Let's Go Crazy

According to IMDB, "Let's Go Crazy" was a hastily improvised movie that marks the first onscreen appearance by Peter Sellers. It seems that studio space was rented to make a movie and the movie was completed well ahead of schedule. So, in order to make the most of the space they paid for anyway, Peter Sellers and his friends quickly organized this short film. It consists of mostly of some comedy skits with Sellers playing various characters (including Groucho Marx) as well as quite a few local musical acts.

So is it any good? Well, considering how quickly it was tossed together, the movie is understandably rough. A few of the skits were very rough...such as the overly slapstick opening musical number which seemed more at place on a burlesque stage than on film. And, while I really enjoy much of Sellers' later work, his skits are VERY tough to love and come off as a bit amateurish. I did like the weird dance number with the older couple who mashed the snot out of each other...they were amazing and amusing acrobats. Overall, there's much more bad than good but the film IS well worth seeing for fans of Sellers, as it gives you insight into his early years where he was mostly an up and coming radio star...and occasional movie personality. Much more interesting as a curio than anything else.

After months of reading about this-Peter Sellers film debut, I think-I just finally watched this online. Sellers plays various characters as well as impersonates Groucho Marx. He delivery is consistently humorous if not always hilarious. Spike Milligan also provides some funny stuff with Sellers. Then there are various music and dance acts that are either serious or comical that are also pretty entertaining. Among them is a band that seemed inspired by the American Spike Jones. So on that note, I recommend Let's Go Crazy for Peter Sellers fans.

Peter Sellers' first movie-screen appearance was shot when Penny Points To Paradise came in with more than a week left on the studio rental. Sellers and Milligan improvised a few scene, including Sellers doing a Groucho imitation, his 'Crystal Jollibottom' character from radio. They added a few singers, dancers, and Freddy Mirfield's orchestra, had Milligan do a bit of Eccles, and edited the whole together for a bit over half an hour.

It's a variety short and little more, pitched midway between Olsen & Johnson and Ernie Kovacs. It's of some interest to fans of Sellers and Milligan - which I certainly am - but little more.

This is an oddity - review and variety performers of variable quality interspersed with short sketches with Sellers playing various curious characters. Here he certainly shows potential and the relative restraint and lack of goony-ness allows him to demonstrate abilities which really reached their pinnacle in Dr Strangelove. Overall along with the better of the acts, quite entertaining.

One uncredited cast member (Mr Jollibottom)has a voice instantly recognisable to older British viewers. Wallace Eaton was the dismal barman in the long running radio comedy "Take it from Here", whose weekly role it was to serve a dismal pint of Mild and Bitter, and to listen, to the show's main star relate the goings on in the dreadful "Glum" household. Eaton was allowed dismal catch-phrases in the show such as "get yerself a trade". He had more of a career in the theatre than in film, appearing in "Fings ain't wot they used t'be"

Like an episode of The Muppet Show, set exclusively in the Ballroom.