Peter Sellers’ First Feature and Short Come to Blu-ray
Juno Selects, a video imprint of Juno Films, will release the first two onscreen credits of Peter Sellers on Blu-ray on March 28th. The 77-minute feature, Penny Points to Paradise, and the 33-minute short, Let’s Go Crazy were filmed concurrently in 1951, and both feature other members of the radio cast of The Goon Show (Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe).
Neither film is supposed to be very good. However, for fans of Peter Sellers and The Goon Show (I fall into both camps), the disc may be worth picking up for the curiosity factor alone. Here are spoiler-filled synopses from the Juno Films website:
Penny Points to Paradise (1951)
Peter Sellers debut film. Madcap comedy about a pools winner on holiday at the seaside. Sellers plays 2 parts. The pools winner – Harry Secombe – and his friend – Spike Milligan – are beset by gold digging girls and con men trying to part him from his money.
Secombe plays the part of Harry Flakers, a man who has a big win on the football pools. He and his friend Spike Donnelly (Milligan) decide to go to the same shabby seaside boarding house that they have always patronised for their summer holiday, but this year all the other guests (including two young women out to marry money, a dodgy investment advisor and a master forger and assistant) are intent on taking the fortune off them in one way or another.
Ultimately the forgers manage to substitute fake five-pound notes for the real ones that Flakers keeps in his suitcase, but before they can abscond with the money one of the girls is given cash by Flakers to buy some cigarettes, and accused of passing false currency when the forgery is detected. A grand chase follows with half the characters pursuing the other half through a waxwork museum in which the true crooks have taken refuge. Justice is served when the chief forger boasts of his crime in front of what he thinks are two waxwork policemen, but who turn out to be real members of the force.
In the final scenes Harry and Spike get married to the two women.
There are sequences featuring a night out at the theatre where a stage hypnotist mesmerises Flakers and the girl Christine into performing an operatic duet, he singing soprano and she baritone, and a scene in which Harry Secombe wordlessly mimes out an entire heart operation being carried out by a nervous surgeon.
Year: 1951
35mm, 77 min, black & white
Directed by Tony Young
Production Company: P.Y.L. Productions
Presented by Advance Films
Produced by Alan Cullimore
Screenplay: John Ormonde
Cinematography: Bert Mason
Editor: Harry Booth
Cast:
Harry Secombe as Harry Flakers
Alfred Marks as Edward Haynes
Peter Sellers as The Major / Arnold Fringe
Paddie O’Neil as Christine Russell
Spike Milligan as Spike Donnelly
Bill Kerr as Digger Graves
Freddie Frinton as Drunk
Vicki Page as Sheila Gilroy
Joe Linnane as Policeman
Sam Kydd as Porter / Taxi Driver
Let’s Go Crazy (1951)
Opportunistically produced to use up paid-for studio time booked for the proto-Goon comedy Penny Points to Paradise (d. Tony Young, 1951), Let’s Go Crazy was shot in Brighton over the course of one week. A short musical featurette set in a nightclub, it combined variety acts with hastily prepared linking comedy sketches written on the spot by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, both on the cusp of radio comedy fame with the Goon Show. Rough and ready, but not without a certain low-budget, anarchic charm, Let’s Go Crazy is a more characteristic vehicle for Milligan and Sellers’ absurdist talents than the more conventional Penny Points to Paradise.
Sellers was still best known for his radio work, but here he proved his ability to convey character visually, defying his bargain basement surroundings to breathe life into a range of surprisingly effective and distinct characters. These include exasperated Italian head waiter Giuseppe, frustrated Crystal Jollibottom (a popular character created for radio’s Ray’s a Laugh) and the unbearable Cedric, apparently a hit with the ladies but with a hair-flicking twitch that suggests a nervousness within. Sellers’ convincing Groucho Marx provides a suitably abrupt end to the film when, in the final seconds, he blows up the club with a bomb. Milligan, puzzlingly uncredited, also adopts various roles and is best as a wild-haired waiter, the powerful comic chemistry between Sellers and Milligan apparent as they briefly slip into Goonish mode.
The variety acts featured are of uneven quality. One suspects that the primary selection criteria were that they should be cheaply available, nearby and available for booking at short notice. The strange diversity of the acts, though, provides an interesting snapshot of club entertainment at the time. Notable among the merry throng are Freddie Mirfield and His Garbage Men, a novelty jazz band strongly reminiscent of the more celebrated Spike Jones and His City Slickers.
Barely registering on the critical radar upon release, the film was at least noticed by Kine Weekly, though its reviewer was not impressed: “the performers are versatile and willing, but presentation lacks imagination and showmanship.” However, some years later, when Sellers’ star was in the ascendant, the Groucho scenes from the film were cut into Penny Points to boost the Sellers content of the short 1960 reissue version of Penny Points to Paradise.
Adelphi Films
35mm, black and white, 33 mins
Directed by: Alan Cullimore
Screenplay by: Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan
Cast: Peter Sellers (Groucho Marx / Giuseppe / Cedric / Crystal Jollibottom / Izzy Gozunk); Spike Milligan (Eccles); Wallas Eaton (Mr Jollibottom); Tommy Manley, Florence Austin, Keith Warwick, Jean Cavall, Pat Kaye, Betty Ankers, Maxin and Johnson, Freddie Mirfield and his Garbage Men (variety acts)
