Down Among the Z Men

As already stated, a fairly confusing mishmash of a film.

HOWEVER ! If you are a UK resident over the age of fifty, it *might* just make a bit more sense, as the Goons were the UK's greatest comedy team ever. I have no idea who "the good guys" were (other reviewer's comment), but the Goons were "Gods" in their day - and it's the "in their day" which is most relevant now. Sadly, the film has aged dreadfully, sorry lads.

Bentine as Purehart (whitehead, blackhead, whitehouse etc...) is probably the funniest character, even outshining the immortal Eccles for most of the time. Sellers could have easily played 6 or 7 more characters, easy, but that's the movie industry for you.

1952, early days for the Goons, and most of their fame still to come on BBC radio. Shame Blinbottle couldn't have joined up with Eccles for some naughty sossinges.

An advisory 7/10 for old fart UK types.

This independently-produced British army comedy is chiefly notable now as Peter Sellers' film debut and for being the only starring screen vehicle for comic radio performers The Goons (of which Sellers himself was a member). Actually, it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated – given the unenthusiastic reviews online (chiefly because it's said that their material has been heavily diluted in the transition); still, it's not helped by the dated TV-style technique on display.

Curiously enough, the laughs come mostly from the characterization of a scruffy, absent-minded Professor played by Michael Bentine – the least-known and shortest-lived member of the group! Of the other three, Harry Secombe is the nominal lead – but his character doesn't have a distinct personality (at least in this incarnation); Spike Milligan is a private whose dopey countenance and voice seems to have been inspired by Goofy, the canine star of Walt Disney cartoons!; Peter Sellers, surely the Goon with the most prominent subsequent career (I've just acquired a number of his work from the 1960s and 1970s), is reasonably impressive – if basically playing it straight – as an elderly Major.

The plot has to do with a secret gas formula devised by Bentine, which is coveted by enemy agents who infiltrate the camp (looking out for him is a female member of M.I.5 passing herself off as Sellers' daughter); Secombe, then, is the everyman hero who unwittingly finds himself 'drafted'. Unfortunately, most of the second half (the film runs for a mere 71 minutes) is taken up by a putting-on-a-show routine showcasing a number of resistible song-and-dance performers – though the busy climax, at least, shows three of The Goons all dressed in similar outfits to confuse the villains (a gag probably lifted from The Crazy Gang's THE FROZEN LIMITS [1939], which I've recently watched)...while Sellers, somewhat irrelevantly, does a couple of impersonations on stage (a great talent he possessed and which he would constantly fall back on for the rest of his career).

Hmm. as most people who are goons fans have probably done, I watched this film purely out of curiosity having never seen the format "on screen". It didn't work. There is nothing whatsoever to recommend this film, boring, unfunny and unwatchable. as the goons huge popularity in later years goes to show, that's not to say that their talent is in any way called into question, I just think they really hadnt quite decided on which comedic routines would work and which wouldn't as early as 1952. Far better to watch something like "the muckinese battle horn" from 1957, which although doesn't feature secombe, is far nearer the mark to the goons madcap fast moving humour, and fans of the radio show will feel more at home. "z men" is quite frankly embarrassingly bad.

I was never a great fan of any of the "Goons" so approached this with quite a bit of trepidation. Sadly, it is all rather silly and presented in such a stilted fashion as to appear to have been rehearsed to within an inch of it's life - totally devoid of anything that looked convincingly genuine or spontaneous. There is a storyline involving a rather flaky professor who leaves a top secret formula in a grocer's shop. When he attempts to return it, he is mistaken for one of the "Z" (British army reservists) men, dragooned into the army and soon exposed to criminals who are also after this scientific boon. Curiously enough, there are one or two quite redeeming musical performances dotted throughout this featuring Carole Carr and Harry Secombe; but the performances of his fellow goons - Messrs. Bentine, Sellars and Milligan - really have suffered badly from the ravages of time, so much as to make this pretty unwatchable to all but real "Goonies".

As a fan of the Goons ever since I was a kid (I used to listen to them late at night on the local college radio station) I was surprised and delighted to find this DVD at the checkout counter of a local drug store (for only a dollar!). I suppose I have to be honest and say I was disappointed by the movie, but not by the opportunity to see it. Harry Secombe is the star and seems to be trying to imitate Curly from the Three Stooges (right down to a direct steal when he tries to read the label of a record while it's still playing). Secombe never came off well in his few starring vehicles (although he seemed to shine in Dickens --- he was great in OLIVER and made an excellent Pickwick in a musical TV adaptation of THE PICKWICK PAPERS). Michael Bentine also gets a lot of screen time as the batty professor, but struck me as more bizarre than funny. Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers were totally wasted. Sellers of course went on to great things, but Milligan, surely one of the funniest men who ever lived (and the single greatest creative force behind the Goons) fared no better in films than Secombe. The mistaken identity chase scene at the end provides a few laughs, but that's about the high point. All in all if you're a Goon fan you have to watch this, you really have no choice, but don't expect to like it.