Ask a Policeman

Because "Oh Mr Porter" was filmed two years earlier, it gets more favour from the critics, but although this film was a reworking of that plot, it stands up equally, if not better. -

There are so many great scenes. My favourite being when Harbottle (Marriott already playing a much older man) takes them to see his father, played by himself. Just shows what a superb actor he was. - The print quality seems a little worse for wear in places. Probably due to over use!

The small English village of Turnbottom Round prides itself on being the safest place in the United Kingdom. All due to the crack law enforcement team of Will Hay and his two second bananas Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt. In fact they're so good they haven't made any arrests in ten years, didn't even pick up a drunk for a night to sleep it off. They even have a BBC broadcast to celebrate this town and its peaceful nature and peaceful cops.

But someone decides this little sinecure has gone on long enough. What to do, but create some crime. But these three muck up traffic arrests.

Their salvation of sorts might be a suspected smuggling ring which has taken advantage of the lax police work and operates with impunity. Not that Turnbottom Round PD does anything really but the bad guys are rounded up in spite of Hay and his staff.

Some really funny sequences including the BBC broadcast where no one can quite get the use of the microphone right, the search for the smugglers, the attempts at enforcing traffic laws and how that works out and the final chase scene where Turnbottom Round's finest commandeer a bus for their pursuit.

This nicely done Will Hay comedy could have been a model for Police Academy movies.

What a comedy! This is a movie that had me laughing from beginning to end. Even after all these years the one line gags from Will Hay are superbly timed. The movie plot about smugglers is good but all three main characters make this film a real hoot as local village policemen. I have this on video and watch it regularly if I need a laughter pick-me-up! Classic line, they need to arrest someone to prove the village needs a local bobby, Moffatt suggests Guy Faulkes, to which Will Hay replies "he's not a criminal, he invented fireworks" brilliant!

Please watch it, you'll love it.

Turnbotham Round has no crime, something that becomes common knowledge after a radio programme is broadcast from the village. Upon hearing this broadcast, the top brass at Scotland Yard send word that if there is no crime there, then why employ policemen to police the village? Realising that their good lives are about to come to an end, inept coppers Dudfoot (Will Hay), Brown (Graham Moffatt) and Harbottle (Moore Marriott) set about making some arrests. What they hadn't bargained for was the uncovering of a smuggling ring and the unleashing of the phantom headless horseman.

Much like Will Hay's Good Morning, Boys (1937) followed a similar formula to that of one of his earlier pictures, Boys Will Be Boys (1935), so it be with Ask A Policeman in that it has close links with critics fave, Oh Mr. Porter! (1937). However, that in no way is a bad thing because Ask A Policeman is utter joy from start to finish. In fact I would go so far as to say that the writing is actually better here. With a writing team consisting of Marriott Edgar, Sidney Gilliat, Val Guest and J.O.C. Orton, it's no wonder that the gags come thick and fast and still hold up over 80 years later.

Marcel Varnel once again directs Hay and his blunderingly magnificent sidekicks, Marriott and Moffatt, and each of them are on terrific form as they within a heartbeat lurch from incredulity to stupidity. They are helped by the story and its delightful supernatural set ups. These coppers have been having it easy for so long they have forgotten just what it takes to be a copper. More content with bending the rules for an easy life (note some nice satire in the writing), these guys are suddenly faced with the supernatural and actual real crime. Something they are delightfully unable to properly cope with. From trying to set up a roadside speeding arrest to an attempt at solving an ancient smugglers rhyme, Ask A Policeman, courtesy of an across the board team on fire, is to my mind one of the greatest British films of all time. So pay attention to the jokes and admire the visual comedy that goes with them, and then hopefully you too will appreciate just what genius Hay and his cohorts brought to British comedy between 1936 to 1940. 10/10

Wacky British humor abounds in this story of three bumbling policemen (including a very old man and a very overweight youth) who run the tiny station in the quiet (so quiet there's nothing out at night except, of course, the night-riding "Headless Horseman") English village of Turnbottom Round where there has not been a single arrest made in over ten years. Promoting with pride this lack of crime on a radio program one evening, the next day the station gets a notice from the chief constable that their station is no longer needed, the policemen working there to be "retired or transferred". So - our three officers come up with the idea to *create* some crime, first putting up a local "speed trap", then later getting mixed up with a gang of real smugglers.

This film is, yes, quite silly, but very entertaining and amusing - boosted up considerably by the three actors who play the policemen. They seem to have a real camaraderie and rapport with each other, all look like they're having a great deal of fun making this. One very funny scene has the oldest policeman visiting, of all things, his even older father - played by the same actor, dressed up in bed with long white beard. One missed bit of humor I thought they could have done here though - they mention that the father still has a living wife and I thought it would have been funny if they had the same actor dress as her too and come out into the room. In fact, that is what I was expecting when the woman was mentioned, but it didn't happen - ah well. A quite humorous and enjoyable film.