Don't Panic Chaps

Having just made two extremely grim war movies ('The Camp on Blood Island', followed by 'Yesterday's Enemy') it probably came as quite a relief for Hammer Films to make this innocuous little pacifist comedy set in the Adriatic, which the exceptionally fine summer weather of 1959 probably helped them get the location work on Chobham Common in the can so quickly and bring the whole production in for a mere £75,000. (Plenty of the IMDb's own plot synopses spoil their own plots, and both Dennis Price and then Nadja Regin make their 'unexpected' appearances quite late in the film; particularly Ms Regin.)

Hammer Films has in the past been criticised for its racial insensivity in casting the likes of Christopher Lee as a Chinaman in 'The Terror of the Tongs', but here we get Dennis Price making no attempt at an appropriate accent (we're told that he went to Oxford), supposedly playing a German officer; later followed by a Serbian actress playing an Italian. (The film also contains a degree of explicit nudity we wouldn't see again in a Hammer Film until the 1970s; too bad it's George Cole rather than Nadja Regin!)

As I've been watching the Hammer films along with the "House of Hammer" podcast, two words have begun to strike terror in my heart. It's not "Dracula" and "Frankenstein", it's not even "Lee" and "Cushing". The words "Wartime" and "Comedy" though will bring me out in cold sweats. But maybe "Don't Panic Chaps!" will be the opposite and succeed where your "I only Arsked" and "Up The Creek" failed so miserably. Nope... it's maybe the worst of the lot.

A small group of British soldiers are sent to a tiny island in the Adriatic with instructions to watch for enemy movements ahead of refocusing efforts from North Africa into Southern Europe. They eventually discover that they share the island with a small group of German soldiers, who were guarding a cache of supplies, but seem to have been forgotten by German command. As both groups are of similar size and temperament, rather than fighting to death or capture, the German command proposes a truce, and that they share resources until someone, from either side, comes to collect them.

I've not made it sound very funny from that plot synopsis and that was clever on my behalf as indeed it's not very funny. There is a bit a of farcical element to it, as the English discover that the Germans are there, and then later when the decide to make an idiot cook. Later, inexplicably, a woman - Elsa, played by Nadja Regin - washes up on the island. She doesn't actually advance what little plot there is and only really appears to be there so the boys (and presumably us in the audience) can go "Phwoaaaar". You also get to see George Cole's naked bottom, if somehow that was on your bucket list.

What I'm saying is that this is rubbish. It's the first act of a premise of a story - but again it's one that goes nowhere leading to a particularly anticlimactic ending. I've wondered, with these comedies, whether it's all just timing and that it would have had them rolling in the aisles back in '59, but it appears the reviews of the time thought this was awful too. They were right.

Don't Panic Chaps is directed by George Pollock and adapted to screenplay by Jack Davies from the Radio Play written by R.G. Holroyd and M.G. Corston. It stars Dennis Price, George Cole, Thorley Walters, Terence Alexander, Nadja Regin and Percy Herbert. Music is by Philip Green and cinematography by Arthur Graham.

Blimey! What a war, the Battle of the Sunbathers.

Amiable and pleasant British comedy that finds a small group of Brit soldiers commissioned to a remote Mediterranean island during WWII. However, when they encounter a small group of German soldiers holed up in a monastery they are offered a truce by the German commander and begin to live peaceably. That is until a gorgeous woman is washed ashore…

Underwear from the Byzantine Period.

The bickering and banter keeps the pic ticking along, Regin pops in to lower the testosterone levels, while the message about opposing sides being able to live in harmony is a good 'un. It's never uproariously funny and Cole's buffoon act wears thin long before the finale, but there is enough good here to warrant it a good time waster rating. 6/10

The best thing about this mildly-amusing film is the presence of several well-known actors, not least the reliable Percy Hibbert as a determined NCO - a higher rank than usual for him!

The film got sillier as it progressed and several times I wondered if the script could have been stronger.

As other reviewers have noted, two of the cast go swimming in the nude (one was to become a popular TV actor) and Talking Pictures (the British TV channel that specialises in old films) thought fit to blur their bottoms. I find it difficult to imagine that these fully exposed would offend anyone, but then we live in an age where great care has to be taken least one does.

A keen but not overly bright Lieutenant Terence Alexander is ordered to take up a position on an Adriatic island preparatory to the Allied invasion of Italy. He and his three soldiers are surprised to find a similarly sized German force under the command of Hauptmann Dennis Price. Fortunately they come to a cordial agreement to share and share alike; if the English are relieved first, the Germans will become their prisoners, and vice versa. Everything is fine until Nadja Regin washes up on shore.

It's slow to start, looking like a typical service comedy, until Price shows up. He's urbane, he likes his table, he attended Oxford, and he makes little effort to do a German accent. Instead, he gets the maximum out of his funny lines. Shot on the balmy strand of Walton-on-Thames, it's pretty funny by the time it's over. With George Cole, Thorley Walters, and Harry Fowler.