Runtime: 86 minutes
Directed by: Gerald Thomas
Starring: The usual crew
From: Anglo-Amalagated
Film Distributors
Late last night I was deciding on what to view, and as the DVD
collection of their early films was right besides me and this was less
than 90 minutes, it seemed like a natural choice to pick this, and I
won't be going through the series in any set order either. In addition,
this was the first time Sid James appeared in the franchise.
The plot is decidedly not complicated: because of a flu epidemic, a police station needs to hire some temporary help, so in comes some new graduates from the police academy, although they might as well be from the Police Academy and be contemporaries w/ Mahoney, Hightower and Tackleberry as they are bumbling fools. They either stumble around or get into trouble because of foolish misunderstandings. The quartet includes a hypochondriac who is also amazingly superstitious and a faux academic who believes he can use the 1960's version of forensics but actually is a failure at it.
The humor includes pants falling down, going undercover in drag, a bucket of water being thrown on the wrong person and a literal slip on a banana peel; need I say more about how highbrow this is? I can still say this was fine as it wasn't too silly for me and the pratfalls at least were amusing. It also highlighted how different censorship was when it came to movies in the US vs. the UK. The former would have never allowed in 1960 either the bare-assed gag we get in one scene nor the female K9 dog be referred to as “a bitch” and that be used for a joke in another scene. Those moments did catch me by surprise.
The plot is decidedly not complicated: because of a flu epidemic, a police station needs to hire some temporary help, so in comes some new graduates from the police academy, although they might as well be from the Police Academy and be contemporaries w/ Mahoney, Hightower and Tackleberry as they are bumbling fools. They either stumble around or get into trouble because of foolish misunderstandings. The quartet includes a hypochondriac who is also amazingly superstitious and a faux academic who believes he can use the 1960's version of forensics but actually is a failure at it.
The humor includes pants falling down, going undercover in drag, a bucket of water being thrown on the wrong person and a literal slip on a banana peel; need I say more about how highbrow this is? I can still say this was fine as it wasn't too silly for me and the pratfalls at least were amusing. It also highlighted how different censorship was when it came to movies in the US vs. the UK. The former would have never allowed in 1960 either the bare-assed gag we get in one scene nor the female K9 dog be referred to as “a bitch” and that be used for a joke in another scene. Those moments did catch me by surprise.
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