Displaying items by tag: Bill Fraser

UP THE CHASTITY BELT

UK, 1972, 94 minutes, Colour.

Frankie Howerd, David Kernan, Nora Swinburne, Godfrey Winn, Bill Fraser, Anna Quayle, Graham Crowden, Anne Aston.

Directed by Bob Kellett.

Slapstick in the Middle Ages.

Frankie Howerd was a popular comedian on television and in cinema in the 1960s into the 1980s. His best known series was U[ Pompeii which led to a film of the same name, directed by Bob Kellett who also directed this film and a variation on the Up theme, World War I, Up The Front.

This film was much more lively than the other two Up pictures, the Middle Ages offering a greater variety for stories – medieval life amongst the aristocracy, amongst the poor, the crusades, Robin Hood…

Frankie Howerd actually has the opportunity to act as two characters here, twins, one, Richard the Lionheart, the other, Lurkalot, brought up amongst the pigs and acting as a servant in the Castle of the Sir Coardy Custard (later to be challenged by Sir de Bombast). And, various names accordingly.

It also offers Frankie Howerd the opportunity to take on a number of impersonations throughout the film including participating in a joust, disguising himself as a female, wandering from Europe to the Middle East, discovering that the Crusaders were being hosted by Saladdin who was creating a harem for them. (Some of the jokes seem particularly sexist now, some racist.)

Of course, Frankie Howerd is continually talking to the audience, straight to camera, commenting on the film and its progress and what is suitable or not. There is a surprise at the end when the screenplay turns Robin Hood and his merry men, including Friar tuck, into a very gay troop.

For Howerd fans to enjoy – and a reminder of some of the trends in British comedy, especially at the end of the 1960s, becoming more open, explicit and permissive into the 1970s.

UP THE FRONT

UK, 1972, 89 minutes, Colour.

Frankie Howerd, Bill Fraser, William Mervyn, Linda Gray, Jonathan Cecil, Dora Bryan, Stanley Holloway, Bob Hoskins, Peter Bull, Vernon Dobtcheff..

Directed by Bob Kellett.

Frankie Howerd had a long career in comedy, especially in television and films. During the 1960s and early 1970s he appeared in The Chastity Belt and, especially, the comedy television series Up Pompeii. He also appeared in several Carry on films.

Frankie Howerd characteristically broke the fourth wall, looking at the audience, looking straight to camera, confiding all his thoughts and feelings, his jokes, his mischief, and the touch of the affected disapproval at times to the audience.

This film, playing with the Pompeii title, is set in World War I, Up the Front, starting in an aristocratic mansion, Frankie Howerd is Lurk, a servant, hypnotised during a show, then volunteering for the war – and all kinds of adventures and misadventures in France at the front.

Once again, a considerable number of British character actors are there in support. But, Frankie Howerd is an acquired taste, popular in his time, but not so lasting. Which means that this is a film for his fans and for those studying the style of popular British film comedy in the 1960s and 1970s.

UP  POMPEII

UK, 1971, 90 minutes, Colour.

Frankie Howerd, Patrick Cargill, Bill Fraser, Michael Hordern, Barbara Murray, Lance Percival, Adrian Foster, Bernard Bresslaw, Roy Hudd, Lally Bowers, Kenneth Cranham.

Directed by Bob Kellett.

Comedian, Frankie Howerd, popular on British radio and television, had a successful television series, 14 episodes, in the late 1960s, Up Pompeii. And here is a version made for the cinema screen, with Talbot Rothwell, writer of the Carry on films, having a credit for idea.

The basic idea is humorous enough, Frankie Howard as a slave in Pompeii the year of its destruction, A.D. 79 – but, for film purposes, the Emperor is Nero who reigned 15 years earlier!

Frankie Howerd’s style of comedy was to confide in the audience, looking straight to camera and the audience, plenty of remarks, reminding everyone that this is a film, anticipating action and jokes. The idea here is that there is conspiracy against Nero amongst senators and military of Pompeii. Howerd’s Lurcio works for Ludicrus Sextus (the film’s names of characters rivalling those of the Asterix films), the pompous senator, played with the right kind of satire by Michael Hordern. There is his wife and her ambitions, his young son and his sexuality problems, a clash with a Roman sergeant in the marketplace and the focus on a scroll with a list of conspirators.

Anything could happen – and does.

However, the writers and the cast have drawn on an enormous catalogue of sex jokes. And most of them are here, some very obvious, some familiar – touch of innuendo (though the screenplay is too obvious for innuendo). Some are signalled, Frankie Howard drawing attention to them and reacting sometimes with prudery.

And, looking back, it may be surprising to find such an amount of nudity in British comedy at the beginning of the 1970s – reticence is not the order of the day here.

So, once again, an opportunity to see and gain something of an awareness of popular British comedy in the early 1970s – but, so much depends on whether audiences are fans of Frankie Howerd himself and this kind of style. He then made The Chastity Belt and the World War II farce, Up the Front in the same style.