When a couple from London move to the country to take over a pub they have inherited, they find that rural life isn't as idyllic as they'd imagined, thanks to the manoeuvrings of a powerful ... Read allWhen a couple from London move to the country to take over a pub they have inherited, they find that rural life isn't as idyllic as they'd imagined, thanks to the manoeuvrings of a powerful local brewery.When a couple from London move to the country to take over a pub they have inherited, they find that rural life isn't as idyllic as they'd imagined, thanks to the manoeuvrings of a powerful local brewery.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFinal featured role for Graham Moffatt. He had an uncredited bit in a 1963 film and died in 1965.
- GoofsThe above entry is incorrect as the closing credits list the whole family as 'Larkins', albeit as Alf Larkins and are called Larkins throughout the film.
- Quotes
Eddie Larkins: Undermining my authority!
Ada Larkins: I'll undermine the seat of your pants in a minute. Remember your name's Larkins, not Montgomery. Now get in there!
- ConnectionsReferenced in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)
A film about the Larkins 'at home' was clearly not a strong enough setting, therefore Alf retires from the labelling department at Belcher's brewery. Normally he would be given a pub to run, but he is given a derisory pen, instead. In marches wife Ada (Peggy Mount), who harangues the owner, Leslie Phillips, to the extent that he lets the Larkins have the 'Earl Osborne', a pub more ailing than the ale, which the locals hate, described by a yokel, Jumbo (Graham Moffatt) as 'potato water'.
The plot is thin, and consists of Ada inducing tourists and locals into her 'local', eventually realising that the locals receive free beer each quarter from the Earl Osborne, who, up till now, has been masquerading as farm worker Bill, his spilt personality remaining unexplained. Naturally, after his true identity is revealed, Ada buys some barrels off him, and the locals descend on the pub in droves. The anti hero, Gaskin, Alan Wheatley as the Sheriff of Nottingham in a suit, heading a powerful rival brewery, tries to trick Phillips into selling the pub, the latter unaware that a motorway is about to be built in the vicinity, which will elevate the insignificant watering hole to the status of a service station goldmine. Alf's drinking club, 'The Fluids', avert this impending catastrophe by moving the paper contract around in a ritualistic game of cat and mouse.
The supporting cast is mainly misplaced or underused. The great Charles Hawtrey is sidelined as a grumpy employee; his colleague from their early days in Will Hay films, Graham Moffatt, plays the eponymous Jumbo, his last film appearance before succumbing to a heart attack at 46. Moffatt had run his own pub for many years, so his role is one of a 'busman's holiday'. Glyn Owen struggles as the Earl Osborne, and is more at home as his 'alter ego' Bill, safer among those of his own class - this was 1960, and the 'swinging sixties' had not yet replaced the class conscious fifties. Ronan O'Casey is whimsical as Ada's Canadian son - in - law, complete with dodgy Irish -American accent, and Shaun O'Riordan, a future director of TV programmes, is a mummy's boy, a forerunner of Private Pike, from Dad's Army, but is given a measure of authority, since he is a scoutmaster and drives a car much better than his dad.
The multi - talented David Kossoff is unable to display the range of his undoubted talents in his limited role of Alf (Cyril Smith was much more effective as Peggy Mount's husband in 'Sailor Beware') and, of course, in homage to Raquel Welch, there is the obligatory gorgeous French girl, Yvonne Monlaur, who, by chance, is staying at this pub in the middle of nowhere. Naturally she becomes engaged to the Earl. Well studied support comes from Frank Williams, as Gaskin's snobbish nephew, while Esma Cannon and Irene Handl are in top form as the gossipy ladies in the village shop. However, that inveterate scene stealer, A.E. Matthews, affectionately known to everyone as 'Matty', is delightful as a scattily pompous master of the hunt. At the age of 91, he was Britain's oldest working actor.
Ultimately, the film demonstrates the decadence and imminent collapse of the British film comedy in the sixties - some rather dodgy processing doesn't help, either. Despite its obvious frailties, it's still worth a watch, even if it's only to gain a glimpse of a vanished way of life. No wonder the 'carry on' films were already beginning to carry the film comedy banner, in whose genre Charles Hawtrey has passed into cinematic legend. For Peggy Mount, films were virtually over, and television comedy beckoned; Kossoff would become an outstanding religious writer and raconteur, and Frank Williams would play the vicar in 'Dad's Army'. Give it a viewing on a wet Sunday afternoon, but be careful - Steve Race's honky tonk title tune will have you foot tapping, until the call comes: 'time, ladies and gentlemen, please..'
- music-room
- Nov 29, 2006
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origen
- Languages
- Filming locations
- Walton Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, UK(studio: produced at Walton Studios Walton on Thames Surrey England)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1