John Snagge Movies
Julien Temple's punk documentary U.K. Subs: Punk Can Take It presents live footage of the seminal punk band and is structured like a parody of WWII era British documentaries. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
This zany British comedy finds a homeless hobo (Ringo Starr) being adopted by the world's richest man, Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers). Setting sail on the luxury liner The Magic Christian, Sir Grand tests the limit of human avarice. With money to motivate the greedy, Laurence Harvey combines his Hamlet soliloquy with a striptease. A vile cesspool of excrement is seeded with cash and the money-hungry dive right in. Wilfred Hyde White is the drunken captain, Yul Brynner is uncredited in his performance as a chanteuse transvestite, and John Cleese is the director of Sotheby's auction house. Roman Polanski, Richard Attenborough and Raquel Welch also appear in this offbeat comedy. Paul McCartney wrote and produced "Come and Get It," the first international hit from the power-pop group Badfinger. John "Speedy" Keene wrote "Something In The Air" and performed the track with his group Thunderclap Newman. Sellers, Cleese, Graham Chapman and Terry Southern co-authored the screenplay taken from Southern's novel. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, (more)
Fledgling filmmaker (and future film historian) Kevin Brownlow worked in collaboration with Andrew Mollo for nearly ten years to create It Happened Here. Shot on 16-millimeter stock in stark quasi-documentary fashion, the film is predicated on the postulation that Germany had invaded--and defeated--England in World War II. Brownlow and Mollo's vision of this nightmarish world is perfect in every detail, right down to the German road signs in rural Britain. The plotline is carried by Pauline Murray, playing a nurse who uncovers Nazi atrocities perpetrated on Polish and Russian hospital patients. Begun in 1957 when Brownlow was an 18-year-old editing apprentice, It Happened Here was finally completed in 1964, and released theatrically two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Pauline Murray, Sebastian Shaw, (more)
- 1944
The "2000 Women" of the film's title are the female inmates in a WW II German concentration camp in France. Though many of the women don't get along, they are united in their hatred for their Nazi captors. The story takes a truly melodramatic turn when three English airmen parachute into the camp, offering a ray of hope for those inmates planning an escape. Some of the humor is "black" indeed, involving a card-playing corpse and other questionable sources of laughter, but this was the sort of material that wartime audiences wanted. Heading the cast of 2000 Women are Phyllis Calvert, Flora Robson and Patricia Roc, fine British actresses all who overcome an abundance of script deficiencies. The film was the first production of Individual Pictures, formed by the producer-director-writer team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Phyllis Calvert, Flora Robson, (more)
