The Cuckoo Patrol

I don't know HOW this ever got to be made, despite the stalwarts of British cinema/familiar faces, plus, off the top of my head in 1967, Freddie and the Dreamers, had used up any popularity they had by then. They produced dire songs here too.This really was an awful script and acting in a vain attempt to capitalise on the 'pop-stars-into-film' genre, especially really limited to 60s bands. This is really forgettable and not pleasant, or funny in any way. It had to be viewed though as 'part' of this genre, in my book, but I regretted every minute of it, even though the actors I've said, had 'support'. 'The 'gang' are just that, a troupe of Boy Scouts unwittingly helping and then foiling a couple of robbers. Do yourself a favour - give it miss, promise! Saw this recently, on the new UK satellite channel TalkingPictures.

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.

I actually felt a bit sorry for the "Freddie and the Dreamers" guys here as they play a troop of aged boy-scouts who find themselves embroiled with some petty crooks. Along the way, they have some "carry-on" style escapades that allow some surprising names - who should have known better - to pop up: John le Mesurier, Victor Maddern and Basil Dignam to name but three. I suppose the only one who emerges with anything akin to credibility is the sparsely used Kenneth Connor who is very much in character as their hapless scout leader. It's got plenty of the usual slapstick antics, and comes across much like a cheap and cheerful Norman Wisdom film, only with songs. That's the nadir just there - the title song and the few others that pepper the film are truly terrible (especially when sung in pyjamas). A fun ambush at the end raises the tempo ever so slightly, but sadly this is just a poorly conceived and executed flop of a film that can't ever have looked good - even on the storyboard/beer mat.

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.

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.