Dry Rot

My sense of humour must have changed quite a radically since I was 9 years old when I first saw this farce on stage at the Whitehall theater with my late parents with (if I can remember back 56 years ago), Leo Franklin in the part of Sid James.Yes, Brian Rix was in the cast and yes he lost his trousers in good old farce style.In fact I cannot think of Brian Rix in another dramatic role when il ne perdu pas ses pantalons!So After 55 years I bought this film out of curiosity to find out whether I would find any humour still existing in 2011.The answer was only mild echoes from my youth.We had very primitive humour before they were sharpened on Monty Python, Blackadder, satire and modern fearless stand up comedy from the likes of Ben Elton, Bernard Manning et all.

What I did find of interest was seeing Lee Paterson whose most famous role was as Group Capt.Turner, the Canadian fighter pilot from the film "Reach for the Sky" (1956) starring Kenneth More and Heather Sears as "Susan" in "Room at the Top" starring Lawrence Harvey.Sid was Sid James and Ronald Shiner played his usual ignorant cockney role.

Obviously the film has outside location scenes not possible in a theatre production especially shots of Sandown Park racecourse.Had I written this review when I was 9, I would have scored it 8/10 but now alas, I rated it only 5/10 as the humour seemed very primitive to my aging eyes.