Sir Henry at Rawlinson End

I've seen this movie twice and yet still can't make head or tail of it. However, that doesn't prevent it from being near on brilliant, perhaps the lamentably late Vivian Stanshall's masterpiece. Trevor Howard as Sir Henry rambles on pompously (and nonsensically) and maintains a bunker which houses two guys who pretend it's still World War II for Howard's sake. There's some sort of plot involving exorcising Howard's brother's ghost (played by Stanshall) and a sub-plot involving Patrick Magee as a Reverend up to no good (can't figure out what sort of no good, however). The extremely low production values add to the feeling of run-down old money that make this dada narrative so damn funny. It's also got some good music and Howard in blackface on a unicycle. Director Steve Roberts was responsible for writing the Max Headroom TV show, of which I have extremely fond but vague memories.

"The cracks are showing, listen to the loonies croon". Perhaps the most remarkable thing among many remarkable things about this film is that it was ever made. It is a surreal, nonsensical, sepia tinted memorial to a glorious, politically incorrect, past that never was that will nevertheless inspire a sense of nostalgia in every British viewer of a certain age. Beyond that, even to British viewers, it makes very little sense whatsoever. That however is to entirely miss the point. Whether the product of alcoholiday or derangement, or both, the film is a buried and largely unknown gem.

Buy the DVD! Why? - Because to watch the great Trevor Howard, seemingly perfectly in his element as the "brandy baffled rhinoceros Fuhrer" of Rawlinson End is, alone, worth the money; because you will almost certainly never see it on television again; because you will want to watch it time after time, (the second to at least actually confirm that you weren't hallucinating when you watched it the first), and then to get more and more of what is a very, very, rich seventy one minute running time. Some scenes don't work, but the pace of the film is so rapid you won't have the opportunity to become bored. Like me you may also get huge if guilty enjoyment out of casually slipping it into your DVD player when unsuspecting friends come to visit and you suggest they might like to watch a movie you've come across.

Having done that please also buy the album. Yes, there is an album, (not a soundtrack) which, in my opinion is even stranger and laugh out loud funnier than the film.

Mad, propelled by language and stereotype reinvented by surreal humour, this is a unique and brilliant film of a text which ranks with 'Under Milk Wood'or 'Facade' by Edith Sitwell. There are, however, too many references to 'sambos' and 'jungle bunnies' for my liking although I appreciate that the characters are supposed to be reactionary, the narrator also joins in. I suspect that Vivian Stanshall both loved and hated his subject matter. If you want a living parallel, try the poetry of Mike Haslam.

Given the junk, like Pirates of the Caribbean, which gets 7.5 +, I don't think the assessment of this film reflects its uniqueness. It's good to see Trevor Howard debunking Englishness too.

It's 18 years since I saw Sir Henry at the cinema. My friends and I had to go two nights in a row, just to make sure we hadn't imagined it the first time.

Sir Henry is a stroll through the mind of Director, writer, performer, and Bonzo Dog Band frontman Vivan Stanshall's mind - which, by the early 80's, was probably coming seriously unravelled. Fans of hard-core British surrealism absolutely must see this movie. Everyone else should probably avoid it. Rooms filled with rotting fruit, ghostly mechanical bulldogs, face-jumping competitions, and not least of all Sir Henry's Brother Hubert (Viv), who goes fishing for hairdressers. Stanshall's humour has far more in common with Dali than with Eddie Murphy, and the overwhelming majority of (at least, American) filmgoers will simply be stupified.

A few things should be said about sir Henry. First, Trevor Howard, in the lead role, plays such a magnificent drunk that it's a little hard to believe he was putting it on (I do believe it was his last movie.) Secondly, the film alternately plods and lurches in such a fashion that , as with early Woody Allen films, you'll find yourself sitting through a fair bit of material that doesn't work, just for the blinding moments when it comes together. Thirdly, as wonderful as this movie is (and despite its faults, my memory insists it _is_ quite wonderful), it isn't as good as the album. Sir Henry the film is terrific. Sir Henry the LP is a comic masterpiece; Stanshall's finest moment.

8 out of 10.

I absolutely love this film. I have watched it so often I could dictate the screenplay from memory, but still new subtleties become apparent, even twenty years after I first saw it. Imagine a festering synthesis of Evelyn Waugh and Bunuel via Monty python, then make it ten times better than you might imagine. The fevered and eccentric imagination of 60's Dada-jazz-pop-freak Vivian Stanshall has brought to life a film that is by turns insanely funny, intellectual, schoolboy coarse and charmingly nostalgic for a never-been, golden age of Englishness. If you think you have wrung out every subtlety and pun from the dialogue then you have probably not been listening carefully enough. Layers of meaning run through everything (visuals, dialogue and songs). Apparently Vivian, never satisfied with his own work, hated it but, for me, this film is very nearly perfect. I saw this before hearing any of the Sir Henry radio or LP recordings and to be honest, there are some things that can't be fathomed from the film alone but they only serve to make it more surreal. 'Bizarre' magazine voted it the weirdest movie of all time. That is open to debate but it is decidedly, wilfully odd. If you are one of those (irritating) people who like to quote whole chunks of pungent comic dialogue then leave the safe waters of Monty Python and Derek and Clive and set out on an epic journey to Rawlinson End. It's not hip, it's in B&W and it has ukelele music, it makes no concession to commerciality and 95% of the population will not understand the appeal, but if you are one of the lucky twentieth then your life (and your repertoire of quirky film quotes) will be enriched. A lost British classic.