lee10538

This is a British comedy show I remember fondly from my childhood. Charlie Drake played a 'little man' character whose attempts to find an honest job were always scuppered by fate. Henry McGee, best known today for his appearances in The Benny Hill Show, was his long-suffering employment officer.

I would very much like to see this series again, if only to see if it's as good as I remember, but despite the proliferation of channels these days it seems as if nobody wants to show black and white series anymore. ITV, the network that commissioned the series, never shows anything over ten years old nowadays, and I'm not even sure the recordings still exist. Because Britain never had syndication (at least not until satellite TV provided something similar) old shows just weren't seen as having any commercial value and often got wiped. But if people regard black and white films like Casablanca as all-time classics, why shouldn't black and white TV shows be treated with the same respect?

OK, let me see if I've got this straight...

It's World War I, and retired Wacky Racers Dick Dastardly and Muttley the dog have got together with a couple of eccentric aviators, Klunk and Zilly, to form Vulture Squadron. Zilly is a devout coward whose catchphrase is "oh-h-h de-e-ear", and who frequently tries to hide by ducking his head inside his roll-neck sweater like a human tortoise. Klunk, the team's inventive genius, speaks in a mixture of English and bizarre noises which are accompanied by the most extraordinary facial contortions. Between them this not-so-intrepid crew spend all their time manufacturing incredibly elaborate machinery and aircraft designed to block American war reports by catching...wait for it..._a single homing pigeon_. And week after week Vulture squadron are easily outwitted by the bird's superior speed and manoeuvrability, as well as the fact that it has more brains than the lot of them put together. This always results in their planes colliding or blowing up in midair, which leads to some nasty falls for Dick Dastardly. Luckily his old sidekick Muttley has learned how to fly by spinning his tail like a helicopter, and is always willing to use this talent to rescue - in return for a medal or two.

I don't know about you, but it all seems a bit silly to me. But of course that's the point: the show's wild combination of loopy ideas and corny gags combined with cheap and cheerful animation, not to mention those patented Hannah-Barbera sound fx, make these not-so magnificent men (and dog) in their flying machines a strangely compelling viewing experience in a sixties cartoon kind of a way. (And the voice cast always sound as if they're having a lot of fun even if their characters aren't.)

I still think it would have been cheaper to buy a hawk, though....

I recently had a chance to see this film for the first time since its original BBC screening on December 26 1967. I'd seen all the reviews, of course, pointing out what an awful, shambolic mess the film was and how the Beatles had been forced to apologise to viewers after its first screening. But then, I thought, it was the sixties and maybe the passage of time will show the film in a more favourable light. And let's face it, nothing by the Beatles could be a *complete* disaster, could it?

Well, I'm sorry to say...yes it could. The film has a pretty weak concept to begin with - a couple of middle-aged people fall in love on a bus tour of the English countryside. (Of course, in this day and age they'd probably be jetting off to the Bahamas instead.) Right from the beginning the acting is weak, the dialogue isn't remotely funny and the attempts at surrealism seem forced. Admittedly there is some minor amusement to be gained from watching a drill sergeant bellow gibberish orders at a cow, but the scene where Ringo's "auntie" dreams she has to eat a huge plate of mud in a restaurant is just plain embarrassing, and the scenes where the Beatles dress up as wizards and run around a laboratory are totally pathetic. At one point Ringo's narration informs us that "already the magic is starting to work", but unfortunately he's wrong.

All right, but what about the music, you cry? Well, yes, this movie does feature some of the Fab Four's best work - "The Fool On the Hill", "Flying", "Blue Jay Way", "Your Mother Should Know", "I am the Walrus", and of course the title song, as well as the jazzy "Death Cab for Cutie" by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. But the songs are let down by the visual presentation. "The Fool on the Hill", for instance, features Paul McCartney...um...on a hill. That's it?! Afraid so. Likewise "Blue Jay Way" features George sitting on a rug, while the instrumental "Flying" features the kind of colour-distorted landscapes that Kubrick later used in "2001: A Space Odyssey". At least "Your Mother Should Know" is accompanied by a dance routine, albeit a slightly lacklustre one, and "I am the Walrus" has some nicely surreal imagery (John's idea?). For the most part, though, you'd probably get more out of the music by listening to it with your eyes shut. And if you're going to do that, you might just as well buy the Magical Mystery Tour CD, which also includes "Hello Goodbye", "Penny Lane", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Baby You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need is Love"....

If in spite of these comments you still feel compelled to watch the film, it has been released in Australia on DVD. It's Region 0, which means that it should play on DVD machines everywhere.