Stars: Will Hay, Charles Hawtrey, Peter Croft, Barry Morse, Peter Ustinov, Anne Firth, Frank Pettingell, Leslie Harcourt, Julien Mitchell, Jeremy Hawk, Raymond Lovell | Written by Angus MacPhail, John Dighton | Directed by Basil Dearden, Will Hay
I always enjoy reviewing re-releases of old films, they remind us – and in some cases introduce us to – some classics. One such release is The Goose Steps Out which is getting a special 75th Anniversary release, and is a comedy great from the 1940s…
Will Hay plays William Pots, a bumbling teacher who turns out to be the double of a German general. Sent to Germany to impersonate the general and steal a new bomb the Nazis are working on, he finds himself having to teach a group of students how to spy on the British.
Watching The Goose Steps Out it is easy to see this was a piece of propaganda used to...
I always enjoy reviewing re-releases of old films, they remind us – and in some cases introduce us to – some classics. One such release is The Goose Steps Out which is getting a special 75th Anniversary release, and is a comedy great from the 1940s…
Will Hay plays William Pots, a bumbling teacher who turns out to be the double of a German general. Sent to Germany to impersonate the general and steal a new bomb the Nazis are working on, he finds himself having to teach a group of students how to spy on the British.
Watching The Goose Steps Out it is easy to see this was a piece of propaganda used to...
- 5/19/2017
- by Paul Metcalf
- Nerdly
Author: Competitions
To mark the release of The Goose Steps Out 75th Anniversary Edition on 15th May, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray.
Inept schoolmaster William Potts (Will Hay: Oh, Mr Porter!, The Black Sheep of Whitehall) is mistaken for a Nazi spy by British Intelligence. When the real spy is captured, Potts is sent to Germany in his place to intercept plans for a new Nazi secret weapon being thought up by inebriate Professor Hoffman (Frank Pettingell: The Remarkable Mr Kipps). Upon his arrival Potts takes charge of a group of trainee spies and, in his own unorthodox fashion, teaches them the manners and customs of the British. Among the young spies are three pro-British Austrians (Charles Hawtrey: Carry On Films, Peter Ustinov: Poirot: Death on the Nile & Barry Morse: The Fugitive TV series), who question Potts’s true motives yet...
To mark the release of The Goose Steps Out 75th Anniversary Edition on 15th May, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray.
Inept schoolmaster William Potts (Will Hay: Oh, Mr Porter!, The Black Sheep of Whitehall) is mistaken for a Nazi spy by British Intelligence. When the real spy is captured, Potts is sent to Germany in his place to intercept plans for a new Nazi secret weapon being thought up by inebriate Professor Hoffman (Frank Pettingell: The Remarkable Mr Kipps). Upon his arrival Potts takes charge of a group of trainee spies and, in his own unorthodox fashion, teaches them the manners and customs of the British. Among the young spies are three pro-British Austrians (Charles Hawtrey: Carry On Films, Peter Ustinov: Poirot: Death on the Nile & Barry Morse: The Fugitive TV series), who question Potts’s true motives yet...
- 5/8/2017
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
By Adrian Smith
William Blood (Kenneth More) is a man with an incredible immune system and without worries. He spends most of his time working as a human guinea pig for government departments such as the Common Cold and Flu Research Agency. There he frustrates the men in white coats by stubbornly refusing to catch a cold. He never gets ill, and his secret is that he has no emotional attachments. “The minute you get into a relationship with a woman, your guard is down and the coughing will start!” News of this remarkable constitution gets to the scientists at N.A.A.R.S.T.I., the National Atomic Research Station and Technological Institute, who are preparing to send the first maned rocket to the moon. They have previously sent up dogs and monkeys, but owing to public complaints about cruelty to animals, they have decided it would be...
William Blood (Kenneth More) is a man with an incredible immune system and without worries. He spends most of his time working as a human guinea pig for government departments such as the Common Cold and Flu Research Agency. There he frustrates the men in white coats by stubbornly refusing to catch a cold. He never gets ill, and his secret is that he has no emotional attachments. “The minute you get into a relationship with a woman, your guard is down and the coughing will start!” News of this remarkable constitution gets to the scientists at N.A.A.R.S.T.I., the National Atomic Research Station and Technological Institute, who are preparing to send the first maned rocket to the moon. They have previously sent up dogs and monkeys, but owing to public complaints about cruelty to animals, they have decided it would be...
- 10/30/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Few movie genres date with as much fluctuating unpredictably as comedy. What is hilarious to one person is humourless to the next. What is daring and boundary-breaking to one will just be in poor taste to the other. Some comedies are so reliant on contemporary social mores that the laughs are whittled away over time. Does anyone really still think that Will Hay’s comedies are hilarious, or Abbott & Costello’s, say?
The maturation process whereby movies pass through opprobrium, obscurity, rediscovery and reassessment is especially tortuous for comedies. A joke has to be pretty strong to withstand thirty or forty years of scrutiny, and the film must withstand repeated viewings and still retain the ability to amuse. I can’t imagine anyone, not even the people who made it, will remember Epic Movie or Meet The Spartans in 2044.
It’s one of the great touchstones of maturity when you...
The maturation process whereby movies pass through opprobrium, obscurity, rediscovery and reassessment is especially tortuous for comedies. A joke has to be pretty strong to withstand thirty or forty years of scrutiny, and the film must withstand repeated viewings and still retain the ability to amuse. I can’t imagine anyone, not even the people who made it, will remember Epic Movie or Meet The Spartans in 2044.
It’s one of the great touchstones of maturity when you...
- 6/18/2014
- by Cai Ross
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
(Val Guest, 1960, StudioCanal, PG)
The versatile British journeyman Val Guest (1911-2006) began his prolific movie career in the 1930s writing scripts for comedies starring Will Hay and the Crazy Gang and was still directing in the 1980s. But his memorable films are genre pictures made in the late 50s and early 60s such as this realistic police procedural thriller, an unusual departure for Hammer, shot in black and white on gritty, unfamiliar Manchester locations. The formidable star is the toughest British actor of the day, Stanley Baker, just then embarking on a four-movie partnership with Joseph Losey. He's a no-nonsense cop, anticipating TV's Z-Cars, which started the following year, and he's pursuing a vicious escaped convict. The violence is unusually convincing for a British movie and fresh observations include an illegal gambling school involved in pitch and toss on the edge of the city.
Guest's dialogue is abrasive and unsentimental,...
The versatile British journeyman Val Guest (1911-2006) began his prolific movie career in the 1930s writing scripts for comedies starring Will Hay and the Crazy Gang and was still directing in the 1980s. But his memorable films are genre pictures made in the late 50s and early 60s such as this realistic police procedural thriller, an unusual departure for Hammer, shot in black and white on gritty, unfamiliar Manchester locations. The formidable star is the toughest British actor of the day, Stanley Baker, just then embarking on a four-movie partnership with Joseph Losey. He's a no-nonsense cop, anticipating TV's Z-Cars, which started the following year, and he's pursuing a vicious escaped convict. The violence is unusually convincing for a British movie and fresh observations include an illegal gambling school involved in pitch and toss on the edge of the city.
Guest's dialogue is abrasive and unsentimental,...
- 11/18/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn was born in Covent Garden, London on January 9, 1920 from a family of theatrics - he was the cousin of Gretchen Franklin, Ethel Skinner in EastEnders. As a child, Dunn's life was almost cut short when he had a supernumerary nipple removed. After training at the Italia Conti School, he appeared alongside comedy legend Will Hay in Boys Will Be Boys and Good Morning, Boys during the 1930s. His career was temporarily interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, during the course of which he spent four years in Austria as a prisoner of war after being called up as a 20-year-old. Photo gallery - Clive Dunn's life and career:
Upon returning to the UK, Dunn spent a few years in music halls, before making his television break in The Tony Hancock Show and later Hancock's Half Hour, where (more)...
Upon returning to the UK, Dunn spent a few years in music halls, before making his television break in The Tony Hancock Show and later Hancock's Half Hour, where (more)...
- 11/7/2012
- by By Paul Millar
- Digital Spy
The novelist relishes Hitch's prewar comedy adapted by Gilliat and Launder because it both satirises and celebrates the English stiff upper lip
It might not be his best film, but Hitchcock never made anything warmer or more lovable than this. I must have seen it 20 or 30 times and can't imagine ever growing tired of it.
Kudos to his collaborators, first of all. Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's screenplay is sharper than anything written for Hitchcock's other British films (or his American films, come to that – except possibly for North by Northwest) and you could make a strong case for regarding it as a Launder and Gilliat film rather than a Hitchcock one, if authorship has to be decided. That sometimes endearing indifference to nuances of dialogue and characterisation that marks even some of Hitchcock's best films is nowhere to be found here: the edgy banter between Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood really sparkles.
It might not be his best film, but Hitchcock never made anything warmer or more lovable than this. I must have seen it 20 or 30 times and can't imagine ever growing tired of it.
Kudos to his collaborators, first of all. Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's screenplay is sharper than anything written for Hitchcock's other British films (or his American films, come to that – except possibly for North by Northwest) and you could make a strong case for regarding it as a Launder and Gilliat film rather than a Hitchcock one, if authorship has to be decided. That sometimes endearing indifference to nuances of dialogue and characterisation that marks even some of Hitchcock's best films is nowhere to be found here: the edgy banter between Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood really sparkles.
- 6/16/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
Classic British comedy Go To Blazes is out on DVD on January 30th from Studio Canal. Featuring an all-star cast: Maggie Smith, Robert Morley, Dennis Price, Dave King, Derek Nimmo, Thora Hird and Will Hay, the DVD release marks the film’s 50th Anniversary, and for this occasion, it will also be screened at the British Film Institute in the London Comedy Film Festival on January 29th.
Studio Canal have given us three DVDs of Go To Blazes to giveaway to you, our readers. All you have to do to win one is answer this simple question:
Go To Blazes stars Thora Hird, but in what classic British BBC televison series did she appear? Was it:
a) Songs of Praise
b) Points of View
c) Last of the Summer WIne
Email your answer and address to competition@blogomatic3000.com with Blazes in the subject line. An email entry counts as One entry into the competition.
Studio Canal have given us three DVDs of Go To Blazes to giveaway to you, our readers. All you have to do to win one is answer this simple question:
Go To Blazes stars Thora Hird, but in what classic British BBC televison series did she appear? Was it:
a) Songs of Praise
b) Points of View
c) Last of the Summer WIne
Email your answer and address to competition@blogomatic3000.com with Blazes in the subject line. An email entry counts as One entry into the competition.
- 1/23/2012
- by Phil
- Nerdly
Most stars are just the front-of-house display for an industry that makes fortunes for many others
I asked my mum over the holidays where her big pile of sketches was, because I wanted my sons to see them. She said she'd thrown them away ages ago. I was stunned. I'd loved looking though them all when I was little. Portrait after portrait of actors, all beautifully copied from the movie magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, some of them oil paintings on greaseproof paper, a nimbus of ochre linseed around their edges, most of them pencil on sugar paper. There were a few of Deborah Kerr, whom my mother, as a young woman, had adored. She was my namesake.
My mother's classmate at school in Essex, Maureen Rippingale, had been particularly fascinated by my mother's ability to capture a likeness, even to ratchet up all that glamour and beauty just a tiny bit more.
I asked my mum over the holidays where her big pile of sketches was, because I wanted my sons to see them. She said she'd thrown them away ages ago. I was stunned. I'd loved looking though them all when I was little. Portrait after portrait of actors, all beautifully copied from the movie magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, some of them oil paintings on greaseproof paper, a nimbus of ochre linseed around their edges, most of them pencil on sugar paper. There were a few of Deborah Kerr, whom my mother, as a young woman, had adored. She was my namesake.
My mother's classmate at school in Essex, Maureen Rippingale, had been particularly fascinated by my mother's ability to capture a likeness, even to ratchet up all that glamour and beauty just a tiny bit more.
- 1/21/2012
- by Deborah Orr
- The Guardian - Film News
Mira Mexico! London
The darkly surreal edge that saturates both comedy and tragedy in Mexican cinema is a constant source of delight, and there's plenty of it on show in this season of contemporary Mexican talent. Rollicking circus black comedy Meet The Head Of Juan Pérez, for example, revolves around a magician's unfortunate decapitation, while in Rodrigo Pla's art-and animation-suffused The Desert Within, a peasant attempts to thwart a government ban on religion. There's also Daniel And Ana, a shocking tale of kidnapped siblings, and Five Days Without Nora, a heart-warming take on a well-organised suicide.
Barbican Screen, EC2, Thu to 27 Jan
Slapstick 2010, Bristol
Whether it's a twirl of Chaplin's cane, fisticuffs between Laurel and Hardy or a cartoon anvil falling on an unsuspecting cartoon head, chances are you're a secret, or not-so-secret, lover of slapstick comedy. And why not? As this sixth slapstick silent comedy festival proves, it's as popular today as ever.
The darkly surreal edge that saturates both comedy and tragedy in Mexican cinema is a constant source of delight, and there's plenty of it on show in this season of contemporary Mexican talent. Rollicking circus black comedy Meet The Head Of Juan Pérez, for example, revolves around a magician's unfortunate decapitation, while in Rodrigo Pla's art-and animation-suffused The Desert Within, a peasant attempts to thwart a government ban on religion. There's also Daniel And Ana, a shocking tale of kidnapped siblings, and Five Days Without Nora, a heart-warming take on a well-organised suicide.
Barbican Screen, EC2, Thu to 27 Jan
Slapstick 2010, Bristol
Whether it's a twirl of Chaplin's cane, fisticuffs between Laurel and Hardy or a cartoon anvil falling on an unsuspecting cartoon head, chances are you're a secret, or not-so-secret, lover of slapstick comedy. And why not? As this sixth slapstick silent comedy festival proves, it's as popular today as ever.
- 1/16/2010
- by Andrea Hubert
- The Guardian - Film News
Bac, London
This is a bit of a carry on, in more ways than one. There are over 50 characters but only one performer, Amanda Lawrence, in this affectionate whirlwind tribute to the comedy actor, Charles Hawtrey, who stole his name from the Edwardian actor and manager, lost his career to alcoholism and his life to gangrene. The former child actor, who began his career playing a Lost Boy in Peter Pan and appeared in the Will Hay films, eventually achieved fame late in life as a regular in the Carry On series.
But before he even opened his mouth to declare lines that included, "I don't mind the jiggery, but I do take exception to pokery" he looked funny: his thin face with its wire-framed specs in a permanent pucker of camp surprise and disapproval, as if he was sucking on a lemon while being tickled with a feather duster.
This is a bit of a carry on, in more ways than one. There are over 50 characters but only one performer, Amanda Lawrence, in this affectionate whirlwind tribute to the comedy actor, Charles Hawtrey, who stole his name from the Edwardian actor and manager, lost his career to alcoholism and his life to gangrene. The former child actor, who began his career playing a Lost Boy in Peter Pan and appeared in the Will Hay films, eventually achieved fame late in life as a regular in the Carry On series.
But before he even opened his mouth to declare lines that included, "I don't mind the jiggery, but I do take exception to pokery" he looked funny: his thin face with its wire-framed specs in a permanent pucker of camp surprise and disapproval, as if he was sucking on a lemon while being tickled with a feather duster.
- 12/4/2009
- by Lyn Gardner
- The Guardian - Film News
The late, great Dame Thora Hird brought well-mannered cheer to British TV for sixty years. Famed for her roles in Last Of The Summer Wine, Salvation Army sitcom Hallelujah and 1960s classic Meet The Wife, she was one of the most gifted comedy stars of her generation. Her often forgotten early work included war-time propaganda and roles alongside comic Will Hay and Sir Laurence Olivier. Although the Morecambe-born star is often latterly remembered (more)...
- 12/5/2008
- by By Alex Fletcher
- Digital Spy
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