Home and Away

Dismissed by the late David Shipman as "another clinker from the same bunker as 'Where There's a Will'" and scarier than most of Vernon Sewell's horror films. It all feels as if it happened about a million years ago.

Technically it's a comedy, but as most previous reviewers have commented it actually takes a grim view indeed of working class life in a row of terraced houses in the fifties as the cast squabble over a pools win.

Thora Hird is on hand to create the same menace she later brought to 'A Kind of Loving', while the cast also includes an unrecognisable teenaged Kate O'Mara (billed as 'Merrie Carroll') in a gymslip and the only postwar film appearance of former silent comedian Leslie Henson in a high collar.

Home and Away is directed by Vernon Sewell and Sewell co-writes the screenplay with Heather McIntyre and R.F. Delderfield. It stars Jack warner, Thora Hird, Kathleen Harrison, Lana Morris, Charles Victor and Valerie White. Music is by Robert Sharples and cimematography by Basil Emmott.

A working class British family's luck seems to have turned when the father hits the jackpot on the football pools...

How wonderfully quaint and of its time, this harks back to an era when all the family lived under one roof, where the patriarch's opinion held sway and any woman who was remotely flighty was looked down upon. This was before the lottery's of the world started to take a hold and dangled riches beyond compare to the lucky winners. Back here in the 1950s there was The Football Pools, a coupon you would fill out in the hope of toting up enough points from football match predictions of the week and snag the jackpot. Hope springs eternal...

George Knowles (Warner) thinks he has finally cracked it, and thus the celebrations begin - but then there's a twist and the film kicks on to something more darker in tone. It's the reactions of all involved that keeps this ever watchable, the humour derived from the catty barbs the women throw at each other, and then the male foibles also come to the fore. The message of money as poison is deftly played, as is the family values angle, and while it doesn't finish off with a bang, pic has a comforting feel that has made worth the time investment. 6.5/10

This is a well observed and tightly scripted piece. Yes it probably is more suited to stage than film but this is beautifully performed and a masterclass in comic timing. One reviewer here felt it necessary to describe it as misogynistic. The women here don't need defending from today's woke, revisionist perspective thank you very much. They are the ones in charge.

It is a comedy of manners, a social document illustrating class and gender rolls of its time and it shouldn't be dismissed or devalued because things are different today.

Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison played the Huggets in a series of Rank forties films and also a BBC radio series which i remember used to start at around 2pm on the BBC Home Programme right after The Billy Cotton band show.So although they are not called The Huggets in this film thats what they are.Warner always called his wife ma and Harrison used to call Warner Dad.They were good stolid citizens and presumably were meant to represent how most working class families behaved.The fact is that with both Warner and Harrison both in their late fifties at the time of this film they were more likely to be Grandma and Grandpa.All anyone in this film seems to do is squabble and quite frankly by the end it becomes extremely tedious.

When Bernard Fox wins a tidy sum on the football pools, his family and friends -- parents Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison, sisters Lana Morris and Kate O'Meara, neighbors Charles Victor and Thora Hird -- are ready to celebrate. Nothing, however, is ever simple when it comes to money.

It's a class-conscious and misogynistic comedy as the women wrangle over money and snipe at each other, particularly Margaret St. Barbe West as Miss Harrison's parvenu and money-hungry sister, and Valerie White as the sleazy mother of Fox' partner in the ticket. Warner and Harrison are fine in their sweet spots as a married couple; they had co-starred in four or five movies in the "Hugget Family" series. Clearly this movie was cast to take advantage of their star pairing.

I found it more harrowing than funny, with an assortment of unlikable women slanging each other. It shows its origins on the stage very clearly, with almost all of it taking place on one set, with a few scenes shot outdoors near the end.