L'ultime garçonnière

For some strange reason, I recorded this movie one afternoon when it aired and my brother still has it on tape. Hilarious. Ralph Richardson, MIcheal HOrdern, Dudley Moore and Peter cooke were incredibly funny, but Mona Washburne as Mother had us laughing mostly, such as when nurse marty Feldman informed her she had died while she was still very much alive. "Well, you can't argue with it. There it is in black and white." and especially when she was throwing the dishes and was called a 'slut'. "Get out of here, ya slut." too funny! Rita Tushingham gets a bit irritating as the youthful voice of reason, possibly what hurts this movie most, but Peter Cooke's dialogue is priceless. Absolutely priceless. Then of course, we have to pay homage to our Royal Family. Or as close as we can get. Mrs. Ethel Stronk, was it?

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.

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.

This is a visually stunning, funny, brilliant, and extravagantly weird film that should best be compared to El Topo, Barbarella, Playtime, and the Cremaster series. It's the kind of movie made with a big studio budget and free artistic reign; a combination that existed in other late 60s and early 70s bombs that have become cult classics.

Imagine if Monty Python did a lot of LSD, spent a million dollars on art direction, and then made a nuclear-apocalypse satire. Each shot is as sumptuous and symbolically rich as any Mathew Barney created - what with middle class Brits walking on a field of broken china, Underground escalators that end in mid-air, and Cathedrals submerged in water. Plot-wise, this is as free-of-field as an experimental film. Whether you think it profoundly beautiful or profoundly ugly, the look is in the Quay brothers'/Dubuffet mold. Its narrative loosely strings together amazing images, costumes, and poignant, often hilarious scenes of British society desperately trying to hold on to any remaining shards of civilization. The Bed Sitting Room is full of sarcastic comments and profound notions. It is not full of plot - it's amazing without it.

If there is any chance to see this movie on screen, take it. Any frame is worth the price of admission.

After the grim realism of Peter Watkins' 'The War Game' this film marked the sixties' headlong retreat into total fantasy in which the Central Line still functions and radiation causes mutation into a bed-sitting room rather than boring old radiation sickness.

An amazing cast (including two Goons) make complete fools of themselves in the film in which Dick Lester blew once and for all the professional capital he'd made directing the Beatles. Ken Thorne's music like the rest of the film is likeable but far too emphatic.