The Cuckoo Patrol

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.

A star vehicle for Freddie Garrity - of FREDDIE AND THE DREAMERS fame - THE CUCKOO PATROL is an entirely dated and lacklustre comedy centred around a Scout troop and the misadventures they get themselves into. This really is poverty row stuff, with awfully lame jokes and the sight of Garrity mugging and gurning towards the camera all the while. You wonder how on earth a production like this got made or who they were aiming at given the star's five minutes of fame had long since passed.

Still, for fans of cult and/or forgotten films, THE CUCKOO PATROL holds some fun. Kenneth Connor and John Le Mesurier contribute a nice little double act as the thoroughly exasperated scouting superiors and some of the sub-plots are quite fun, like when the Scouts unwittingly aid a criminal gang with their attempt at safecracking. But let's be fair, the quality of the writing is very poor here, and the film as a whole feels like something that came out of the 1930s rather than the late '60s. Victor Maddern gives the best performance as the gang boss.

I don't really remember a great deal about this film as i was only about six years old at the time. My father, Harry Bennett aka Crafty Casey Pye played the part of one of the wrestlers called the black gorillas, alongside his tag partner Dominic Pye. Dominic is listed on the cast list but the other black gorilla is listed as a Bill Turney, I know this isn't correct but don't know who Bill Turney is/was and why . My mum says there was a mix up at the time, she seems to remember.

I would be interested in obtaining a copy of this film, can anyone help, i have sent a message to stephen-50 who has previously made a comment about this film.

Thank you for your help Michelle

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.

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!