User reviews

The only black & white film directed by Peter Yates. Largely known for action films like 'Robbery' and 'Bullitt', he also made chamber pieces like 'The Dresser' and this deceptively deadpan, charmingly dated adaptation by N. F. Simpson of his own play (about which the funniest thing is probably the usual disclaimer at the end about it's resemblance to actual persons living or dead).

Similar to 'Billy Liar!', only here it's the entire family that all live in worlds of their own. Alison Leggatt is particularly good as the mother but all the cast are excellent, which include Eric Sykes in a rare leading role in a film and an even rarer - almost silent - part for Jonathan Miller, who usually had so much to say in his TV appearances.

A very odd film along the lines of the bed sitting rooms.

Eric Sykes (a film is always worth a watch if Eric is in it) plays an insurance man who is building a copy of the Old Bailey in his living room while his son teaches speak your weight machines to sing. Yes you heard that right but don't let it put you off.

It's a little gem that's well worth 90 minutes of your time.

I have longed to see this film and pestered Turner to show it for years, and finally they put it on in October 2011 as part of a Peter Yates series. It has a wonderful cast of British actors, including Graham Crowden (who appeared in the original play), George Cole, Mona Washbourne and Glyn Houston.

Jonathan Miller is cast against type as an almost nonverbal character who is training talking weighing machines to sing as a chorus. I was amazed to hear one of the songs they sang was Michael Brown's LIZZIE BORDEN from NEW FACES OF 1952! If you haven't read the play, you may have trouble following this when a living room turns into a court room; it must have been easier to grasp this watching it on stage where the room was assembled before the audience by the eccentric father.

Thank you, Turner, for finally letting the public see this!

A very strange and low budget British comedy that starts off normally enough in the first half an hour before descending into a kind of tedious surreal approach from that point onward. The oddball characters go about their business building electronic devices, playing music and eventually staging a court trial in the lounge! Very strange and not even established players like Eric Sykes or George Cole can generate much interest here.

I remember this era in the theatre well.Bizarre and offbeat was in.Many of these plays made it to the cinema.However as shown here they don't really work too well.Notwithstanding an interesting cast.

I first saw this weird film in the early 70's and was aghast at its strangeness. A father (Eric Sykes) who is obsessed with the Old Bailey and is building a replica in his front room, a son who nicks 'speak your weight' machines and adjusts their innards so they sing together like a choir ('fifteen stone, ten pounds!') and an attractive young daughter who thinks she looks like a monkey. Add in a live-in Aunt who thinks she's waiting for a train and Mrs Gantry (the wonderful Peggy Mount) who 'pops in' to eat leftover food (a service for which she makes a charge) and we have what could be a very disturbing film if it wasn't so funny. This film's screenplay must be the product of a disturbed mind, but it is so well done by the cast and director that it works brilliantly. We have a VHS recording of this, made from a 1980's TV showing - I really must dig it out!

March 2022

Thanks to talking pictures tv for allowing me to see yet another British comedy rarity from this time period. I watched this with great expectations as it stars the likes of Eric Sykes and George Cole, i was hoping for another out and out comedy typical of the time period.

Well how wrong was i, this was not funny at all, it was actually like watching one of those kitchen sink dramas, maybe i missed something, as most the other reviewers appear to love it, although they do words like surreal.

So its not what you may expect, but if you likes films a bit different then it may be your cup of tea.

Not for me this one.

4 out of 10.

This is an absolutely bizarre crazy film. You watch puzzled (for me) till the conversation about having arms shortened to fit sleeves and the light bulb brightens:) Saw it in an art theater in the States about 2 years after it was released and was blown away. I have been telling people about it for years and am ecstatic about it being acknowledged as even existing (it was invisible on the Web for a very long time - you had to go to Beyond the Fringe and work backwards) If I could find it it any playable format I would get it in an instant - track the strangeness picked up in later 60's films - Beatles included. If it ever surfaces and you are into 'quirky-ness' be sure to sit back and enjoy.

I watched this film with practically no prior knowledge of it and for the first fifteen minutes or so I thought it was shaping up into a typical farce or situation comedy of the era with one or two elements which seemed a little too far-fetched. However, the dialogue and the situations become even more bizarre and then, at about 40 minutes in, the film turns completely on its head with a wholly surreal twist.

This film is wonderfully bonkers, incredibly inventive with a small but excellent cast and a plethora of richly absurd lines of dialogue. The characters almost without exception see the peculiarities in their peers whilst being completely oblivious to their own eccentricities and in that sense is a wonderful observation of our own individual failings. It won't appeal to everyone, but if you like the humour of Monty Python, Spike Milligan or, especially, The Strange World of Gurney Slade, you should love this overlooked, and largely forgotten gem.

I see it flopped on its original release, maybe it was too ahead of its time, or more likely people watched it with expectations that this film would deliver a comprehensible plot with traditional gags. It doesn't. Like the main character, Mr Groomkirby, it exists in a world of its own - and we are privileged to be afforded a glimpse into it.

I last saw this movie in 1970. I was discussing the funniest movies of all time and this one came to my head. Very bizarre movie, but incredibly funny. Absurd situations and dialog. If you liked Monty Python, this is your movie. I remember one particularly funny line. When asked by a friend why their son always dresses in black, the mother responded that they decided before he was born to dress him in white if he turned out to be black or to dress him in black if he turned out white. Her friend then asks if her husband has any Negro blood. She responds that she's not sure, but he does keep a lot of strange things in jars in the attic. Very non-PC, but it's all in good fun.

The original play by N F Simpson (who also wrote "A Resounding Tinkle" is even weirder! Mr Groomkirby is working his way through a series of historic buildings ("When we had Stonehenge and people called us Druids!), Sylvia actually wants to look like an ape so that she can touch her toes without bending down etc. The plot is a conflation of literalisms ("into the jaws of Death" is no mere metaphor here) and bizarrrerie by modified context, e.g. the son and father have hobbies such as model building, collecting and choir training whilst the teenage(?)daughter worries of over her looks.John Cleese saw this film in the cinema in Weston Supermare and it seems to have stayed with him ever since. If you haven't seen it you have missed a true classic of surrealist comedy!

Watched this tonight on Talking Pictures. I was about 5 yrs old when this was made. Very nostalgic & featured several familiar TV faces from the time (UK), Brilliant. As other reviewers have stated it looks like a hybrid of Spike / Python before their time. Obviously the Court scene is the best but watching Peggy Mount consume 10,000 calories eating in the kitchen is great. If the aforesaid genre is not your SOH then avoid it gut otherwise just enjoy this rarity.

'One way pendulum' is a 1964-5 film I saw only once on the TV in (I think) way back in the early 70s. I've been looking for it ever since and found and watched it on Youtube last night. Its as good/better than I remember and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

We start with some nice footage of early 60s London but what could morph into either a standard kitchen-sink drama or the opening episode of a soap opera gradually sucks you into an increasingly absurdist world that sits very comfortably between early Spike Milligan and Monty Python. Its heritage includes Alice in Wonderland, challenging as it does that great book for flights of logic that will bemuse and amuse.

The acting is excellent and contains many of the regulars from the period's British movie scene. One of them, Eric Sykes, gets to play one of his greatest roles.

The characters are both believable and absurd at the same time. A young man who dresses in black and teaches 'I speak your weight' machines to sing songs in harmony in the attic. A husband who's recreating the Old Baily (London's Central Criminal Court) in his living room. A wife who pays a woman come in each week to eat any uneaten food in the house. A daughter who worries about the length of her arms.

A great film. I'd put it in the top 20 I've ever seen. I wonder if you will?

it's wonderful when it was last on TV about 600 years ago, the TV times said "if you think the world is round then don't bother watching this" that sums it up, it's absurd and very funny for example - jonathan miller is his son, he steals speak your weight machines and retunes them to different notes so he can get them to play a symphony julia foster is his daughter who thinks her arms are too long after watching the monkeys too much at the zoo. peggy mount is the neighbour who they pay to come and eat up all the left over food. eric sykes is building a copy of the old bailey in the living room - after that it gets mad. Come on TV companies - it's about time we saw it again.

The weirdness of this film is made all the more bizarre by its seemingly normal cast. The behaviour of each member of the family is eccentric in the extreme. It's not side splitting funny, rather I can't believe they've done that funny. Eric Sykes is a comic genius, who can just make me laugh by just being there, the rest of the family aren't particularly funny but it's their eccentric behaviour which makes them so outrageous. George Cole and Peggy Mount are legends. To say that this film inspired Pythons, maybe, although it's a lot weirder than python humour for the time. It certainly showcases British eccentricity and sets the tone for the comic acts that followed.