Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[lynn cates]

Dark Star

Hello All. I say, one of my favourite surreal comedies is absent. That would be John Carpenter's 1974 "Dark Star."

Anyone seen this cult classic?

Cheers.
LC

[Robert]

The Ghost of St Michael's (Hay)
Geordie
Ring of Bright Water (both Bill Travers)
The 39 Steps (especially the version with Robert Powell)

[GUT]

Films set in Scotland in whole or part:

Macbeth (1949)
Macbeth (1969)
Mary of Scotland
Mary, Queen of Scots
The Ghost Goes West
Bonnie Prince Charlie
The Master of Ballentrae (1953)
Kidnapped (1935)
Kidnapped (1962)
Rob Roy
Mania
The Doctor and the Devils
The Greed of William Hart
The Body Snatcher
Greyfriars Bobby (1960)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1960)
Hatter's Castle
On Approval
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
I Know Where I'm Going
Terror By Night
Whiskey Galore / Tight Little Island
The Bridal Path
The Battle of the Sexes (1960 - Peter Sellers)
The Maggie
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Jeff

G'day Jeff

What about Braveheart.

[Mayerling]

Films set in Scotland in whole or part:

Macbeth (1949)
Macbeth (1969)
Mary of Scotland
Mary, Queen of Scots
The Ghost Goes West
Bonnie Prince Charlie
The Master of Ballentrae (1953)
Kidnapped (1935)
Kidnapped (1962)
Rob Roy
Mania
The Doctor and the Devils
The Greed of William Hart
The Body Snatcher
Greyfriars Bobby (1960)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1960)
Hatter's Castle
On Approval
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
I Know Where I'm Going
Terror By Night
Whiskey Galore / Tight Little Island
The Bridal Path
The Battle of the Sexes (1960 - Peter Sellers)
The Maggie
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Jeff

[Robert]

Hi Jeff and Lynn

I do prefer Hay to Formby, though the latter isn't bad.

Formby made many films, and I heard that each of them featured a different actress as the romantic interest. This was because Formby's wife was determined that no attachments should develop. Fairly soon after she died he remarried, but died himself soon after.

He did of course play the uke, but the banjo-like instrument he played was apparently not a banjo but a banjolele.

[Mayerling]

Since I mentioned my growing liking for Mr. Hay and his crew, I have to also admit a growing liking for George Formby. But I have to see more of his films.

Formby, as you can expect, is in the "Ukulele Hall of Fame".

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hello Jeff, Robert. Entirely agree about Will Hay. Seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b6TdwpUpXk

Cheers.
LC

Thanks Lynn, I'll take a look at Windbag later.

Hay was an interesting man in his own right - he was a distinguished amateur astronomer.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Yes indeed, Jeff - a likeable rogue, and with no deference whatsoever to his 'betters.'

If I remember correctly, "The Black Sheep of Whitehall" had none of the usual Will Hay associates, such as Harbottle and Albert, or Claude Hulbert or Charles Hawtrey. Instead John Mills steps in. There's an enjoyable chase through the countryside, involving a top economist being towed along unconscious in a bath-chair.

His best moments are with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat, and Hawtrey. In "Go To Blazes" he is involved in trying to get a repaired firehouse pole back into the firehouse (a four story affair), which he somehow got out of it's holes. He, Marriott, and Moffat are struggling with this four story pole into the street, destroying property left and right, stopping traffic, and creating a crowd of about 100 men to assist them. Hawtrey, playing one of his snooty whiz kids (he was young then) starts lecturing them on physics and mechanical arts about how to move the pole, and at one point Hay says, "I have a good idea where I would like to put the damned pole!!"

In "Ask a Policeman" he's an incompetent police chief in a town which has the record of NO CRIMES for the last ten years (which the local High Constable does not believe for a moment). To find a smuggling ring depends on some ancient "rocking horse" meter poem but the key last line has not been remembered, accept by Marriott's even older living father (Marriott in a second part). Meeting the figity old man in his bedroom, Hay reassures, "Don't worry about this Balaclava business!" The old man does remember the last line of the quatrain - unfortunately it is longer by at least two lines than the proceeding three. Hay has gotten his information about the lair for any smuggling, but starts analyzing what is wrong about the way the quatrain was written!

Finally there is a choice early moment in his final movie, "My Learned Friend", where Hay is on trial for getting money under false pretenses. He has written begging letters using the name "Evelyn", and he is clearly a man.
But (as the author Mr. Waugh would have pointed out) men can have that name too, and Hay produces his birth certificate. He mentions in the letter
that he is looking at the three tots in front of him as he writes this. "But you have no children" it is pointed out. The judge (who clearly sees what he is facing) says, "Let me guess - they were tots of beer?" Clearly caught off guard (a little) Hay says, "Actually, no M'Lord! They were tots of gin!" There is also a line in the begging letter, "Nothing but this letter stands between me and the poor house!" The judge asks, "Were you writing it against the wall of the alms house?" Again surprised, Hay says, "Actually it was the door."

Great comic actor.

Jeff

[lynn cates]

Hay, you.

Hello Jeff, Robert. Entirely agree about Will Hay. Seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b6TdwpUpXk

Cheers.
LC

[GUT]

How about Patch Adams.

[GUT]

Loved Cookoo's Nest, one of my favorite movies.

[Robert]

Yes indeed, Jeff - a likeable rogue, and with no deference whatsoever to his 'betters.'

If I remember correctly, "The Black Sheep of Whitehall" had none of the usual Will Hay associates, such as Harbottle and Albert, or Claude Hulbert or Charles Hawtrey. Instead John Mills steps in. There's an enjoyable chase through the countryside, involving a top economist being towed along unconscious in a bath-chair.

[Mayerling]

I remember the Robin Williams film "Awakenings," about people coming out of comas.

And there was the Amicus horror film "Asylum" starring Robert Powell and Patrick Magee.

"The Black Sheep of Whitehall" has Will Hay dressing up as a nurse in order to rescue a top economist who has been kidnapped by Nazi agents and taken to a nursing home in the countryside.

Hi Robert,

I really have gotten to like Will Hay. He was one funny character.

Jeff

[Robert]

I remember the Robin Williams film "Awakenings," about people coming out of comas.

And there was the Amicus horror film "Asylum" starring Robert Powell and Patrick Magee.

"The Black Sheep of Whitehall" has Will Hay dressing up as a nurse in order to rescue a top economist who has been kidnapped by Nazi agents and taken to a nursing home in the countryside.

[Mayerling]

Great idea for a list !!


I thought I would include films in mental health institutions as well..if that’s ok

here is my starting list


Brink of Life 1958
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest-1975
Britannia Hospital- 1982 ( third film in the Mick Travis trilogy- If and O Lucky Man being the others)
Titicut Follies-1967 ( not a "film" but a documentary by Fred Wiseman....very disturbing!!)
Men in Black ( 1934 Three Stooges Short.. not the Tommy Lee Jones Will Smith film paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari-1919
Even Dwarfs Started Small-1970- oh Herzog...what can I say
King of Hearts- 1966 ( I think this should count.... but maybe not)
Shock Corridor- 1963


Steadmund Brand

Hi Steadmund,

"King of Hearts" would certainly count - who were the really insane characters, the gentle souls in the asylum (at least for this story) or the geniuses who created World War I?

I forgot the conclusion of "Dr. Caligari".

Talking about "King of Hearts", we all seem to have forgotten "Harvey", and Cecil Kellaway's rest home (and please note Jesse White's "Wilson" and his actually realistic commentary on "nice" insanity patients - Wilson might be rough and tough, but he knows wherein he speaks). Other films with asylums

1. Dracula (1931) - and all the others that have scenes in Dr. Seward's asylum. Paging Renfield.
2. Dr. X (the hospital Lionel Atwill is involved in)
3. Farewell My Lovely (Dick Powell has a nasty sojourn in the "clinic" run by Otto Krueger)
4. High Anxiety
5. Spellbound
6. The Uninvited (Cornelia Otis Skinner has a fascinatingly evil part as the head of an asylum with a nasty agenda).
7. Captain Carey, M.D. (again wartime medicine, this time mental units)
8. Three Comrades (Margaret Sullivan's attempts to regain her health at George Zucco's medical clinic - ironically in this film Zucco is a good surgeon).

Jeff