The Cuckoo Patrol

In answer to another comment from someone who wondered whether this film had been released, I can assure him/her that it was. I remember seeing the photographs outside a London cinema around 1967 or 1968. If I remember correctly, Freddie Garity was dressed as a boy scout. As a boy scout myself at the time I can tell you that each troop is divided into patrols, and that each patrol is named after an animal or a bird.

By that time, Freddie and the Dreamers were past their sell-by date. I did not want to see an overgrown Freddie playing a boy scout, so it did not take much willpower to resist the urge to enter the cinema.

With hindsight, I can see that Freddie and Co were unique in rock music, and were a better band than people give them credit for. But, at the time, pop stars were put in films that were usually absolute crap. The only film of this kind that I have found impressive is Adam Faith in Mix Me a Person.

Being a fan of sixties music and the associated bands, I wondered how I had missed this film. I now know why, its rubbish. It must have sunk without trace on its release.

Whilst there is stella cast of fine comedic talents, they are wasted in this turkey. Makes me wonder how much they got paid and was it worth it.

This must surely be a candidate for the worst film ever : certainly the worst British film, the worst sixties film, and the most unfunny 'comedy'. Freddie and the Dreamers were never big enough stars to carry a film and in any case were by 1967 when the film appeared, already past their use by date. There isn't a single decent 'gag' in the whole sorry mess, the 'acting' is uniformly dire and the likes of John le Mesurier must surely have been embarrassed to be associated with it. If I say that Kenneth Connor (of 'Carry On' fame) was taking a step DOWN in terms of quality and subtlety to appear in this appalling drivel, it might convey how truly awful it is. It's a mystery how it even got made, let alone released. Excruciatingly poor.

Frank Randle was making the same sort of nonsense - with the same director of photography - during the war; and twenty years later it's still no funnier.

More of this was shot on location than Mancunian Films' meagre budgets ever allowed, but Freddie Garrity (whose comic leaping about endeared him at the time to my grandmother and during the early seventies was still starring in the children's TV comedy series 'Little Big Time'), while making Randle seem as sophisticated as Noel Coward by comparison, completely lacks Randle's redeeming acrobatic prowess.

I cannot understand all the damming reviews here - by adults.

This is a children's film, so of course adults are not going to necessarily find it funny. My 8 year old son really enjoyed it - in the same slapstick way I enjoyed Punch and Judy as a kid. There are quite a few famous faces in this film, and I thought it was well put together as a sort of loony/panto mish mash children's comedy.

I would rather they watched this than some of the dark and disturbing rubbish thats put on today!