Postman's Knock

This film was recently shown on Turner Classic Movies. It is a small, fairly tame comedy about an unfailingly good-natured, utterly artless and guileless country postman, Harold Petts (Spike Milligan), who nevertheless possesses a natural intelligence and apparently superhuman mail-sorting skills. He is transferred from his village in the country to London, where in the course of the film he thwarts---almost by accident---two robberies, outperforms the automatic sorting equipment installed by the postal branch where he works, and gets the girl (Barbara Shelley). This is a low-budget affair, rather drab-looking, and of course quite dated. It is of interest primarily because it is one of those rare opportunities here in the States to see the late, great Spike Milligan, who is virtually unknown on the American side of the Atlantic. This must have been bread-and-butter work for Milligan, who keeps his manic tendencies more or less under control in this film, although he allows himself some impish smiles from time to time. If you didn't know who Milligan was, you'd never guess he was the mad, eccentric genius who created The Goon Show for the BBC and who became as well known for his mental instability as for his comic invention. The great actor John Wood, who achieved much greater stardom on stage than on screen, where he was mainly a serviceable supporting actor, plays Police Constable Woods, who winds up on the receiving end of most of the mishaps on screen. I remember him best as Professor Falken in "WarGames." You will also recognize Barbara Shelley, whose natural sexiness was never really exploited the way it would be today, from "Village of the Damned" and the Hammer film originally titled "Quatermass and the Pit," but invariably shown here in the USA as "Five Million Years to Earth." An incidental note: Milligan couldn't resist writing a Goon Show that parodied the Quatermass films, called "Quatermass O.B.E.", where of course Ned Seagoon (played by Harry Secombe) was the Quatermass character. It even used an eerie electronic sound effect borrowed from one of the films.

Opens with the postman Petts (Spike Milligan) handing off letters (from his moving bicycle!) to the recipients, since he blows his horn when he's about to deliver. some clever bits. he's transferred to London, and it's all pretty overwhelming. the music is very happy go lucky, even when Petts gets goofed up and goes the wrong direction. he keeps bumping into Jean (Barbara Shelley), and they strike up a friendship. everything goes wrong, but it's all fun and light hearted. kind of like agent 86 on Get Smart. On the plus side, he keeps accidentally interrupting the robbers who are trying to rob the postal service. It's quite fun. directed by Robert Lynn. was A-D on the Superman movies. Story by... Jack Story! who had also written The Trouble with Harry, which Hitchcock made into film.

The mark of the greatest films is that they create a world of their own. "Postman's Knock" is absolutely unlike any other film you've ever seen, and obeys its own rules of plot, character and comedy. The late Spike Milligan was a fitful genius who could, occasionally, lapse into becoming an undisciplined bore, but here he is absolutely at the top of his form.

He plays a country postman seconded, in error it transpires (a conceit not dissimilar to that in 1963's "Heaven's Above!"), to the big city. The conventional comedic take on this situation is to exploit the bumpkin's lack of sophistication in unfamiliar surroundings, but "Postman's Knock" completely inverts this; the bumpkin is shown to be vastly superior to the urban fools with whom he comes into enforced contact. Milligan even gets the girl!

The late 50s and early 60s were, in hindsight, a golden age for British comedy. It's amazing how, at the turn of the decade, a number of highly individual, indeed quietly experimental, comedies were made: e.g. "School For Scoundrels", "Bottoms Up!" and "Postman's Knock". (Later on in the 60s there were "A Jolly Bad Fellow", "You Must Be Joking!" and the amazing "Rotten To The Core".) These were not part of some franchise, however enjoyable (e.g. the St Trinians films, the Carry-Ons, etc), but apparently unrepeatable one-offs.

I'm surprised, and not a little disappointed, at the low rating this film has so far received from IMDb participants. It deserves to be cherished for its unique brilliance (I'd rather watch its opening credits than most complete films of the last thirty years), and I give it 10/10!

It's nice to see that this ultra-obscure old British film (I've never seen it on British TV) still has appreciative fans but - wow! - it's quite an oddity. I hoped there was a chance that this would be in the same league as the best Wisdom/Phillips/Carmichael/Drake-type comedies, but it's a (delightful) disaster, for these reasons; 1) The script wasn't good/funny enough. 2) I'm sure they did their best (possibly on a particularly small budget) but the direction/technical side of things is clearly not of the typical old high standard. This isn't helped by the less-than-perfect print used on the DVD. 3) Many familiar faces are given very little to work with. 4) I had a worry that the ins and outs of delivering the post would feature heavily in this film, and boy, do they! and 5) Spike was the king of zany comedy, and I was looking forward to seeing him apply his talents to a relatively "straight" old-time comedy, but it doesn't seem he was able to transform (or vastly improve) the film. It's fortunate that the lovely Barbara Shelley features in this (her only comedy?), in the midst of her fantastic horror/thriller movie career. The incredible slightness of her developing romance is quite amusing in itself! The film may be kind of indefensible to anyone who didn't get into this sort of thing at an early age (unfortunately, old British films seem to have all but disappeared from the TV listings...), but it ticks the essential boxes - daft but amusing and good-natured and full of watchable faces. I like it and it will stay in my collection for life - unlike SO much great cinema...

Amusing little British comedy that has rural mailman Harold Petts, Spike Milligan, transfered from his sleepy little country town post office where everything has been the same as it was for hundreds of years. Harold's father grand-father great-grandfather great-great-grandfather etc, etc. were also mailmen, to the large and bustling London GPO (General Post Office) where sorting and delivering the mails is a lot lot more complicated modern as well as mechanized.

As soon as Harold steps off the train he get's involved in an attempted mail robbery that, even though he thwarts it, he's somehow suspected of masterminding just for his being on the scene of the crime and recovering the stolen mailbag. Not at all familiar with the workings of the modern industrial world Harold get's involved with pretty modern artist Jean, Barbara Shelly. Jean not only gives Horald directions to his new job at the London GPO by taking the tube, or subway, but also sets him up for a place to stay, until he finds a place of his own, in her attic.

Getting to his job at the post office Harold at first has trouble in delivering the mail since just one high-rise building, of about a dozen, on his route has as many if not more mailbox's as the entire town that he comes from. This causes him to oversleep and come in late for the work the next day the first he was even late on the job in fifteen years. Harold is still suspected by the police as being a criminal master mind who's job in the post office is just a cover to rob it as well as him being suspected by a local gang of clumsy and butterfingered hoods, headed by the not so bright Rupert ,Warren Mitchell, as being the same thing; a criminal master-mind posing as a klutzy and buffoonish mailman to throw off suspicion.

Finally getting the hang of his new job, as a big city postal worker, Harold suddenly starts to improve and accelerate his working habits. It's later that Harold causes a new mail-sorting machine, that can do the work of six mail distribution clerks, to short-circuit and break down In it just trying to keep up with him sorting letters by hand. Whats even more remarkable about this superhuman feat on Harold's part is that his job isn't even that of a mail distribution clerk but a of mail carrier!

Later in the movie Harold gets Jean a job at the post office, since she wasn't at all that successful in selling her modern art paintings, so she can pay her bills. It's that very good deed on Harold's part that causes both the police and the Rupert Mob to think that he and Jean are planning to rob the post office, via an inside job, of some 2 million in Pound Sterling thats to be processed through the very post office that both Harold and Jean are now working at. That's when the real slap-stick Keystone Kop, as well as Keystone Postman, fun and action begins in the movie "Postman's Knocks".

You have to stagger or sleep-walk through, like Harold did, most of the film to really get a good number of belly laughs when the action starts to really pick up with Harold and Jean running through the main post office with the Rupert mobsters and fumbling London Bobbies chasing them as all hell breaks loose in that giant mail room. Hraold & Jean Wracks the entire GPO and thus bringing the delivery and processing of the mail back to the 18th Century. Harold has in the end not only singled-handled foiled a major mail robbery but got himself a promotion as post master, of his little hometown post office, and married his girlfriend Jean. On top of everything else Harold also saved the jobs of countless postal workers, or mail distribution clerks. Harold that this by his being able to keep the new and modern $400,000.00, or 150,000. Pound Sterling, mail-distribution machines from taking over their jobs with his lighting-like mail boxing seed, causing them all to break down in trying to keep up with him.

P.S It looked like the scene of Harold competing with the mail-sorting machine was taken from the Charlie Chaplin 1936 silent-film, even though talkies were already around for almost ten years at the time, "Modern Times". Unlike Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times" Spike Milligan or Harold Petts in "Postman's Knocks" showed that good old fashion man CAN prevail over modern and unemotional automation not the other way around.