The Great McGonagall

Interesting in an history of British comedy sense. It has a Goon Show cast does Monty Python skit feel. Unfortunately, it takes a concept that would have been appropriate for a five minute skit and stretches it out an additional hour and a half. A fine supporting performance by Peter Sellers and sporadic gratuitous female nudity (while appreciated) are insufficient to save this from being an albeit quirky and unique but simultaneously mediocre and repetitive low budget comedy.

As an aside, the video copy of this film that I purchased features a full cover picture of Peter Sellers and in the short synopsis on the reverse states that Sellers stars as The Great McGonagall. For the benefit of those of you who have yet to see the film, this is entirely incorrect. Peter Sellers plays the relatively small roll of Queen Victoria and Spike Milligan stars as McGonagall.

Firstly I ought to say that apart from me its hard to see who this film will appeal to. To really enjoy it i think that you have to love the real poet Mcgonagall (otherwise you will miss the hilarious fact that all the poetry read in the film is quite real and written seriously) and have to appreciate the very surreal pythonesque humor (such as Prince Albert being dressed as Hitler from the waist up). If your one of the dozen people who fit into both of these categories you will adore the film as I did. However I must say that the best part of it was just listening to Spike Milligan (and Queen Victoria!) reading Mcgonagall's poetry. Surprisingly given the absolute madness of the film the ending is actually very touching.

There is a classic volume edited by Wyndham Lewis and another entitled "The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse". The book illustrated the worst poets and poetry (in the opinion of the editors) in modern English literature (Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and Medieval masters like Chaucer, were not included). Incredibly the editors not only included poets who were deservedly forgotten (the bland and self-satisfied Martin Tupper, or Edward Foote, who footnoted his poems to verify what he meant, or Poet Laureates like Alfred Austin) some of the great poets slipped too. Wordsworth, Poe, Byron, Tennyson, Longfellow (for "Excelcior") were in the book. I recommend it for people who want to enjoy the pratfalls of poesy (which can be very odd indeed).

Oddly enough William MacGonigal is not included in the collection. Yet he is generally chosen as the example of the worst poet of Victorian Britain. He was the only one who never realized it. He was a dreamer - one day he was in bed and suddenly realized he wanted to be a poet...a great poet. He then proceeded to write poetry, and would do so until he died. There was absolutely nothing anyone of his serious contemporaries ever saw in his work to grant it merit. He certainly was not in the same category of Tennyson or Wordsworth or Byron (despite their occasional lapses). Yet he actually tried to become poet laureate. Given that (after Tennyson died in 1892) Alfred Austin finally got chosen (Wilde, Kipling, and William Morris were not considered politically correct enough for different reasons - Austin was a good Tory policy propagandist), MacGonigal could have served that political occasion job. He would have enjoyed it.

Today, actually, his poetry sells well (some say it sells better than Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, or Robert Browning). It has a beguiling beat, likened to calypso in rhythm. His fairly simple line of English vocabulary is quick to grasp among people struggling to learn our language. And (unlike Tennyson and most of the others) a movie was made about his life. Spike Milligan finally got the lead role in his career (remember "Postman's Knock" - I suppose not) that was worth remembering. Sellers was given an interesting cameo as Queen Victoria. Not a great film, but an interesting one.

This is the film that "Wind From the East" so desperately wanted to be. Deconstructs itself before your very eyes. Hilarious and mystifying. Spike Milligan and Joe McGrath were made for each other. And Peter Sellers is on board too. I find it hard to believe this classic of the Cinema of the Absurd is so little known. But then so is McGrath -- the Edgar G. Ulmer of British comedy. While Richard Lester is more associated with "The Goon Shpw" -- thanks to "The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film," it's McGrath who conveys the true Goonish sense of intellectual lunacy. The fact that the entire film is shot inside of a theater -- used to suggest the whole world -- is especially novel and fascinating.

This film is totally hilarious. The film is a loose adaptation of the life of William "Topaz" Mcgonagall, said to be the worst poet circa 1890. Milligan is excellent, playing the role with great determination. Spinetti is hilarious in at least 5 different roles. McGrath uses guerrilla filming tactics in his direction, sort of similar to his earlier film "The Magic Christian" also with Sellers, and Milligan. Peter Sellers pulls a sort of "Mouse that Roared" revival, this time playing the role of Queen Victoria. The VHS copy that I own is at least 25 years old. Hopefully Anchor Bay, Crtierion, or some other company will take note of the value of this film, and give it the release that it deserves.