Bottoms Up

I would like to know why such a good film never gets put on the television anymore. It was a good old classic comedy and if anyone from the BBC sees this perhaps they would show it for us all again to watch instead of seeing the other movies time and time again. come on please help us to have it shown again.

One of the most under - rated of 1950s British film comedies, 'Bottoms up', is a spin - off from the TV series 'Whacko', and an early example of the new fast developing genre, television, spawning a 90 minute offering for the cinema, the latter sadly in decline at the time.

'Bottoms up' must have delighted the beleaguered cinema goers of 1959, and is still a delight to watchers on DVD six decades later. The central characters are perfectly cast. 'Professor' Jimmy Edwards (an Oxbridge MA in real life) reprises his role of the blustering, cane - welding headmaster who only succeeds in whacking his Assistant Headmaster, the latter played to hapless, dithering perfection by Arthur Howard. Martita Hunt is the new Chair of Governors who threatens a 'regime change' unless there is a marked turn around in the school's fortunes, another memorable 'battle axe' performance by the screen's best Miss Havisham.

The plot is the hoary old chestnut of a foreign prince enrolling in the school, an idea lifted from 'The Belles of St Trinians', five years earlier (naturally a princess on that occasion). However, its treatment in this film is hilarious, Melvyn Hayes as a fake prince with a marked cockney accent, caped in oodles of brown face paint. Naturally, the real prince turns up!

In truth, the rather wobbly storyline doesn't really matter: a sparkling script (Muir and Norden much in evidence), extremely effective interactions of the characters, and first rate, highly authentic sets all contribute to an eminently watchable film. It's also a fascinating experience for imdb aficionados. Look out for future comedy great Richard Briers, as the new master, and take a good look at the 'leader' of the boys - yes, it really is Mitch Mitchell, legendary drummer for Jimi Hendrix, aged 12, sporting a short back and sides!

Jimmy Edwards is the headmaster of a third-rate public school -- for Americans, that means a private school. He believes in beating the boys for any offense and none. Eventually, they revolt.

It's a feature-length version of Edwards' TV show, WHACK-O. I've never seen it, but found that his blustery character palled on me over ninety minutes. It's certainly possible that at the shorter length of TV sitcom, it was more palatable. Apparently, the show, which ran eight seasons from 1956 through 1972, for a total of 60 episodes, would have Edwards attempting to steal the boys' pocket money, like a futile Sgt. Bilko.

Other notable players include Martitia Hunt, Sidney Taffer and John Stuart.

I never saw the movie until now, 2020, and 60 years hasn't aged it one bit. I remember seeing the TV show but, have never seen the movie.

Thanks to political correctness (the laws of which I've yet to see), movies have had to constrain themselves at times. Stupidity is allowed ala American tripe yet, intelligent, comedic movies are torn to shreds because they speak of, everything.

Thankfully modern comedians, male and female, are speaking about everything, and making everything normal and funny once more, something that has been lacking over the past 20 years or so.

This movie is bloody funny, if one looks closely enough. One will see the boys trying to hide smiles while working against a giant peer of his time. Everything works if one has an open mind. Like everything else, if the mind is closed, it sees nothing.

I loved it.

'If....' was a shameless plagiarism of 'Zero de Conduite', but Mario Zampi had already anticipated the anarchistic shenanigans of Anderson's film (aided and abetted by his regular collaborator Michael Pertwee, whose abrasive cynicism had already complemented Zampi's genial good humour on several previous occasions and who's script here manages to reference both Castro and the volatility of the Middle East) with far less conceit and self-regard in this big screen version of the TV series 'Wacko!'

Jimmy Edwards' venal and sadistic headmaster with a taste for corporal punishment was already a long-established comic figure in a tradition that extended back at least as far as Beachcomber's Narkover stories and the films of Will Hay (to whom the presence of Martita Hunt provides a direct visual link).