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MovieMail's Review
Sir Henry is at breakfast of brandy, bacon, beetles and winkles. Old Scrotum (yes, the wrinkled retainer) is churning a gob of spit for the iron. In the adjoining room Sir Henry’s son plays polo snooker on horseback. He then turns his horse and jumps it through the window glass. “That’s the trouble with Italian aeroplanes – too much hair on the wings” says Sir Henry.
Welcome to the surreal world of Rawlinson End, or rather, ‘English as tuppence, changeless as canal water, nestling in green nowhere, armoured and effete, bold flag-bearer, lotus-fed Miss Havishambling, hermit-crab, tight-fist, eremite, feudal still, reactionary Rawlinson End’, as writer and narrator Vivian Stanshall has it. The film, expanded from a number of broadcasts ex-Bonzo Dog Stanshall did for John Peel’s Radio 1 show, sees Sir Henry at his country pile, reminiscing on past colonial experience all the while, and attempting to exorcise his trouserless dead brother’s ghost while synchronously foiling escape attempts from his POW camp (small but daunting) in the grounds. Meanwhile, the Reverend Slodden (a menacing Patrick Magee), plots thievery from Rawlinson End down at the village in The Fool and Bladder.
Trevor Howard, never far from an optic of brandy throughout, is fully game as the blithely bigoted Sir Henry, and is convincing to such an extent that you begin to believe the whole world of Rawlinson End could be an extension of his character’s fevered alcoholic imaginings. He sports a mealtime sou’wester for the exudations of fruit jellies from his deceased brother’s room overhead and at one point, more troublingly, appears in blackface and a tutu. His script, with its numerous deadpan one-liners (“Frankly, once I've eaten a thing, I don't expect to see it again.”; “If I had all the money I've spent on drink - I'd spend it on drink.”) is a comic actor’s joy. The storyline has been described as ‘PG Wodehouse on acid’ but in its bibulous, consonant-clotted wordplay (nationality notwithstanding of course), it calls to mind Dylan Thomas as his most excessive. It’s one you’ll watch raised-eyebrowed, slack-jawed, keen-eared and quizzical, and then you’ll need to watch it a second time to catch all the things you missed first time round.
Commentary with director Steve Roberts, actors Sheila Reid and Jeremy Childs
English for hard-of-hearing subtitles
Picture gallery
Trivia.
Film Description
A real cult classic, this is a genuine curate’s egg of a film. Written by the late Vivian Stanshall, it stars Trevor Howard as eccentric English peer Sir Henry Rawlinson, who attempts to exorcise the trouserless spirit of his brother.
