

If you didn’t know the connection to “Doctor Who,” you will probably find this project a bit low-budget and occasionally cliched, but decent. If you do know the connections of the main and secondary actors to the TV show, you’ll probably enjoy this more than the general public as a whole.

The story centers around two men — indie filmmaker Al Dunbar (Peter Davison) and environmental activist Anthony Stanwick (Sylvester McCoy), who are each going their own way but occasionally cooperating — with the help of a benefactor, Oliver Thretheway (Jon Pertwee) — on suspicious activity by private company Airzone. The company CEO, Robin Archer (Bernadette Gephardt), has promised the UK government a miraculously no-pain solution to decreasing the air pollution that forces people to wear masks when they’re outside.

TV station exec MacNamara (L) and Airzone CEO Archer (R ) are up to something.

Airzone, however, hasn’t really got an actual plan together yet — but they’ve hit upon what might be an ace in the hole, and Dunbar and Stanwick are using an inside mole named Rachel (Heather Tracy) to get more information about this seemingly sinister option the company is considering. Due to a strange and unexplained connection, they later find and rope in popular TV weatherman Arnie Davies (Colin Baker) and his journalist girlfriend, Ellie Brown (Nicola Bryant).

Dunbar manages to infiltrate Airzone after hours and discovers the company’s secret option, but is discovered and stumbles into a secret lab where the air is so polluted he almost instantly suffocates to death. At that moment, Stanwick and Davies feel the loss, even though at this point they don’t know each other — and Davies, who never even met Dunbar before, begins seeing visions of him urging Davies to get involved.

Badly-cropped photo of Davison working with the advanced technology of the year 2091.

Thanks to Davies’ relationship with Brown, he does get drawn in, but continues to have “episodes” where he sees Dunbar and gets a few bits of key information from him, which leaves Davies very shaken, and Brown very concerned for him. When he finally meets Stanwick, who is having the same visions, and Thretheway (who can also apparently see the dead Dunbar), the plot moves into the “race against time and the evil company” phase very nicely.

The second half of the video shows the two men (and less frequently, the ghost of Dunbar), Brown, and Rachel unlocking the secret Dunbar discovered, and then racing to expose it before the government blindly agrees to fund Airzone’s plan. The standard amount of cat-and-mouse ensues before the secret is finally revealed, and the evil plan stopped in the nick of time.

Dunbar’s ghost behind Davies and Stanwick

Baker’s Davies is probably the strongest (and occasionally quite funny) performance in the film, with McCoy’s Stanwick also doing well, though prone to speaking in riddles – rather like his Doctor. Davison, who was given the smallest of the three principle parts owing to his limited availability for the project, is able to characterize Dunbar differently enough from his usual roles to show off his skill, but not much more than that.

Baker’s Davies is a weatherman and unwitting propaganda tool until he discovers the truth.

As someone who was a friend of the late Jon Pertwee, I was happy to see him in the film, though he plays Thretheway mostly as he played The Doctor — as himself, because he has a really commanding and charismatic presence on screen, even at the age he was when this was filmed (73, having played The Doctor some 20 years earlier). The problem with Thretheway is that there’s literally no reason for this part to exist except for him to interact with actors who succeeded him in “Doctor Who.” Thretheway acts as a passive and benevolent observer, but doesn’t actually do anything except for funding Dunbar’s exposé, nor does he actually move the plot along at all.

Pertwee was still a reliable performer with great charm, which saves his otherwise meaningless role.

Other actors that “Doctor Who” fans will recogize are Bryant (here as a romantic partner to Baker, which mostly gave fans the creeps when they saw the very brief love scene); Michael Wisher as Richard Allenby, a corrupt government minister; and a very young Alan Cumming playing a TV station exec named MacNamara, who is not all that he seems. Cumming didn’t actually get to play a role in “Doctor Who” until 2018, but it was worth the wait.

It’s still a pleasant and now more-relatable drama, made on a low budget but everyone seems to be having fun doing something a bit different. If you are familiar with classic “Doctor Who,” this is probably a must-watch. For everyone else, it’s not a bad way to pass an hour and four minutes, but taking a bit more time to build the big reveal, building the main characters’ backstory, and giving Thretheway more of a reason to exist would have made The Airzone Solution more watchable outside its built-in cult audience.

And don’t think I didn’t spot you in there, Gary. 🙂

Baker does a very good job of playing a confident man sincerely rattled by the visions of strangers and evil that are suddenly plaguing him.

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13Nov / 2023

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

(1973, dir. Gordon Hessler)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 41

The quick summary: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is as good as Sinbad movies with Ray Harryhausen effects get. This one has everything: a great actor for the title role (John Phillip Law), an intriguing and well-played villain (Tom Baker), a beautiful love interest (Caroline Munro), some comic moments alongside the race to victory, and a great selection of original Harryhausen monsters to complement a well-constructed fantasy adventure tale.

This was the second of the Columbia Sinbad movies, a revival of sorts following the first one, 1958’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. While it would really be nice to someday get a mainstream Sinbad movie where the lead was played by an actual Muslim from the actual region in which these stories are set, John Phillip Law charismatically embodies the qualities of the heroic wayfarer, unlike his successor (my review of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is here).

As mentioned there, for the month of November I’m reviewing movies that feature actors who also played the title role in the TV show “Doctor Who.” While Tom Baker may have one of the longer filmographies of that select group of actors, there are only a handful of films where he had such a large role, and this one is a personal favourite.

What’s great about this film is that, while it is a little slower-paced that modern films in terms of setting up the story location, major characters, and conflict, it is well-directed and tightly edited to to ensure that every scene in the film has a purpose that serves the overall story — the main failing of Eye of the Tiger, in my view.

In this tale, we find Sinbad just doing nothing in particular at sea, when along comes a strange flying creature with a shiny bauble. One of his men injures the creature via bow and arrow, causing it to drop the shiny item — a strange piece of jewelry that looks like some kind of puzzle part. Sinbad decides to wear it as a necklace, despite warnings from his crew.

That night, he was strange dreams, including a disguised but ominous man calling his name, and a sequence involving a dancing girl with a tattoo of an eye on the palm of her hand. A storm comes out of nowhere to knock the ship off course, taking them to the land of Marabia, where Sinbad encounters the ominous man, who turns out to be the evil magician Koura (Baker).

Koura demands the puzzle piece back, but Sinbad escapes with it into the city, where he meets the Grand Vizier (Douglas Wilmer), who wears a golden headdress/facemask to hide his disfigured face (from an earlier attempt by Koura to take over Marabia). The Vizier has a matching piece of the jewelry, but there is a missing third that, when matched with the other two, forms a map to the Fountain of Destiny, on the lost continent of Lemuria.

(L-R) Sinbad, Haroun, and the Grand Vizier

Those who can bring the three pieces back to the Fountain will receive youth, a “shield of darkness” (invisibility), and “a crown of untold riches.” Sinbad agrees to help the Vizier find the third piece, but unbeknownst to them, another of Koura’s flying homoculuses has seen and heard their conversation, and related it magically to Koura’s castle. They discover and kill the homoculous, but the race to Lemuria is now on.

Koura with one of his homoculus spies.

Koura is no ordinary magician; he is steeped in the black arts, and calls upon the forces of darkness for his magic — and each time he does so, the darkness takes some of his life force, visibly aging him in small or significant ways, depending upon what Koura calls for.

The aging begins, and gets worse Koura grows more desperate

In a later scene, Koura is desperate to avoid crashing on some rocks that Sinbad knows how to navigate around, and casts a spell to bring the figurehead of Sinbad’s ship to life, so it can steal the map and bring it to Koura. This is, as you might expect, a big “ask” of magic, and when the (terrific) sequence is over, his assistant Achmed (Takis Emmanuel) is shocked to see that Koura is much visibly older.

The chase continues through a series of interesting set-pieces, and the third bit of the jeweled map does at first fall into the right hands — following a magnificent bit of Harryhausen work as Kourna animates a statue of the six-armed god Kali to win over the natives, with the statue fighting Sinbad’s main crew simultaneously — but Koura steals it and takes the completed ornament to the Fountain, where he appears to win the day (going so far as to receive the youth that was promised, which restores him from the very old man he has had to become to try and stop Sinbad).

Koura also receives the shield of darkness, which prevents Sinbad’s attempt to steal the completed ornament back, but Koura makes the fatal mistake of hiding inside the fountain, where his shadow can be seen, and is then killed by Sinbad before he can claim the third prize. Sinbad thus wins the crown of many riches, but chooses to give it instead to the Vizier, where it restores his face and melts away his mask, making him the new Sultan. Now free to marry Caroline Munro’s Margiana, Sinbad and his friends sail off for Marabia.

The Vizier’s true face is restored by the Crown of Untold Riches

As I mentioned in my review of Eye of the Tiger, that film could be edited way down to reduce the padding and come out a much more exciting 90- to 110-minute film. Golden Voyage proves this theory by being much tighter and faster-paced, and clocking in at … 105 minutes.

Once you accept the (excellent) stop-motion effects work, the movie just carries you along on its quest with a rich set of characters, obstacles, and — let’s face it — cleavage (courtesy of Ms. Munro). It’s also worth noting the film’s b-plot — a merchant who enslaves Margiana begs Sinbad to take his drunken, useless son on the voyage to make a man of him, in exchange for Margiana and 400 gold coins.

Initially operating strictly as comic relief, the son Haroun (Kurt Christian, who would go on to play one of the villains in Eye of the Tiger) does complete his story. By the end of the film, he is a keen sailor who loves the thrill of adventure.

Even by today’s standards, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is still an enjoyable Saturday afternoon adventure, anchored by Law’s credibility in the Sinbad role, the judicious use of comic moments to move the story along, and in particular Baker’s strong performance as Koura (so much so that it led “Doctor Who” producer Barry Letts to cast him for the title character in early 1974).

Baker delivers both on the evil the part requires, and his own powerful charisma to rivet attention on Koura without ever stealing the spotlight away from the story. Yet, he still gives us a markedly different performance here than he would bring to the more heroic Doctor, where he created the first truly “alien” incarnation that remains one of the all-time favourite takes on the character. It’s a pity he didn’t get the chance to do more movies, but at least in one of them he got to play Rasputin — yet another definitive interpretation, in my view.

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11Nov / 2023

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

(dir. Sam Wanamaker)

⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 40

Continuing with our theme this month celebrating the 60th anniversary of “Doctor Who,” we continue to spotlight films that feature actors who played The Doctor over the years for November. This time, it’s the last Harryhausen Sinbad movie, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, featuring one of my absolute favourite Doctors, Patrick Troughton, in a major role.

It’s a pity this is probably the weakest of the three Columbia Sinbad movies, but it had a surprising amount of bad luck behind it. Patrick Wayne (son of John) is a handsome enough Sinbad, but … no charisma. He definitely puts in the work on the buckling of the swashes and such, but he never comes off as the lead of the film, or even as the hero of the story. Even Sam Wanamaker couldn’t pull a convincing performance out of him.

Another issue with this particular entry in the Sinbad series was that they literally gave animator Ray Harryhausen too much to do, resulting in a mix of excellent work and some clearly rushed and less-well-done effects. As a result, the story really drags, and has difficulty building any tension.

But the killer problem is that, as luck would have it, the film opened just three months after the truly revolutionary (and by comparison, breakneck-paced) first Star Wars movie, that instantly made Harryhausen’s mostly-great work look very dated by comparison.

Fans of Harryhausen’s incredible stop-motion work get a feast with this picture, and point to some of the creatures as among his best work — and they’re right, so if you want to see those you kinda have to suffer through the non-animated slog. The best of these effects are really enjoyable, but there are perhaps too many sequences of them for one movie, and the ghouls we see early on seem very lazy —- since they strongly resemble repurposed skeleton soldiers from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

No, they’re not quite the same, but too close to the Skeleton Warriors of the previous movie for comfort.

The storyline reads well on paper: Prince Kassim is about to be crowned Caliph of the kingdom of Charak, but his evil stepmother, the witch Zenobia (Margaret Whiting), places a curse on him that turns him into a prehistoric baboon. If the curse cannot be lifted within seven (full) moons, Zenobia’s son Rafi (Kurt Christian) will become Caliph.

Sinbad enters the picture by sailing into town to seek the hand of Princess Farah (Jane Seymour), but the town is under lockdown. Farah eventually finds Sinbad, and tells him of Kassim’s curse and that Kassim must be made whole and assume the Caliph before she can marry Sinbad.

Prince Kassim sees exactly what he looks like under the curse, to his horror.

The pair set sail to find the Greek alchemist Melanthius (Troughton), who may be able to help. Zenobia and Rafi, worried that they could succeed in undoing her curse, set off in pursuit using a ship powered by a giant “Minodon,” a Bull-Man creature made of metal, brought to life by Zenobia. The Minodon can do the rowing of six men from a single master oar (an uncredited Peter Mayhew, ironically also playing Chewbacca in the competing Star Wars), so they don’t need a crew.

Our heroes eventually do find Melanthius, who can’t help them, but knows of a temple in the faraway land of Hyperborea that will be able to undo the curse, if they can get there quickly. If they can’t, Kassim will remain an ape forever, so Melanthius and his lovely daughter Dione (Taryn Power) accompany the group to help in the quest.

Farah and others pass the time by playing chess with Kassim, which is beautifully done.

Zenobia, who transformed herself into a seagull to go spy on the group (a really bad effect that’s really noticeable in a movie with mostly strong effects), sees enough of the map they have to navigate her own path there, but some of her potion was spilled when the crew discovered her in seagull form, so when she transforms back, she still has one foot as a seagull — a nice touch (and callback to Koura’s price to pay for his own sorcery, but that’s from another Sinbad movie).

Anyway, it’s a loooonnnngggg journey to get to this mythical land, that keeps getting interrupted by stop-motion creatures (mostly quite good) and some disappointing traveling mattes that don’t quite work. Both ships finally make it to the Arctic, eventually find alternate ways into the somehow-temperate lost city, which provides the opportunity for a brief nude scene of the girls swimming — until they discover a giant troglodyte.

Well, hello there!

Finally, the two opposing crews have their big fight scene that also involve stop-motion creatures inside the temple of the lost civilization. One guess who wins (and who doesn’t end up as an ape permanently, as we were constantly warned would happen if they didn’t hurry things along), but it’s pretty well-done — and of course they make their escape just as the temple and city destroy themselves, and all ends up well for our heroes and very badly for the villains.

Kassim-ape is by far the most consistently excellent effect, almost at times convincing you that in some shots an actual ape was used. The now-friendly troglodyte and friends’ battle against Zenobia-in-smilodon-form in the climax is another standout sequence, though it’s never made fully clear why this creature threatens and then later helps our heroes, other than a weird “friendship” with Kassim-ape, maybe.

You could cut this film down, shorthand more of the interminable “here’s Sinbad’s boat … and here’s Zenobia’s boat” travel sequences, tighten the plot machinations, and have a really pretty good, exciting adventure movie that runs maybe 80-90 minutes instead of the poor pace of its actual 1h53m. It’s a pity they didn’t do that, because there’s some excellent work scattered among the overrunning parts.

I may be biased, but Troughton as Melanthius is far and away the best actor in the film, apart from the stop-motion ape which is kind of mesmerizing. I should add that the two women, Seymour and Power, do a very effective job in their stereotypical love-interest roles even if poor Jane is romancing up against a flat wall named Patrick Wayne sometimes. At least Kassim, once restored to human form, also finds a mate in Dione.

It’s a pity the Columbia Sinbad franchise finished on such an uneven note, both because of the flaws of the film and because it was mistimed to a fluke revolution in sci-fi special effects by Star Wars and Close Encounters at the box office that same summer. The earlier two Sinbad films are much better examples of the adventure genre, with the pinnacle of Harryhausen’s Sinbad work shown off in the second one, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad — which just so happens to have Fourth Doctor Tom Baker in a major role …

The Minodon (Peter Mayhew) does all the henchman work and gets no thanks whatsoever.

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05Nov / 2023

Will Any Gentleman …? (1953)

Dir. Michael Anderson

⭐️⭐️½

52-week film challenge, film 39

I hadn’t actually intended originally for last month’s reviews to have a theme of horror movies for October, but after the first one I just opted to keep it going. There’s really not enough Thanksgiving movies to make a theme out of that (and Thanksgiving’s not necessarily in November, Americans), but this year marks my all-time favourite TV show “Doctor Who”’s 60th anniversary, so I’ve hit upon the idea of reviewing films that have actors who played The Doctor in them, and we’ll start with a twofer: Jon Pertwee (in a big part) and William Hartnell (in a minor part) in a film adaptation of the stage farce Will Any Gentleman …?.

The problem with film adaptations of stage plays that are farces is that the energy doesn’t translate well, and of course now this 1953 film is so dated that it’s almost 100 percent laughter-free. There’s a lot of “stagey” overacting, though Pertwee and Hartnell are not among the guilty parties, and neither is lead star George Cole.

The underlying story is a simple one: mild-mannered bank clerk Henry Sterling (Cole) is trying to repay a small debt his brother Charley (Pertwee) owes the owner of a music hall. He gets roped into attending the show, gets pushed up on stage where “The Great Mendoza” (Alan Badel) hypnotizes him to remove his inhibitions. Things go a bit wrong and the show is closed before Mendoza can un-hypnotize anyone, leaving Sterling and another man with mixed personalities.

Sterling randomly alternates between his normal self and his wild playboy persona, to the consternation of most of the people in his life and the amusement of a few (including his maid). Brother Charley slowly works out what has happened and retrieves Mendoza to undo the hypnotism, but not before many shenanigans and misunderstandings have happened, almost resulting in Sterling’s marriage collapsing and being arrested for stealing money from his bank.

The other man hypnotized by Mendoza and not brought out of it turns out to be an undertaker who is hypnotized to laugh at nearly everything — one of the few genuine funny surprises in the film.

If you had seen the stage play in the early 50s, I’m sure you would have laughed a lot — farces work much better in theatre because the energy of the cast brings the audience along with them. The film version also plays things mostly very broadly, with may characters being cartoonish in nature, apart from the aforementioned future Doctors and Cole, who does an expert job switching personas.

If you’d seen the film in the 1950s being aware of the stage version, you’d probably find this one funny as well. But this type of campy, stagey comedy is tricky to get right on film, and while there are a few movies of this sort that still retain their “suspension of disbelief,” qualities this one just seems like most of the cast are trying waaaay too hard, and the comedy fizzles.

“Manic” Sterling has plans for his maid, who is more than willing as her life is otherwise dull and lonely.

At this point, the only people who would seek out Will Any Gentleman …? are likely “Doctor Who” fans who want to see what Pertwee (33 at the time) and Hartnell (45) looked like when they were much younger (though people in the 1950s all seem to look “old” all the time to me), and of course fans of George Cole, who is the best part of this movie.

Pertwee plays the rogueish brother just right, and his colourful personality keeps his performance in line with the film but not exaggerated, while Hartnell as the only truly serious part in the movie (as a police detective) just reminds me that every film I’ve seen him in, he gives each of his characters something distinct from the others — in this he is a perfect foil for Pertwee and Cole, gruff but never crossing into exaggeration.

Three of my favourite British actors in a single picture.

It’s a pity that this doesn’t quite work, but it doesn’t — in part because of changing social morés around sexism, which is really the centerpiece of this one. It is of its time and reflects its stage origins, which bodes mostly badly for modern viewers.

Almost the entire cast, L to R: Sterling’s wife, mother-in-law, frantic bank manager, brother, Detective Inspector, hypnotist, (can’t remember the half-seen fellow), and overly dotty doctor. Missing: the maid.

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