The Great McGonagall

This is an update on my June 2003 comments which I had I posted based on my recollections of the videotape that I'd hired in the early 80's - but which I hadn't seen anywhere since.

So I was surprised to see the DVD listed for release in Australia in October (2004) and immediately ordered a copy. The text on the back of the DVD continues to mislead the viewer by referring to the film as "a high camp farce" and "cult British spoof". However it's clear after finding out more from the internet about McGonagall that the film is all based on the poet's autobiography - most of the circumstances are the same, they're just presented in a slightly absurd manner (but not much more absurd than the poetry itself). The poetry in the film is definitely the original McGonagall.

It's still a very funny film, and even before I found out that McGonagall was a real poet I appreciated the tragedy and pathos of the character. I think it was Spike Milligan who said that someone, or something, suffers in every joke that's ever been funny.

The DVD quality is very good considering the low price - so I'm hoping that Spike Milligan's "The Bed Sitting Room" can be made available too. Spike Milligan and William McGonagall had a lot in common in regard to their ability to make people laugh - but that was exactly the reaction Spike wanted, whereas William struggled to be taken seriously as a dramatic performance poet.

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.

Spike Milligan never got an even break. After he redefined comedy and pop culture on the radio with his scripts and performances on "The Goon Show," driving himself in the process to a nervous breakdown, he had to watch while his flabby "Goon Show" partner Peter Sellers became a film comedy superstar. By the time Milligan was well enough to try his own hand at film acting, it was already the 1970s and he had become passe.

His biggest stab at cinematic glory, "The Great McGonagall," reveals he might have gotten out of the looney bin a little too early. Portraying a talentless Scottish poet, Milligan overacts his way through a punchy script he co-wrote with director Joseph McGrath. Sellers appears too, as Queen Victoria, and ironically the two former Goons - who used to play dozens of roles apiece each week on the radio - stick to single characters while other actors, including Victor Spinetti of "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!," are given the task of performing multiple parts.

It's a strange film that breaks down in the second half, much the way Milligan must have in real life. Still, the script offers hints of the great Goonish humor that launched a comedy revolution.

"Knock, knock." Who says that? "A wee postman who canna reach the knocker," is the reply.

There's strange bits of self-indulgence, too. Scenes are broken up by actors shoving pies in each other's faces, and at one point Milligan forgets his line, whereupon the cameras continue to run as the director and other actors coach him on what to say. It's very bizarre, and might even be fascinating, but for the fact that the story on screen is too slender to brook such diversions.

Sellers, the one name actor in this film, is given little to do as Queen Victoria but perform reaction shots, and occasional witty lines like "Does anyone know a good solicitor" when her Prince Albert locks lips with a male messenger. The early 1970s were a dry period for Sellers, and "The Great McGonagall" was no exception. Albert wears a kilt but otherwise dresses like Hitler, a tiny joke which Milligan and the filmmakers beat into the ground. Valentine Dyall, a dead ringer for Ian McKellen, comes off best in a series of roles that include Alfred Lord Tennyson and a Zulu messenger.

"The Great McGonagall" no doubt amused its makers, who thought it would be funny to send up a bad poet endlessly mocked by fate and society, but on screen it's no "Ed Wood" of poesy. Its too disjointed, too mean-spirited. It's the product of a man who has seemingly given up on life, and wants to hit his audience upside the head with its sordid futility. Milligan, a comic genius who never got his due on screen, had reason to be depressed, but you do not. Give this a miss.

This movie uses the poems of William McGonagall in form of theater and fantasies to tell the story of this most famous bad verse poet who completely left his day job to become a poet and perform for Queen Victoria.

This movie is not for all tastes and definitely not a commercial type one, but if you can get into the subject and the style its hilarious!

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.