Skywatch

It has been many a year since I have seen "Light Up The Sky" but the first and remaining impression was one of Honesty. The presented story, acting and setting is completely honest.It reflects a real sentiment of the times and that for my opinion is very rare.The only down side is that the whole historical times of the film are very much sliding into the fast vanishing past. The film will be forgotten and our memories will die with us...very sad. You can sometimes obtain a used VHS tape from Ebay but it always reaches over $40. Why this is so has been a surprise to me not for the lack of quality in the film to command a good price but the persons around who are willing to purchase.

When I was 8 my mother took me to see this as Tommy Steele was a big star to us kids . Everyone was singing ' Little White Bull' . I remember I enjoyed it especially when the German bombers appear . Benny Hill is his usual self . Seeing it now brings back memories . It's still a pretty decent film

I've just watched this film on the excellent British TV channel Talking Pictures.

Perhaps its best feature is the cast, almost all of whom I recognised, with several being on their way to greater things. Dick Emery has a few brief scenes as a driver, and it was interesting to see Benny Hill in a few non-comedic scenes depicting various emotions - sympathy, irritation, brotherly protectiveness.

His double-act on stage with Tommy Steele was wince-provoking, though I suppose it typified 1940s' entertainment. I couldn't make out the point of Sheila Hancock's terrible singing - it was incredibly bad.

The stage origins of the film are very obvious.

Others have queried the opening and closing scenes of village cricket matches before and after the war. I suppose they could have been meant to portray the quintessential English life that Britain sort to protect, but perhaps this is a subtlety beyond the modest aspirations of this film.

Wikipedia tells us that Tommy Steele deferred £7,500 of his fee, which perhaps is why he was allowed to escape a military haircut.

I'm puzzled as to why the IMDB lists the cast as, for example, "Ian Carmichael ... Lt. Ogleby (as Lt. Ian Carmichael)".

Somewhere in Europe, during the Second World War, a group of young men make up a Searchlight Squad. If an adventure is days of boredom interrupted by short bouts of terror, this is an adventure.... but for most of it they spend their time bickering, picking up women, and worrying about what's for dinner.

It's a comedian's show, with Ian Carmichael, Tommy Steele and Benny Hill at the top of the cast list, yet they are all tamping down their performances. If you've ever observed a comic actor giving a serious performance only to be surprised and impressed, you shouldn't be. As Edmund Kean said on his deathbed, dying is easy; it's comedy that's hard. Yet this quasi-service comedy tries to alternate the comedy with the difficulties of actual war, and doesn't really manage the first half of the remit. The actors step on the punchlines, deliberately.... but the result is 75 minutes of boredom, and 15 minutes of terror.

You look at the cast and expect an out and out comedy. Instead what you get is a surprisingly well acted and poignant film that tells the story of a searchlight battery in world war two.