Up the Front

I have to say this film is a big disappointment especially when you see the actors in it. Frankie Howerd was always better with a live audience to bounce catchphrases off (he could make three jokes last over half an hour like that). This film also features stalwarts of the British film scene such as Stanley Holloway, William Mervyn, Bill Fraser, Dora Bryan and Lance Percival with early bit parts for Bob Hoskins and Mike Grady. Madeline Smith provides the love interest for most of the film as Fanny, loved by both Lurk (Howerd) and Groping (Fraser). Zsa Zsa Gabor turns up as Mata Hari which says a lot about the film and the state of Gabor's career at the time. Jonathan Cecil gives one of his best performances as the twit son of the family who becomes a spy and Hermione Baddeley is marvellous as the brothel madame. Gertan Klauber and Stanley Lebor play almost exactly the same characters as they play in Soft Beds, Hard Battles as slightly sinister but ultimately comic heavies. The story is basically about the spy stealing the German master plan for the war and the efforts of the Germans to get it back while the Brits try to get it to the General at HQ. It ought to have been a lot better. I do have a big soft spot for this film despite its failings.

Well, we had UP POMPEII - a Roman comedy based on his popular television series, and its sequel UP THE CHASTITY BELT (which updated the format to the Middle Ages), so now comes UP THE FRONT, featuring the same kind of shenanigans except this time taking place during WW1.

I was in two minds about this film before watching it, purely because I wasn't sure how a comedy set during one of the most tragic wars in history would play out. I needn't have worried; UP THE FRONT is as trivial and frivolous as ever, a series of lame gags just about held together by Howerd's front man.

I like Howerd, but this material is definitely beneath him. When a running gang about a goat is the highlight of your movie, you know you're in trouble. He blusters and shams his way through a series of painful, originality-free gags while a series of supporting actors (Bill Fraser, Dora Bryan, Lance Percival and Stanley Holloway) mug shamelessly. Even Zsa Zsa Gabor shows up (playing Mata Hari!) along with a youthful Bob Hoskins in his first film outing.

The paucity of both budget and imagination is evident in the uselessness of the script, which involves a secret map tattooed on Howerd's behind (interestingly, the idea was later borrowed for the spaghetti western, THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER). At the end of the day, this is a comedy with unfunny jokes, so it's not really worth sitting through.

Cor blimey guv....worra plot. I'm underwhelmed.

I don't care how long ago it was the people responsible for the main premise of this movie should be arrested. Honestly, it's criminal. Suffice to say the idea that Frankie has a "map" on his bottom filled me we dread from the off.

During WW1, a London boot boy called Lurk (Howerd) is hypnotised to save Britain from the Germans and has their master plan tattooed on his buttocks in order to get the information back to the British.

The second spin-off from the highly successful "UP POMPEII" sitcom is a truly ramshackle farce. It only ever provides faint amusement and the production values are strictly cardboard cut outs as is the direction of Bob Kellet who directed all three of the films spawned by the TV original. The best scene is where Dora Bryan dances with a German officer disguised as a doctor leaving him no choice but to join in with an English patriotic song much to his chagrin.

By the early 1980s Frankie Howerd's brand of comedy went into serious decline. He was frankly unfunny and it was only in the late 1980s he was re-discovered by young students as a cultish live comic.

Up the Front is an inferior version of the Lurk-a-lot films, a boot boy who ends up fighting Harry Hun in the first world war and ends up having some secret plans tattooed on his butt. He ends up meeting Mata Hari who tries to seduce him for the plans.

The film was co-written by the legendary Eddie Braben but it comes across as a low rent Carry On movie with regular amounts of bawdiness even when they are up the front.

The cast includes Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lance Percival, Dora Bryan, Derek Griffiths, Bill Fraser and they are all too good for this material. Bob Hoskins makes a short early appearance.