Vote for Huggett

This is probably one of the better Huggett films, very fast paced and with an interesting storyline. Mr. Huggett with the help of Pet writes a letter to the paper about turning some spare land into a "lido" and the letter actually gets printed. Well, next thing you know, he's running for council! Turns out the land is government owned apart from one block, right in the middle, which belongs to Mrs. Huggett and cousin Diana, and nothing can be done without that, so all their opposition are trying to buy. Diana is all for selling, but Mrs. Huggett won't hear of it.

The best scene has to be where Susan and Peter figure out what's going on and set about fixing it - AND trapping Susan's womanizing boss at the same time. Hilarious!

In this last of the Huggett Family series, Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison have returned to the United Kingdom after their African sojourn in their previous film where oldest daughter Dinah Sheridan and her husband Jimmy Hanley went to South Africa for his new job. The Huggetts now with only two daughters at home Susan Shaw and Petula Clark are facing new challenges as Jack Warner decides to go into politics.

It all starts quite innocently enough when Warner writes a letter to the editor proposing that a bit of land be used to provide some kind of recreation park for use of people at all stages of life. Unbeknownst to him the missus owns a section of that land with her cousin Diana Dors and her husband and they see a chance for a quick killing.

If you think this sounds a bit familiar I think that someone saw Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and rewrote it a bit for the Huggett family. So when Huggett stands for the local community council against David Tomlinson it all blows up into a scandal. Like Jimmy Stewart who is being used by some unscrupulous men, Warner gets out of it with the help of friends and family.

Things wouldn't be complete without a song from Petula Clark who in those years was the UK's answer to Deanna Durbin.

The Huggetts ended their saga on a good note.

Property contracts were seemingly as central to the political process seventy years ago as they are today according to this mildly Capraesque entry in the Huggetts series in which a piece of land worth £300 (which eventually reaches the astronomical sum of £750!) is the prime mover behind local government political machinations in the fictional municipal borough of Strutham.

Fortunately, the producers realised that the whole "Huggett" concept had run it's course, and so before they got just a bit too silly, retired the family with this rather fun poke at the British local government system. This time, it's "Ma" (Kathleen Harrison) who finds that a plot of land she, and cousin "Diana" (Diana Dors) inherited by the riverside is required by the council to build a leisure centre. Reluctant to sell, she soon discovers that the proponent of this plan is none-other than her husband (Jack Warner) who made the proposal blissfully unaware that his own family owned the land... When he decides to stand for office to facilitate the development, there are allegations of profiteering being bandied about and he has to think on his feet. It's light-hearted fun, this film - it swipes at the inefficiencies and red tape that always seems to manage to thwart even the most consensually popular of projects, and with a fittingly concluding number from daughter "Pet" (Petula Clark) the series signs off as it ran - amusingly, amiably and with most of it's self respect still intact.

This was Huggetts film 3/4, all were solidly entertaining fun family fare. They're also fascinating in depicting a long dead world – you find yourself continually wondering what everyone involved would have thought about modern cosmopolitan Britain and how much or little they would have enjoyed it. Did people really prefer plaice to cod?

Sentimental old codger Dad Huggett has the bright idea (pre-Passport to Pimlico) of getting the local council to build a lido and park for the community to disport itself in. Unfortunately various posh vested interests weigh in, one side eventually persuading him to run as a councillor, the other side running a smear campaign. The family members little stories all dovetail nicely in what is a surprisingly complicated plot for this kind of film, but needless to write, Good wins out in the end! This role was just meat to Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison uttered some splendid malapropisms, Pet Clark sung a nice old song, Hubert Gregg played a sex-starved married man, and it's refreshing to see Diana Dors pre-sex bomb. Dad's seriously endearing comment to Ma "I can't abide pretty or clever women an' you're neither" to her delight still resonates all these years later.

Well worth watching to those of us who enjoy watching cheaply made British post-War b&w musical comedy semi soap operas.