Penny Points to Paradise

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.

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.

You probably wonder what i mean about "An Artist is Borne... and the Birth was not Very Good", the artist is Peter Sellers, and the birth is this movie 'Penny Points to Paradise', so simple is that.

The Goons first movie together is slightly better than there's second attempt at making one (Down Among the Z Men), and the characters is also slightly funnier, and the whole thing is just more lively in a way, but not perfect by a mile, most of the jokes fall flat, and sometimes it's just boring to look at. I frequently ask myself why Milligan and Secombe didn't gave the leading role to Sellers, it's obviously him that rule at being fun, it's hard to understand but there must have been a reason... and yes the story is pretty thin.

Sellers himself didn't like the movie at all, actually this was what he said about it... "It really was a terrifyingly bad film!' As you will see when you watch it" (sentence remembered by Vic Pratt, one of Sellers friends), I wouldn't use the same words as Sellers, I would rather say it's 60% bad and 40% good, because it's not utterly bad, but also it isn't so good that you want to buy it, it's more like a movie you rent, and just watch because it's Peter Sellers first feature film... if your a fan of him or The Goons, it's a (MUST-SEE)

British actors peter sellers and spike milligan. The first 25 minutes, it's mostly a bunch of silly vaudeville bits, some of them even silent movie type gags, where the piano plays as the physical slapstick humor is shown. Now, we finally see a plot begin to unfurl. Harry (secombe) has won the sweepstakes, and a flim flam artist (sellers, playing two different roles) is out to find the stash of money. Then more vaudeville bits under the guise of a hypnotist. There are about 40 minutes of actual story, and another 40 of filler and silliness. The first feature film directed by tony young. It's all ridiculous and amateur hour. Can't really recommend this one, although it is early sellers and milligan, so their fans should see it, for historical reasons.

I was never a fan of the Goons, but I'm a sucker for anything that looks remotely obscure so thought I'd give this early effort of theirs a go. It's quite good, with some inspired moments to be found amongst the more mundane material. Secombe and Milligan play a couple of innocents, one of whom has won £100,000 on the pools, who return to their holiday boarding house in Brighton only to find themselves the target of gold-diggers and con-men. Highlights include the rather well-built Paddy O'Neill pulling off a clever Bette Davis impersonation, and Freddie Frinton as a drunk who angrily berates the person he's talking to for walking away from him without realising he is actually the one staggering backwards (well, I thought it was funny, anyway). Although he has a couple of parts, Peter Sellers does little other than announce to the world his insuperable skill at making a limited comic talent stretch an