The Bed Sitting Room (1969)

 "Radiation's rising. Still, one mustn't grumble too much.

I'm full of sesations from this extraordinary film. It contains multitudes. It is, I admit, my only experience of a Spike Milligan (co-)script, full of irreverent absurdity, the sort which wqould later begat a less overtly successor in Monty Python.

Thetre is much more, though. Despite the very British humour that anchors everything, this is a cinematic adaptation of an absurdist play that feels like Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, which is high praise indeed. It's a post-apocalyptic world, set in the near future to 1969, with absurdity upon absurdity. Yet it's grim, in the traditions of Ionesco and Beckett. Indeed, the constant cynicism in the face of nuclear annihilation and the equally cynical, yet glorious, skewering of the British "stiff upper lip" denies us even the consolations of existentialism.

Despite this, the humour is exquisite. Realism being abandoned, we may use the setting to skewer British behaviour. Hence Arthur Lowe (genius casting) as the father, leaning heroically and deeply into another sort of comedy. I suspect, in person, over a pint, he would have been no Captain Mainwaring. Despite Peter Cook, Michael Hordern and others, his performance stands out. Beyond, even, that of Nurse Marty Feldman.

I can only urge you to saee this triumph of British comedy cinema which, deaspite its clear absurdist bent, is full of genus humour of the type one may expcct. You MUST see this film.

The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971)

 "You're a walking repository of carbohydrates."

I suppose I have to start that this is a rubbish film, made by pretty much the cream if British comedy writers and performers as of 1971, but it ends up as (mostly) utter pants. But they are, at least, interestingly soiled pants.

Yes, I shall indeed go into a corner and think about what I've just typed.

This is a portmanteau film, with a very crude (in all senses) cartoon linking device separating seven long comedy sketches of varying quaity and various styles. The use of the seven deadly sins as a basis for portmantaeu film is not an inherently bad idea; its just that most of the sketches are rubbish.

Yes, the Galton and Simpson sketch with the stand-off between two cars on a country road is good, but we've all seen it before and here we have it wheeled out again, this time with Ian Carmichael. There's also a sketch on gluttony, penned by Barry Cryer and Graham Chapman that's rather good. Sadly, beyond that we have rather a lot of sub-Benny Hill nonsense (hot take: Benny Hill wasn't cancelled in 1988 because of "political correctness", but because hisentire format was unfunny and crap) and Blakey from On the Buses as a tyrannical park warden. We even have Harry Secombe blacking up- badly- at one point. The social attitudes are certainly of another era.

Still, rubbish though it is, this film is a fascinating snapshot of the variable state of British comedy fifty years ago. We tend to remember the best stuff, but there was also a lot of dross out there.