Whereas this is very much in your face. I consider Spike Milligan to have been that well-worn phrase, a comic genius and The Goon Show on BBC radio from 1952-1960 to be his most inspired and inspiring job. Whereas this was written by Jimmy Grafton and Francis Charles. And the release of hundreds of the Goon show recordings have long been a money-spinner for the BBC when nearly everything else from the era has been junked, forgotten or ignored. Including this. It was a hard job that contributed to a couple of mental breakdowns but over the next five decades in various media he maintained a consistently high standard of disembowelment of the English language and human logic. I remember him exuberantly agreeing with Esther Rantzen on TV in 1975 that "he was a bit of a cult". This film has its moments but true Goon humour is all in the mind – this veers from ordinary and cheap to mildly amusing and historically interesting.
Michael Bentine plays a mad professor, Peter Sellers plays a mad army colonel, Harry Secombe and Milligan play a couple of mad soldiers, and Graham Stark one of two baddies, all chasing about for the professor's secret plans for a bicarbonate bomb. It's a b film in all departments with the humour occasionally shining through but often submerged in embarrassing pauses or script flatlining. If you didn't like the Goons you won't like this at all – but as a life long Goon fan I get just enough out to enjoy it. And I'm grateful that it was filmed at all, a tantalising record of the four of them working together - Bentine left the team the next year - and grateful there actually are a few one-liners that worked in it. It's hardly Goonacy but thankfully there's always classic episodes for my ears to return to such as The String Robberies, The Fear Of Wages, Tales Of Mens Shirts, Napoleon's Piano among many many others that I can still return to time after time.
Michael Bentine plays a mad professor, Peter Sellers plays a mad army colonel, Harry Secombe and Milligan play a couple of mad soldiers, and Graham Stark one of two baddies, all chasing about for the professor's secret plans for a bicarbonate bomb. It's a b film in all departments with the humour occasionally shining through but often submerged in embarrassing pauses or script flatlining. If you didn't like the Goons you won't like this at all – but as a life long Goon fan I get just enough out to enjoy it. And I'm grateful that it was filmed at all, a tantalising record of the four of them working together - Bentine left the team the next year - and grateful there actually are a few one-liners that worked in it. It's hardly Goonacy but thankfully there's always classic episodes for my ears to return to such as The String Robberies, The Fear Of Wages, Tales Of Mens Shirts, Napoleon's Piano among many many others that I can still return to time after time.