Dry Rot

Shout your lines, misunderstand everything that is said to you. Lots of cameo appearances of stock British Actors. I guess a lot of this would work better live in a theatre , Dry Rot was a long running London theatre production. But on the big screen it all seems laboured , jokes telegraphed in advance.

I never intentionally went to see a Brian Fix film in the cinema,however I did go to see Ronnie Shiners films.For some reason I found him funny.In this film neither is funny.Did James played a bookie,now there's typecasting.Lee Paterson played a romantic lead and Michael Shelley played the sort of part he had played for all his career.Not so much dry as dull rot.

The biggest problem with this movie is the run time. It's almost two hours long and the 'Three Stooges' impersonations get tiresome after the halfway mark.

But what lifts this up is the rather excellent script. The screenplay has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments but it's unfortunately buried beneath the overplayed performance of the farcical slapstick scenes.

The casting of the characters also lifts this fim... especially Sid James who is a joy to watch on film regardless of what he does or who he is... and here, he is 'Flash Harry!'

Despite a long career, Ronald Shiner is too old to play his part here... and Brian Rix was just starting out on his journey to stardom. However, the satellite characters keep this flick moving along. Brilliant Michael Shepley and Joan Haythorne as Colonel Wagstaff and his detached wife, Joan Sims as Beth the cleaner and there are others.

But like I say, it's just too long and even a 9-year-old boy eventually has to say that enough is enough when it comes to the relentless parade of theatrical slapstick.

My sense of humour must have changed quite a radically since I was 9 years old when I first saw this farce on stage at the Whitehall theater with my late parents with (if I can remember back 56 years ago), Leo Franklin in the part of Sid James.Yes, Brian Rix was in the cast and yes he lost his trousers in good old farce style.In fact I cannot think of Brian Rix in another dramatic role when il ne perdu pas ses pantalons!So After 55 years I bought this film out of curiosity to find out whether I would find any humour still existing in 2011.The answer was only mild echoes from my youth.We had very primitive humour before they were sharpened on Monty Python, Blackadder, satire and modern fearless stand up comedy from the likes of Ben Elton, Bernard Manning et all.

What I did find of interest was seeing Lee Paterson whose most famous role was as Group Capt.Turner, the Canadian fighter pilot from the film "Reach for the Sky" (1956) starring Kenneth More and Heather Sears as "Susan" in "Room at the Top" starring Lawrence Harvey.Sid was Sid James and Ronald Shiner played his usual ignorant cockney role.

Obviously the film has outside location scenes not possible in a theatre production especially shots of Sandown Park racecourse.Had I written this review when I was 9, I would have scored it 8/10 but now alas, I rated it only 5/10 as the humour seemed very primitive to my aging eyes.

Dry Rot has its funny moments, but the trouble is it just seemed to go on forever, perhaps the gags got a little laboured towards the end of the film, but it still contains a few laughs. Only in it for a small part, but Peggy Mount makes a hilarious Policewoman, in the commanding, domineering battleaxe manner that served her so well. The principle leads are ok, Sid's perhaps the best of the trio, for my money he had more charisma and a better eye for comedy then the other two. Joan Sims is so likeable as hapless housekeeper Beth, but I suppose there were only so many trays she could drop. The script is really good, plenty of slapstick, feels like a grounding for the earliest Carry on films.

It's not a film I'd rush to watch again soon, but I liked it. Cheered me up, 7/10