Rent Ronnie Barker: Futtocks End (1970)

Thank goodness it isn't "Futtock Begins"! - Ronnie Barker: Futtocks End review by Count Otto Black

Oh dear. This "classic comedy" doesn't quite deserve absolute one-star condemnation, but if this site allowed half-stars I'd give it one and a half. Actually, I'd give it one, because then the lowest score merited only by irredeemable stinkers would be half a star. In other words, I didn't laugh much.

In 1970 Benny Hill (remember him?) was one of the most popular comedians in Britain (how times change!), and it looks very much as though Ronnie Barker thought he might increase his own popularity by stealing some of Benny's trademark gags. Basically this film is the wordless speeded-up slapstick sequence that featured in every Benny Hill show, only done at normal speed (except for one scene), not accompanied by that oh-so-zany "Yackety Sax" tune, and stretched to 47 minutes. An obsession with sleazy middle-aged men leering at nubile young women in a state of undress dominates the proceedings, and a huge proportion of the jokes rely on the assumption that anything remotely connected with sex is automatically hilarious.

The best jokes are the ones which take fullest advantage of the unusual non-speaking but non-silent format and use sound-effects instead of speech, such as the scene where a hungover Ronnie Barker finds ordinary noises painfully loud, or the surreal moment when a fat cook in a frilly apron and two junior maidservants are transformed purely by creative use of sound into a mother hen and her chicks. But far too much of the humour involves the numerous attempts by a lecherous butler (a bizarrely miscast Michael Hordern) to see a buxom young house-guest naked, to which end he spies on her from behind bushes and steals her clothes. It's true that political correctness was in its infancy in 1970, but even so, this is creepy rather than funny.

Another strange flaw, possibly caused by Ronnie Barker being more used to writing sketches whose participants were allowed to talk, is the lack of punchlines. Sight-gags are painstakingly set up, the joke builds for a while, and then it fizzles out or just stops. Even when there is a punchline it isn't always worth the wait. For instance, a lot of effort goes into setting up a very contrived situation where a woman is shocked to see Ronnie Barker sniffing her underwear, the joke being that we know he's doing it unintentionally but she doesn't. Even if you find that hilarious, you won't laugh because you'll be too busy trying to recall the convoluted chain of events whereby Colonel Futtock ended up accidentally sticking his nose in a pair of knickers in front of their owner.

Like one of the lesser Carry On films, it seems to be trying to appeal to broad-minded adults and small children at the same time, and the result is the worst of both worlds. It's actually not a bad concept, but the crude execution lets it down. All the same, I suspect it may have inspired a similar but much more extreme movie called "Aaaaaaaah!" which those Mighty Boosh fellows made in 2015, and which isn't very funny either. Somewhat ironically, this wordless film has a commentary track, but despite its brief running time I couldn't be bothered to watch it again on the off-chance that hearing somebody talking over the jokes would improve my viewing experience. Which would probably have been slightly better on a smaller and cheaper screen than the one I've got, because high definition this ain't! In fact, it looks as though the videotape the BBC used half a century ago was closely akin to sellotape.