May 9th
How I Won the War   
(GB 1967)                  
United Artists/Petersham Pictures. 107m.

An enthusiastic but incompetent officer is captured by the Germans on the Rhine in 1945, and recollects his previous adventures with his unfortunate platoon.
Totally misdirected lampoon on World War II, where most of the satirical aspects of the story are lost in the surrealness.

Written by: Charles Wood, based on the novel by Patrick Ryan.
Producer/Director: Richard Lester.
Starring: Michael Crawford, John Lennon, Michael Hordern, Jack MacGowran, Lee Montague, Roy Kinnear, James Cossins, Jack Hedley, Karl Michael Vogler.
Photography: David Watkin.
Music: Ken Thorne.

Jul 14th  
Start the Revolution Without Me*   
(GB 1969)                           
Warner Bros/Norbud. 90m.

Mixed-up pairs of identical twins at birth become entangled in the French Revolution.
Lavish spoof with funny moments but many of the jokes are overworked, and the plot steadily takes second place to the stream of gags in anarchic humour typical of its time, e.g. Orson Welles narrates in modern clothes outside Louis XVI's Palace and takes next-to-no part in the rest of the film.

Written by: Fred Freeman, Lawrence J. Cohen.
Producer: Norman Lear.
Director: Bud Yorkin.
Starring: Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, High Griffith, Billie Whitelaw, Victor Spinetti, Jack MacGowran, Harry Fowler, Ewa Aulin, Helen Fraser, Rosalind Knight, Murray Melvin, Graham Stark.
Photography: Jean Tournier.
Music: John Addison.

Apr 21st  
The Intelligence Men*    
(GB 1965)           
Rank. 104m.

A coffee bar owner is mistaken for a double agent in a plot to assassinate a Russian ballerina.
Variable spy spoof geared to two much loved TV comics. They have their bright moments in their own style, but generally deserved better material than this. Successful enough to be followed by That Riviera Touch, The Magnificent Two (and the all but forgotten Night Train to Murder), this first film was sadly as good as it got for Morecambe and Wise, as far as movies were concerned.

Written by: Dick Hills, Sid Green.
Producer: Hugh Stewart.
Director: Robert Asher.
Starring: Eric Morecambe, Ernie Wise, William Franklyn, April Olrich, Gloria Paul, Francis Matthews, Terence Alexander, Richard Vernon, Warren Mitchell, David Lodge.
Photography: Jack Asher.
Music: Philip Green.

Apr 1st 
A Night in Casablanca***       
(US 1946)                       
United Artists. 84m. bw

A crooked hotel manager takes over at a secret enclave of Nazis trying to recover their stolen loot.
Underrated later entry in the Marx canon where neither they or their material are on top form, but still effectively zany and tense thriller spoof, with characteristic Marx interludes.

Written by: Joseph Fields, Roland Kibbee, and others.
Producer: David L. Loew.
Director: Archie Mayo.
Starring: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Lisette Vera, Charles Drake, Lois Collier, Sig Rumann, Dan Seymour.
Photography:James Van Trees.
Music: Werner Janssen (songs by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Werner Janssen).

+ Groucho to Harpo (in a moment of furtive danger): "I don't want to hear a word out of you."

A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA. The Marx Brothers break the bank at the casino (in a film made ironically to help Chico with his gambling debts), with certain sly references to Casablanca, such as Groucho's Bogart-style white tuxedo and bow tie.

Feb 29th  
Sammy's Super T-Shirt   
(GB 1978)           
CFF/Monument. 58m.

A would-be athletic boy's favourite T-shirt slips into the hands of experimental scientists giving it (and  him) super powers.
Elementary Saturday morning kids spoof of the superhero TV craze, released on the same year as Superman made up the road at Pinewood, on a much more humble basis, together with some of the supporting cast of the former Carry Ons.

w/p: Frank Godwin.
d: Jeremy Summers
s: Reggie Winch, Lawrie Mark, Julian Holloway, Richard Vernon, Patsy Rowlands, Michael Ripper
ph: Norman Jones
m: Harry Robertson

Dec 31st  
Amazon Women on the Moon
(US 1986 - released 1987)                                                 
Universal. 85m.

Painfully unfunny series of satirical spoof sketches around TV in the video age(an unofficial sequel to Kentucky Fried Movie): some occasional good moments of movie pastiche - at other times one wonders what the cast and makers were thinking of.

Written by: Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland.
Producer: Robert K. Weiss.
Directors: Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, Robert K. Weiss.
Starring: Arsenio Hall; Lou Jacobi; Michelle Pfeiffer, Griffin Dunne, Peter Horton; Steve Forrest, Sybil Danning, Joey Travolta, Forrest J. Ackerman; David Alan Grier, B.B. King; Rosanna Arquette, Steve Guttenberg; Henry Silva; Archie Hahn, Belinda Balaski, Robert Picardo; William Marshall; Ed Eegley Jnr; Matt Adler, Kelly Preston, Ralph Bellamy; Marc McClure, Russ Meyer; Carrie Fisher, Paul Bartel, and others.
Photography: Daniel Pearl.
Music: Ira Newborn.

Preceded by:
The Assassin
(GB TVM 2015. 2m.; d, ph: Neil Rowe; s: Peregrine Maturin-Baird, Jordan Calver.)

Nov 2nd
Way Out West***(U)
(Manifest Theatre, Manningtree)

(US 1937)
Hal Roach. 66m. bw

Stan and Ollie travel to Brushwood Gulch to present an heir with a family fortune, but her crooked guardians are intent on pilfering it.
Probably the best Laurel and Hardy feature film made, one of their most streamlined features equally mixing themes of a comedy Western and an above average plot, and two delightfully simple song and dance numbers: the "Shoe Shuffle" and "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine". One of the boys' most streamlined and sheerly pleasurable comedies, remembered with affection.

Written by: Jack Jevne, Charles Rogers, James Parrott, Felix Adler.
Producer: Stan Laurel.
Director: James Horne.
Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson, Sharon Lyne, Rosina Lawrence, Stanley Fields, Vivien Oakland, the Avalon Boys, James C. Morton.
Photography: Art Lloyd, Walter Lundin.
Musical Direction: Marvin Hatley.

100 Favourite Films: Way Out West

Preceded by:
The Finishing Touch**
(US 1928. 20m. bw. silent; Laurel and Hardy build a dilapidated house.; w: H.M. Walker; d: James Parrott; s: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Edgar Kennedy, Dorothy Coburn, Sam Lufkin.)

Any Old Port**

May 29th
House of the Long Shadows
(GB 1982)               

A young writer accepts a dare to write his latest novel in a haunted house, where there are unexpected visitors...
Poorly made horror spoof with wooden young leads, almost redeemed by its guest veterans all on screen together for the first time.

Written by: Michael Armstrong, based on the novel "Seven Keys to Baldpate" by Earl Derr Diggens.
Producers: Mennahem Golan, Yoram Globus.
Director: Pete Walker.
Starring: Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Desi Arnaz Jnr, John Carradine, Sheila Keith, Julie Peasgood, Richard Todd, Louise English.
Photography: Norman Langley.
Music: Richard Harvey.

HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS (1982). In the decade of slasher movies, the makers seemed to have forgotten how to make a proper haunted house film. John Carradine, Sheila Keith, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price reflect on an older era.

May 17th  
Movie 43       
(US 2013)         

Semi-compendium of deliberately tasteless spoof sketches, with some stars unexpectedly thrown into the mixture. The bigger sin is the general lack of decent writing.

Written by: Rocky Russo, Jeremy Sosenko, Will Graham, Jack Kukoda, Matthew, Portenoy, Will Carlough, and others.
Producers: Charles B. Wessler, John Penotti, Peter Farrelly, Ryan Kavanagh.
Directors: Steven Brill; Peter Farrelly; Will Graham; Steve Carr; Griffin Dunne; James Duffy; Jonathan Van Tulleken; Elizabeth Banks; Patrick Forsberg; Brett Ratner; Rusty Cundieff; James Gunn.
Starring: Adam Cagley, Devin Eash, Fisher Stevens; Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman; Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts; Anna Faris, Chris Pratt; Kieran  Culkin, Emma Stone; Kristen Bell, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman; Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth; Chloe Grace Moretz, Patrick Warburton; Gerard Butler, Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott; Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant; Terrence Howard; Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel.
Photography: Steve Gainer, Tim Suhrstedt, Matthew F. Leonetti, and others.
Music Supervision: Happy Walters, Bob Bowen.

Apr 1st     
Hellzapoppin'***       
(US 1941) 

Two Broadway comedians are reluctantly persuaded to make a Hollywood film.
30 years before Monty Python and Airplane! came along this anarchic spoof, a surprisingly subversive comedy made in the Golden age, which also plays the familiar Hollywood trick of trying to have its cake and eat it, by staging a grand musical romantic comedy in style, and only occasionally letting conventionality take over before the zany interludes, which, when they come, are hilarious. More cinematic and surreal than the Marx Brothers, and more tasteful as entertainment than Monty Python.

Written by: Nat Perrin, Warren Wilson, Alex Gottlieb, based on the stage revue by Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson.
Producers: Alex Gottlieb, Jules Levey, Glen Tryon.
Director: H.C. Potter (and others).
Starring: Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Hugh Herbert, Martha Raye, Mischa Auer, Jane Frazee, Robert Paige, Lewis Howard, Elisha Cook Jnr, Richard Lane, Shemp Howard.
Photography: Elwood Bredel, John P. Fulton.
Music: Frank Skinner.
Musical Direction: Ted Cain, Charles Previn.
Editing: Milton Crruth, Ted J. Kent.
Costume: Vera West.

Sep 5th    

Blazing Saddles**                                     

US 1974. Warner Bros/Crossbow. 93m. Panavision

A black sheriff teams up with an ex-gunfighter to foil a crooked attorney and his posse.
Zany, scatological, typically crude Brooks spoof Western which still retains a lot of authentic nostalgia for the genre, also skilfully combined with the Blaxploitation vogue for the 70's, even managing to parody itself with a finale across the studio backlot where the heroes and the villain shoot it out at the cinema where the film is playing.

Written by: Norman Steinberg, Mel Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Alan Uger.
Producer: Michael Herzberg.
Director: Mel Brooks.
Starring: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn (homaging Dietrich), Burton Gilliam, Alex Karras, David Huddleston, Claude Ennis Starrett Jnr, Mel Brooks, Liam Dunn, John Hillerman, Count Basie.
Photography: Joseph Biroc.
Music: John Morris (title ballad sung by Frankie Lane).
Editing: John C. Howard, Danford B. Greene.

 

Preceded by:

Tom & Jerry in

Jerry's Cousin**

 (US 1951. 6m.; d: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera; p: Fred Quimby.)

Jun 14th 

Stiff Upper Lips                            

(GB 1996)
Cavalier Features/Impact Pictures/Ivory Hall. 90m.

A coming-of-age girl seeks eligible suitors, whom unfortunately include a handsome local peasant.

The conventions and all the subtexts of the period drama are laid bare in this overdue but crude spoof, authentically lavish in style although most of the jokes are laboured and unsubtle, but some occasionally hit the bullseye.

Written by: Paul Simpkin, Gary Sinyor.

Producers: Jeremy Bolt, Gary Sinyor.

Director: Gary Sinyor.

Starring: Samuel West, Robert Portal, Georgina Cates, Prunella Scales, Peter Ustinov, Sean Pertwee, Brian Glover, Frank Finlay.

Photography: Simon Archer.

Music: David Hughes, John Murphy.

Mar 12th
High Anxiety*
US 1977. Twentieth Century Fox/Crossbow. 94m.

The agoraphobic new head of a California asylum finds his sanity threatened.
Thriller spoof with occasional funny moments and even more occasional passing references to Hitchcock, but with little of his style or suspense.

Written by: Mel Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca, Barry Levinson.
Producer/Director: Mel Brooks.
Starring: Mel Brooks, Harvey Korman, Madeleine Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Ron Carey, Howard Morris, Dick Van Patten, Barry Levinson.
Photography: Paul Lohmann.
Music: John Morris.

Oct 8th
Johnny English Reborn (PG)
Odeon Colchester

Second instalment of the bungling would-be James Bond from the credit card ads, slightly slicker this time round (with some knowing nods to the recent Daniel Craig incarnation), with Atkinson on just as good form as before and the rest of the cast enter into the spirit of things, the cheerfully idiotic plot moving along quite enjoyably - like the typical old-fashioned James Bond film in fact.

d: Oliver Parker
s: Rowan Atkinson, Rosamund Pike, Dominic West, Gillian Anderson, Daniel Kaluuya, Stephen Campbell Moore, Tim McInerney

June 2nd
Silent Movie*
US 1976. Twentieth Century Fox/Crossbow. 87m.

An ex-alcoholic film director hits on the idea of making a silent film to save the studio.
A nostalgic idea for a modern silent spoof is given rather lame comic treatment - with rather pointless jokes about silence - but the slapstick sequences are well done (although pretty average by Chaplin's standards), and the guest stars enjoy themselves.

Written by: Mel Brooks, Don Clark, Rudy de Luca, Barry Levinson.
Producer: Michael Hertzberg.
Director: Mel Brooks.
Starring: Mel Brooks, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise, Bernadette Peters, Sid Caesar, Harold Gould, Fritz Feld, Carol Arthur; and Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft, Marcel Marceau (who has the only line of dialogue), Paul Newman.
Photography: Paul Lohmann.
Music: John Morris.

Sep 4th
Get Smart (12A)
Odeon Colchester

Veteran CONTROL agent Max Smart is promoted to field agent, and with the aid of beautiful Agent 99 tackles an infiltration of the organisation by KAOS.
Self-serving spy spoof with lots of slick action and some occasionally quirky jokes. The plot's baloney but the actors have fun in their roles.

d: Peter Segal
s: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Terry Crews, David Koechner, James Caan (a take-off of George W. Bush), Masi Oka, Nate Torrance, Bill Murray, Patrick Warburton

June 21st

Enchanted* (PG)
Tricycle Cinema, Kilburn

A Disney animated princess is banished by the wicked Queen of Andalasia into the "real" world of New York.

Agreeable, only partly animated (a shame to think that this kind of hand-drawn animation is so out of fashion nowadays) postmodern Disney musical comedy with inevitable sentiment, less cynical than Shrek, and learning the valuable lesson that real life can be brightened up by fantasy, and vice versa.

d: Kevin Lima

s: Amy Adams, Susan Sarandon, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Timothy Spall, Rachel Covey, Idina Menzel, Julie Andrews (narrator)

Dec 28thNaked Gun 33 and a Third: The Final Insult*
US 1994. Paramount. 82m.

Impotent married cop Frank Drebin comes out of retirement to foil a terrorist bomb plot at the Academy Awards.
Third zany outing of this series, sending up White Heat, Thelma and Louise, The Bodyguard and others, without too many knowing references and plenty of funny moments, although the plot is largely an irrelevance. Given the story, and some of the participants involved, the film has a rather curious echo of events to come about it.

Written by: Pat Proft, David Zucker, Robert LoCash.
Producers: Robert K. Weiss, David Zucker.
Director: Peter Segal.
Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, Fred Ward, Kathleen Freeman, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson, Anna Nicole Smith, Ellen Greene, Raquel Welch, Pia Zadora, Elliott Gould, Meriel Hemingway, James Earl Jones, Olympia Dukakis, R. Lee Ermey.
Photography: Robert Stevens.
Music: Ira Newborn.
Production Design: Lawrence G. Paull.

Mar 1st
Hot Fuzz*
(Cineworld Ipswich)

A crack Metropolitan Police officer is "promoted" to a sleepy South West town, where all is not as it seems...
Snappy, dizzyingly edited and rather gory cop movie spoof by the boys who brought us Shaun of the Dead, with an excellent supporting cast of British comedy talent in the best tradition of ironic humour. A pity then, that the last hour of the film disappears into complete fantasy: all high-octane shoot-outs and no gentle satire.

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward, Billie Whitelaw, Stuart Wilson, Paul Freeman, Paddy Considine, Bill Bailey, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan.
(d: Edgar Wright)