The Night We Dropped a Clanger

As a young schoolboy growing up in Manchester during the late 1950's I always looked forward to the screening of a Brian Rix farce on television. My father was a great fan of his and we both loved to watch Brian and his wife Elspet Gray in any "Whitehall Farce" the BBC screened, usually at Christmas.

Consequently, I was looking forward to watching this film very much. Sadly, I was greatly disappointed by this particular effort. The film had very little humour and an even poorer storyline.

The production values were bad and the comedic talents of comedians such as Hattie Jacques, Cecil Parker and Leslie Phillips utterly wasted.

Worth watching only if you are a die-hard fan of Mr.Rix. Perhaps, his other films are better ... let us hope so.

Once upon a time Brian Rix held sway at the Whitehall Theatre.He had one infallible trick to make people laugh which was to take down his trousers.He doesn't do it in this film so maybe that is why it is so hopelessly unfunny.This despite having the talents of Leslie Phillips and Cecil Parker in the cast.The first quarter of an hour is bearable but perhaps that is because Rix is trying to play it straight.After that it is all downhill.In fact this is a lame take off of "I Was Montys Double" so much that Clifton James who played Montys double in that film also has a brief cameo in this.Just compare this with say Some Like It Hot which came out about the same time and you will see just how far Hollywood the British film industry was trailing.

Brian Rix is Military Intelligence's secret weapon, sure to shorten the war five years. At the moment, he's investigating the German buzz bombs that have been dropping out of the sky. He decides he needs to go behind the lines in Germany, to where they are being produced. The problem is that he is now known to the Germans. So he insists that the government produce a double for him. They find one in Brian Rix, of course. He's a perpetual private on clean-up, since he was a janitor before the Wwar, and no more impressive now. He will be sent publicly to Egypt, so the other Rix can operate in the shadows. But first they have to train the private to behave convincingly like the officer.

It was just Rix's meat. He was best known for a series of very popular Whitehall farces, on stage and television. That probably wasn't why he was made a Life Lord; he and his wife worked for several charities for the mentally handicapped, and for chairing the Arts Council's Drama Panel after he retired from acting for his public and charitable work. He died in 2016 at the age of 92.

Other expert farceurs in the company include Cecil Parker, William Hartnell, Leslie Phillips, and Liz Fraser.

I was surprised to see this made in 1959 as the premise would better fit 1949. However despite all the cringemaking low humour the film is worth watching to see how 'backward' England was in those days. The V1 star seems very realistic as did the farn setting. The pomp, idocy and waste of the military show why so many names are on war memorials. All the soldiers wore thoser stupid little forage caps - what idiot designed them! I'm watching while on 2020 COVID lockdown and in happier times the film may lose its appeal.

Although you can still find amusement in this farce (The misheard "Hitler is in his bunker" still seems outrageously near the knuckle for such a family film), It's difficult to appreciate how successful this film was when it was originally released. The situations all seem rather tame or childish and exploit scenarios and interplay between characters that may strike anyone under the age of fifty as peculiarly obtuse. The slapstick just seems needlessly timid. All that siad, audiences loved it when it was released, perhaps you will too.