Slop
Arthur Lucan is the ne plus ultra of Awful British Comedians, or I hope he is. As Old Mother Riley, a shrieking, gesticulating Irish char lady, he appeared in a series of poverty row productions, generally with his wife, Kitty O’Shea, playing his daughter. The sex lives of British comedians are best left unimagined — the little we know of them is repulsive — but the coition of Mr And Mrs Lucan reaches a level of gruesomeness unrivalled until the appearance of the Krankies (don’t Google — if you are in ignorance, best remain so). This may be why young Ken Russell regarded them with such abhorrence, but he doesn’t really need an excuse beyond what’s onscreen.
Kitty does not appear in MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE, but Bela Lugosi does. He made this the same year as BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA, and it’s a wonder he survived, even if not for long. It’s hard to say which cinematic encounter depleted him more, but one thing you can say about Bela, he never phones it in. One might wish he had, from across the Atlantic, saving himself the trip and indignity.
Lucan doesn’t exactly spare us anything either, shrieking every line and waving his bony arms about in a pugilistic mania. Aware that his is a quickly overplayed hand and an entire film of this grisly schtick would turn the strongest stomach, the filmmakers provide a few less rabid actors for us to gaze upon, and two of these, the excellent and resourceful Dora Bryan and the ineffectual Richard Wattis, get what laughs are to be had.
But there are such things as anti-laughs, and when you tot everything up it’s clear that MRMTV has a net total of minus a thousand or so laughs. Despite feature a nice clanky robot, and some good weird sidekicks for Bela, including Judith Furse — the mannish Sister Briony from BLACK NARCISSUS and the ubermannish Doctor Crow from CARRY ON SPYING, assisted by bespectacled homunculus Ian Wilson. Some men are small. Some are very small. Wilson is unpleasantly small, he’s able to turn his stature into a creep factor, an impressive trick unequalled until Ronnie Corbett’s clockwork Nazi in CASINO ROYALE.
“Directing” the show is John Gilling, his Hammer films still ahead of him but with one Todd Slaughter script (THE GREED OF WILLIAM HART) to his name. Most of the men handed megaphones on Awful British Comedian movies have an anti-talent for comedy, but few compare with Gilling, who racks up the anti-laughs until whatever the opposite of hysteria is sets in. He has a way of suddenly cutting to a chiaroscuro closeup of his gurning lead clown that’s more authentically blood-curdling than anything he managed with reptile women, zombies, or pharaonic revenants. A full critical reckoning with Gilling has yet to occur, I feel. His Hammer films feel better than some of their rivals, but they’re funny, not scary. And his comedies are alarming, not funny. This being a horror comedy, it gets to be unfunny at all times, and the music-hall low-jinks are more alarming than the horror spoofery.
If you feel that you might be getting to be too happy, I can highly recommend this film. Image by image, it has a certain misguided verve, the mock-horror framing shows some ability. But put together, it’s absolutely lethal.
Verdict: Arthur Lucan and Old Mother Riley are both Awful. Lucan clearly has some kind of talent, but it could probably have been better applied to a career in enhanced interrogation techniques.
This entry was posted on April 10, 2024 at 10:23 am and is filed under FILM with tags Arthur Lucan, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, Black Narcissus, Carry On Spying, Casino Royale, Dora Bryan, Ian Wilson, John Gilling, Judith Furse, Ken Russell, Kitty O'Shea, Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, Richard Wattis, Ronnie Corbett, The Greed of William Hart, The Reptile, Todd Slaughter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
8 Responses to “Slop”
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April 10, 2024 at 1:14 pm
The last several posts have illuminated a hitherto unknown and unsuspected circle of Hell. Thanks, I guess…
April 10, 2024 at 2:16 pm
There are some lighter moments ahead… little rays of sunshine amid the stygian gloom.
April 10, 2024 at 4:28 pm
DC. Does this mean you are going to finally move on to A COUNTESS IN HONG KONG?
April 10, 2024 at 8:06 pm
Not quite yet. We can’t neglect Tommy Trinder, can we?
April 10, 2024 at 10:12 pm
Inevitably thinking of the Pythons drag bits. Musing whether they were simply following a comic tradition, dealing with the lack of female pythons, or mocking Lucan and his ilk the way they mocked smarmy old-school hosts.
April 10, 2024 at 10:21 pm
It’s not a parody of anything in the case of the Pythons, I think. Partly it’s the need to cast female roles with an all-male team (Carol Cleveland did the the glamorous bits), partly a grand old British panto tradition, of with Mother Riley is but one disreputable offshoot. We love a bit of dragging up here.
April 11, 2024 at 8:43 pm
Although I’ve read that John Gilling was not a popular figure on set, I’ve always had an affinity for his odd sci-fi fantasy THE GAMMA PEOPLE, a project once circled by Robert Aldrich.
April 11, 2024 at 9:45 pm
That’s one odd film! Aldrich might have made it into something like Losey’s The Damned, maybe.