Orders Are Orders

Maybe Orders are orders, but service comedies are about disorder. An American film company invades a a British army base to make a Martian-Invasion movie, and proceeds to flimflam the people in charge to get their own way. It's a bit odd to hear Sid James essay a Brooklyn accent as the sleazy producer-director, but he's also got Margot Grahame as his star in a constantly changing role, as Colonel Raymond Huntley's wife,, and gum-chewing Britons of both sexes and scanty costumes abounding. With a rat in the barracks, Tony Hancock trying to practice a military band for a coming competition, Peter Sellers trying to make a few bob on the deal and a general coming to inspect the base, it's extremely frantic and even occasionally funny.

It's clearly a movie made for the British market, and how they landed Miss Grahame for this role is a bit of a mystery to me. It was her last regular film role. Three years later, she would take a part in Preminger's ambitious but ill-fated SAINT JOAN. She had been Britain's highest paid film actress in the 1930s, England's answer to Jean Harlow. Perhaps she had simply had enough and wanted to retire. She died in 1982 at age 80.

A run of the mill army barracks in Bilchester is overrun by a film company planning to make a Z grade science fiction movie. All seems to being going well as the pretty lady actors have the barracks in a tizzy and get the soldiers to play a part. That is until the Divisional Commander turns up for one of his inspections.

Tho far from being at the top of the cast list, this sub-standard remake of a 1933 film of the same name is of interest to see the names Peter Sellers, Sid James & Tony Hancock in the same movie. However, the truth is is that it's a poor movie that is directed badly by David Paltenghi and the source material really doesn't transfer well to the screen. Based on a play written by Ian Hay in 1932, the makers seems to think that by weaving chaotic scenes with chaotic shouty dialogue that that is going to make for a mirthful movie. It doesn't.

Released to DVD in 2007 as part of a collection called Long Lost Comedy Classics, this is easily the weakest of the set. Other titles in the collection are Miss Robin Hood, John & Julie, Make Me An Offer, The Love Match and the quite brilliant Time Gentlemen Please!. Orders Are Orders smacks of being a "set filler" and exists purely because of the names attached to it (Brian Reece, Margot Grahame & Raymond Huntley also star). 3/10 for Huntley's efforts and James' bizarre American accent

Having visited a plague upon us called 'Keep it Clean', director (I use the term loosely) David Paltenghi has again committed celluloid crime with 'Orders are Orders'. This is the film that introduced Tony Hancock to the silver screen. Based upon this performance he was lucky to work again. Thank God for Galton and Simpson! Sid James, who was destined to play such a pivotal role in Hancock's career has the worst American accent I have ever heard whilst Peter Sellers is simply underwhelming. What is amazing about Sellers is how he transformed himself physically in his perverse desire to be a sex symbol! Where on earth Brian Reece came from and where he went is of little or no interest. Stalwarts Raymond Huntley and Clive Morton are among those taking the money and running. The ghastliness of the female contingent beggars belief. It is now my avowed intention to avoid this dreadful director's output entirely or I shall be carried out screaming and not with laughter!

This a fairly unremarkable film from the era except for the presence of the two (later) major stars - but well worth seeing for the jewel of a performance from Sellers. Both went on to make their names in comedy but this meeting on film was to be the one and only. Did each or either sense that the other was a potential rival? Their parts here are completely without interaction. Thereafter their paths diverged, Sellers became a bigger and bigger name in cinema and Hancock instead found success on television. Very interesting to compare and contrast the two performers and performances.

Both had had success on radio playing a wide range of characters (voices). Sellers though excelled as comic character actor of chameleon like abilities as can be seen here but was never a comedian with his own comic personna. Hancock however was more comedian than character actor other than briefly burlesqueing a range of (much) earlier British film star performers. With the aid of comedy writers Alan Simpson and Ray Galton Hancock did go on to establish a comic personna - not apparently too far away from his real self - but in time became uncomfortable surrounded by a regular cast and finally - but most memorably and successfully - became the sole star of his show. The demons however did not stop, he became dissatisfied with the character and format but was tragically unable to find a successor. Hancock was an acknowledged genius but with an elusive ill-definable talent. Here he looks uncomfortable and uncertain unsupported by a hit and miss script. He was never to find his feet in films, perhaps the validation of a live audience had been essential to calm his insecurities.

In contrast Seller's performance was as complete and brilliant as it ever was, unsurprisingly he became a film star in his own right within a few short years. Few could have failed to notice his talent here as half of a crafty fiddling duo of barrack orderlies (the other half the excellent comic character actor Bill Fraser). Their short scene together about 50 minutes in, with Brian Reece as the amorous Captain, is a jewel and as complete, self-assured and accomplished as anything Sellers subsequently did for Ealing, with this part of the script at least fitting like a glove.

Some reviewers scoff at the threadbare nature of the supposedly big American Sci-Fi feature shot at the barracks but this is to misunderstand almost everything. Clearly the fictional production was a very very budget affair, actual manned space flight was then still 3 years away. And Britain itself in 1954 was threadbare - rationing had only finished 2 years earlier and the film markets and actual budgets were around 10% of their American equivalents. That being said, the biggest grandest pre-war science fiction film of all "The Shape of Things to Come", was British, born apparently of a highly advantageous tax arrangement. Again, oddly, American budget sci-fi and pot-boiler feature films of this era were very adept at looking far grander than their actual budgets.

For fans, watch this film to see the earliest appearance of the mega-star Sellers was to become. Either sit through or skip through the mainly "chaotic and shouty" parts another reviewer nicely describes.

*Sellers had made 3 earlier films, zany unsuccessful very low budget affairs with his then {radio) "Goonshow" comrades, remembered now more for their names than the merits of the films.

Incredibly enough this was the second film version of an ancient army farce 'satirising' the film business. It's one of those rare films with an Introducing credit that actually counts for something, since it's Tony Hancock who's being introduced; and he gets the final close up. However, it was not an auspicious film debut since when he took his wife to see it at the Astoria in Charing Cross Road and asked if he'd be able to get in, was told "Get in? You can have the whole circle if you want it"! Hancock's future TV co-star 'Sidney' (as he was then billed) James playing yet another of the Americans he was then typecast as himself dismissed it as "a bit of a stinker".

It's more interesting to watch now than it was at the time since in addition to Hancock & James so many of the cast later made their mark on TV, including Bill Fraser, Gerald Campion and Eric Sykes (whose only screen credit is for additional dialogue). Maureen Pryor is memorably laconic as the gum-chewing continuity girl in trousers; and even Donald Pleasance puts in a fleeting appearance.

And of course there's a plump young Peter Sellers who a dozen years later reprised this film's plot for 'After the Fox' as well as guesting in Hancock's final completed film, 'The Wrong Box'.