Penny Points to Paradise

This film represents Peter Sellars first screen role and is some inspired, if amateurish, madness from 'the Goons'. (for those who don't know, the Goon show was an hilarious radio show broadcast in England in the 50's, it featured Peter Sellars, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe, who all feature in this film) The plot is a vague story about counterfeiting but it is mainly a framework on which to hang the off kilter jokes and wordplays that are the goons trademarks. Harry (Harry Secombe) wins some money in the pools and decides to go on holiday to bristol with his friend Spike (Spike Milligan). However some dastardly counterfeiters try to relieve him of his winnings. Meanwhile Peter Sellars plays 3 different comic roles foreshadowing his multiple roles in films of the future. This film is simple and low-budget, however it has genuine laughs. I recommend it for any fan of any of the three Goons. (Although prints seems to be extremely rare as I am the only person I have encountered who has seen it!)

An odd mixture: cheap and quickly made, a strange mixture of clichés piled on top of each other, old (and stolen) jokes and improvisations. Harry Secombe has won £100,000 on the football pools, but still goes to Brighton with his pal, played by Spike Milligan, for his usual holiday at at their usual nightmarish guest-house. Two girls already there set up as gold-diggers, a confidence trickster sets out to get his money from him and a pair of counterfeiters (one- Alfred Marks- doing a W.C. Fields impersonation) follow them for the same purpose. The plot is just a thread to hang a set of gags on. The only trouble is, the gags aren't very original or very good. There are one or two moments when they are on the edge of the surreal comedy that they achieved in The Goon Show or they might fly off into farce, but it nearly always fails. A short scene when Secombe, hypnotised to think he is a soprano, and one of the girls, thinking she is a bass, sing a duet is genuinely funny as are moments when all of them and a pair of comic policemen run round a waxworks museum, but on the whole they don't seem to have had the knowledge of film, the confidence or the time to work out something good, though so often they seem just on the edge of it.

Harry Secombe has won a hundred thousand pounds in the football pools, but he and Spike Milligan choose to take their Brighton holiday at the same shoddy guest house...and the gold diggers and con artists come a-trooping, including Peter Sellers in two roles.

The three of them had just taken the airwaves by storm with CRAZY PEOPLE; the following year it would become THE GOON SHOW. This movie is right in the mold, with old jokes, retired majors, and a musical interlude. It also has some silent pantomime sequences with organ accompaniment. While it occasionally veers into the surreal humor of the show, it's neither particularly original nor well put together. Still, it offers Secombe's third screen appearance, Milligan'sfirst and Sellers first in a manner of speaking.... he had done two voices in earlier pictures.

This film is an odd mixture of about fifty/fifty success and failure, but manages to remain quite enjoyable withal: Monty Python, however, it ain't.

It's a somewhat odd experience for those, such as myself, with only a passing acquaintance with the Goons, to see them in person rather than just as radio voices. I had no idea that Harry Secombe was so short, for instance, or Spike Milligan could be so unexpectedly good-looking. And they take advantage of the new medium to experiment with some purely visual comedy, for example Secombe's mimed surgical operation. The hit rate for this, though, is about the same as for the verbal humour: about half of it worked for me and the other half didn't.

The most consistently impressive performer is Alfred Marks, who appears to be channelling Alistair Sim in his role as a smooth criminal mastermind; his derogatory relationship with the sidekick he calls 'Laddie' is almost invariably hilarious. The statuesque Paddy O'Neill's impression of Bette Davis is also wickedly apt, while she and Vicki Page as Sheila have a good double-act going. The Goons have a tendency towards being manic just for the sake of it (epitomised in the speeded-up sequences, a form of Keystone Kops comedy that just doesn't work for me at all) but come up with some nice sequences.

The history of the print we saw was chequered, the picture having been cut for re-issue under the title "Penny Points" with some of the footage surviving only in 16mm format (and apparently extra footage of Peter Sellers interspersed to take advantage of his increased fame!) The differing quality of certain scenes did, however, provide the opportunity to see just what had been cut; largely plot-development and dialogue scenes between the set-piece gags, by the look of it, and certainly the restoration gives the impression of being an improvement.

By and large I found this film about as funny as the average Goon Show episode (which were always a bit haphazard), although not as funny as the best of them... but then I'd been told to expect the worst by two separate people before the screening started, and was consequently quite pleasantly surprised! Provided you don't expect too much this film is quite enjoyable, and manages to avoid being tedious or annoying throughout.

I have seen most of the films of Peter Sellers and recently went to YouTube to see if they had any of the missing ones. Several of his early films are there...and it's obvious they were intended to be seen by British audiences. So, it's not exactly fair to say my score of 3 is for everyone....more for how enjoyable the film would be to Americans. And, with the very thick accents (with no captions) and British vaudeville-style comedy, it was a chore to see this one. To put it bluntly, I disliked it. It didn't help that the film was mad in only three weeks and featured an upright piano score....the sort you'd expect to see if you were watching a broad slapstick comedy from bygone days. Overall, a real chore to watch and little indication of the brilliance Sellers would show in later films...and in this one, he's just a supporting character.