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6.0/10
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Post-apocalyptic England. Survivors navigate surreal wasteland, mutating into inanimate objects. Girl living on train meets commuter and doctor. Follows their interactions amidst chaos, focu... Read allPost-apocalyptic England. Survivors navigate surreal wasteland, mutating into inanimate objects. Girl living on train meets commuter and doctor. Follows their interactions amidst chaos, focusing on girl's pregnancy.Post-apocalyptic England. Survivors navigate surreal wasteland, mutating into inanimate objects. Girl living on train meets commuter and doctor. Follows their interactions amidst chaos, focusing on girl's pregnancy.
- Awards
- 2 wins & 3 nominations total
Featured reviews
Buried in the sheer oddity and downright perversity of the humour there is a deep pathos. People of all classes from Lord to lunatic try through activities and language to cling to a civilization represented by heaps of objects. The horrors of holocaust are tempered by humour arising mainly from the ridiculous pretensions of the cast. Every mainstay of British middle and upper class culture has been made absurd - some of the characters are busy mutating into absurd objects - a bed sitting room, a wardrobe, a parrot. The humour is zany, the one-liners often mixing double entendre, understatement and naievity with real pathos. Arthur Lowe as the pompous father, Mona Washbourne as the all-sympathetic mother can bring a lump to the throat.
The nearest rival to Milligan's and Antrobus' satire is to be found in Swift. Lampooning society after it has endured the very worst of tragedies and demonstrating through a torrent of absurdities, that human decency survives is something difficult to sustain in text, but this Fellini-like panorama could never be contained by the pages of a book. It almost defines one of the things which film can do best.
It is ragged and patchy - but a film which includes Harry Seacombe as a 'regional seat of government' defies conventional criticism!
The nearest rival to Milligan's and Antrobus' satire is to be found in Swift. Lampooning society after it has endured the very worst of tragedies and demonstrating through a torrent of absurdities, that human decency survives is something difficult to sustain in text, but this Fellini-like panorama could never be contained by the pages of a book. It almost defines one of the things which film can do best.
It is ragged and patchy - but a film which includes Harry Seacombe as a 'regional seat of government' defies conventional criticism!
Just two years after the end of the 'frightened fifties', Spike Milligan wrote the play "The Bed Sitting Room", a black comedy about life in post-apocalyptic London and, in 1969, Richard Lester directed this film version. The film is essentially an interconnected series of absurdist sketches featuring some of England's best known comedians playing survivors in the radioactive aftermath of a two minute war (the "nuclear misunderstanding"). In the film's off-kilter reality, mutations are causing dramatic changes to people, including Lord Fortnum's (Sir Ralph Richardson) literal metamorphosis into the titular room and 'Mother's' (Mona Washbourne) change into a wardrobe (setting up the line "Get your hands out of my drawers!"). These strange events are all monitored by the Police Inspector (Peter Cook) and his Sergeant (Dudley Moore), either from their balloon-lofted Morris Minor or their wreaking-ball equipped bulldozer. I found the film is more fascinating than funny: some of the humour I liked (such as the BBC host) but some resembled forgettable Monty Python sketches (the Underwater Vicar comes to mind). The strange, bleak and sometimes surreal settings are the best part of the film, especially the vast piles of shoes and of the mountain of broken crockery. Apparently in a 1988 interview, Milligan said that the play was his way of saying that after the apocalypse life would just go on, with all of its absurdities intact. If that was indeed the raison d'être for the film, it was completely lost on me and I have no idea what other viewers will make of this strange, dated yet oddly compelling pitch-black farce.
Richard Lester's directorial career went into nose-dive (at least for a while) after making this film, which was a pity. It's a post-apocalyptic black comedy like no other. Typically British and typically Milligan-ish, with a stunning visual sense.
What I enjoy most about this film is its uncompromising weirdness. It's incredibly inventive, if not particularly funny, and also quite depressing - but it has to be, dealing with the aftermath of nuclear war.
There are some excellent performances from a cast which seems to contain most of the outstanding British comedy talent of the last thirty years (Marty Feldman is particularly fine) and some pointed satire about the British "stiff upper lip", but it's the surreal visuals which stand out, including the remains of a motorway with hundreds of cars half-buried in mud, and an escalator emerging into a landscape almost entirely composed of broken crockery.
A flawed masterpiece.
What I enjoy most about this film is its uncompromising weirdness. It's incredibly inventive, if not particularly funny, and also quite depressing - but it has to be, dealing with the aftermath of nuclear war.
There are some excellent performances from a cast which seems to contain most of the outstanding British comedy talent of the last thirty years (Marty Feldman is particularly fine) and some pointed satire about the British "stiff upper lip", but it's the surreal visuals which stand out, including the remains of a motorway with hundreds of cars half-buried in mud, and an escalator emerging into a landscape almost entirely composed of broken crockery.
A flawed masterpiece.
This was a commercial disaster on release and has been little seen since. It was written by Spike Milligan and it is set in a post-apocalyptic world populated by very few people. The cast is very good with Milligan, Michael Hordern, Ralph Richardson, Arthur Lowe, Harry Secombe, Roy Kinnear, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Marty Feldman etc on hand. There is barely a story and it is more a series of situations which are driven by the eccentric characters who live on the barren wasteland. The tone is comedic and absurd throughout and it looks great visually. As the old saying goes, it's certainly not for everyone but it's a bizarre film which is enjoyable so long as you can get into its peculiar groove.
A very strange film, this one, a surreal post-apocalypse comedy with some broad satire aimed at British politics and culture. It's quite unmissable on account of the incredible cast of famous faces and worth seeing just for them doing their bit, but the rest is more of a sketch show than anything else. It's moderately funny, on par with a typical MONTY PYTHON episode of the era.
Did you know
- TriviaProducer and director Richard Lester is said to have been depressed that many of the outdoor locations were found so quickly, and needed so little modification.
- GoofsA London Underground train appears several times. The legend over the cab states 'Circle' as in Circle Line. But the Circle is a sub-surface line while the train depicted is London Underground 1962 deep line stock.
- Crazy creditsIn the opening credits, cast members are listed in order of height.
- How long is The Bed Sitting Room?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- The Bed Sitting Room
- Filming locations
- St Austell, Cornwall, England, UK(china clay pits)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1
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