One Way Pendulum

I have longed to see this film and pestered Turner to show it for years, and finally they put it on in October 2011 as part of a Peter Yates series. It has a wonderful cast of British actors, including Graham Crowden (who appeared in the original play), George Cole, Mona Washbourne and Glyn Houston.

Jonathan Miller is cast against type as an almost nonverbal character who is training talking weighing machines to sing as a chorus. I was amazed to hear one of the songs they sang was Michael Brown's LIZZIE BORDEN from NEW FACES OF 1952! If you haven't read the play, you may have trouble following this when a living room turns into a court room; it must have been easier to grasp this watching it on stage where the room was assembled before the audience by the eccentric father.

Thank you, Turner, for finally letting the public see this!

This is an absolutely bizarre crazy film. You watch puzzled (for me) till the conversation about having arms shortened to fit sleeves and the light bulb brightens:) Saw it in an art theater in the States about 2 years after it was released and was blown away. I have been telling people about it for years and am ecstatic about it being acknowledged as even existing (it was invisible on the Web for a very long time - you had to go to Beyond the Fringe and work backwards) If I could find it it any playable format I would get it in an instant - track the strangeness picked up in later 60's films - Beatles included. If it ever surfaces and you are into 'quirky-ness' be sure to sit back and enjoy.

The original play by N F Simpson (who also wrote "A Resounding Tinkle" is even weirder! Mr Groomkirby is working his way through a series of historic buildings ("When we had Stonehenge and people called us Druids!), Sylvia actually wants to look like an ape so that she can touch her toes without bending down etc. The plot is a conflation of literalisms ("into the jaws of Death" is no mere metaphor here) and bizarrrerie by modified context, e.g. the son and father have hobbies such as model building, collecting and choir training whilst the teenage(?)daughter worries of over her looks.John Cleese saw this film in the cinema in Weston Supermare and it seems to have stayed with him ever since. If you haven't seen it you have missed a true classic of surrealist comedy!

A very odd film along the lines of the bed sitting rooms.

Eric Sykes (a film is always worth a watch if Eric is in it) plays an insurance man who is building a copy of the Old Bailey in his living room while his son teaches speak your weight machines to sing. Yes you heard that right but don't let it put you off.

It's a little gem that's well worth 90 minutes of your time.

I watched this film with practically no prior knowledge of it and for the first fifteen minutes or so I thought it was shaping up into a typical farce or situation comedy of the era with one or two elements which seemed a little too far-fetched. However, the dialogue and the situations become even more bizarre and then, at about 40 minutes in, the film turns completely on its head with a wholly surreal twist.

This film is wonderfully bonkers, incredibly inventive with a small but excellent cast and a plethora of richly absurd lines of dialogue. The characters almost without exception see the peculiarities in their peers whilst being completely oblivious to their own eccentricities and in that sense is a wonderful observation of our own individual failings. It won't appeal to everyone, but if you like the humour of Monty Python, Spike Milligan or, especially, The Strange World of Gurney Slade, you should love this overlooked, and largely forgotten gem.

I see it flopped on its original release, maybe it was too ahead of its time, or more likely people watched it with expectations that this film would deliver a comprehensible plot with traditional gags. It doesn't. Like the main character, Mr Groomkirby, it exists in a world of its own - and we are privileged to be afforded a glimpse into it.