Immer Ärger mit den Ladies

As a massive fan of 50s & 60s British films, I love this one. Clearly directed by a man & stereotypical but, hey, it was 1959. A simple humorous easy-to-watch film. In colour too !

The soundtrack blares out 'Girls in Arms' and you suspect this was the original title of the film, from the same people who'd made the nautical farce GIRLS AT SEA shortly before. Certainly 'Operation Bull' is only an incident toward the end of the picture.

Naunton Wayne is the exasperated Major Pym, in charge of a World War Two anti-aircraft unit with women in the majority. They can get little right, with some competing for the affections of ladies' man Lieutenant Brown - Donald Sinden in the days before he acquired that extraordinary accent. When his wife Betty - the adorable Barbara Murray - is somehow posted to the unit, mistaken identities, misunderstandings and compromising situations are the inevitable result.

This is a likable mixture of farce and time-honoured comical army routines. Dora Bryan loses her skirt on parade, while Peter Jones is a weapons enthusiast with an unintelligible Stanley Unwin-type patter. Some years later, Jones also featured in the crude and mirthless CARRY ON ENGLAND, which had a similar theme and identical ending. Best moments though are the scenes between Brown and Betty, their relationship complicated by man-hungry Carole Lesley.

This witless army farce was presumably shot under the title 'Girls in Arms' (since that's the name of the song bellowed under the opening and closing credits), before they decided it needed something more sophisticated. It also requires a fluffier leading lady than Barbara Murray.

Embellished with Technicolor (which makes the film look less cheap and provides the novelty of seeing Ronald Shiner & Naunton Wayne in colour) and set in wartime; but - apart from a few wartime posters and a gag involving a downed German airman - otherwise making absolutely no attempt to be in period.

If the leering emphasis on young ladies in their scanties hasn't already offended enough people, there's also the 'hilarious' presence of a troop member with a speech impediment!

From the starting credits of images of women in their underwear I knew this wasn't going to be a homage to the girls who served in WW2. Nearly all the women were shown to be sex crazed man eaters who stopped to apply lipstick when the base was being attacked rather than manning their posts. It is dated and full of cliché after cliché. Give it a miss.

For its time (1959, film censorship was still quite strong), "Operation Bullshine" is a fairly piquant comedy; it certainly anticipates the bolder sex farces of the 1960s, and even contains some discreet almost-nudity. The Technicolor cinematography is colorful, and the new Region 2 DVD transfer is quite pleasing to the eye. Unfortunately, the film does not have enough big laughs; only a sequence near the end, where all the men and women of the unit must prepare in record time for an upcoming inspection, has a real comic rhythm. There is not much story, either; the film is basically a series of episodes. Painless but not very memorable. ** out of 4.