This independently-produced British army comedy is chiefly notable now as Peter Sellers' film debut and for being the only starring screen vehicle for comic radio performers The Goons (of which Sellers himself was a member). Actually, it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated given the unenthusiastic reviews online (chiefly because it's said that their material has been heavily diluted in the transition); still, it's not helped by the dated TV-style technique on display.
Curiously enough, the laughs come mostly from the characterization of a scruffy, absent-minded Professor played by Michael Bentine the least-known and shortest-lived member of the group! Of the other three, Harry Secombe is the nominal lead but his character doesn't have a distinct personality (at least in this incarnation); Spike Milligan is a private whose dopey countenance and voice seems to have been inspired by Goofy, the canine star of Walt Disney cartoons!; Peter Sellers, surely the Goon with the most prominent subsequent career (I've just acquired a number of his work from the 1960s and 1970s), is reasonably impressive if basically playing it straight as an elderly Major.
The plot has to do with a secret gas formula devised by Bentine, which is coveted by enemy agents who infiltrate the camp (looking out for him is a female member of M.I.5 passing herself off as Sellers' daughter); Secombe, then, is the everyman hero who unwittingly finds himself 'drafted'. Unfortunately, most of the second half (the film runs for a mere 71 minutes) is taken up by a putting-on-a-show routine showcasing a number of resistible song-and-dance performers though the busy climax, at least, shows three of The Goons all dressed in similar outfits to confuse the villains (a gag probably lifted from The Crazy Gang's THE FROZEN LIMITS [1939], which I've recently watched)...while Sellers, somewhat irrelevantly, does a couple of impersonations on stage (a great talent he possessed and which he would constantly fall back on for the rest of his career).
Curiously enough, the laughs come mostly from the characterization of a scruffy, absent-minded Professor played by Michael Bentine the least-known and shortest-lived member of the group! Of the other three, Harry Secombe is the nominal lead but his character doesn't have a distinct personality (at least in this incarnation); Spike Milligan is a private whose dopey countenance and voice seems to have been inspired by Goofy, the canine star of Walt Disney cartoons!; Peter Sellers, surely the Goon with the most prominent subsequent career (I've just acquired a number of his work from the 1960s and 1970s), is reasonably impressive if basically playing it straight as an elderly Major.
The plot has to do with a secret gas formula devised by Bentine, which is coveted by enemy agents who infiltrate the camp (looking out for him is a female member of M.I.5 passing herself off as Sellers' daughter); Secombe, then, is the everyman hero who unwittingly finds himself 'drafted'. Unfortunately, most of the second half (the film runs for a mere 71 minutes) is taken up by a putting-on-a-show routine showcasing a number of resistible song-and-dance performers though the busy climax, at least, shows three of The Goons all dressed in similar outfits to confuse the villains (a gag probably lifted from The Crazy Gang's THE FROZEN LIMITS [1939], which I've recently watched)...while Sellers, somewhat irrelevantly, does a couple of impersonations on stage (a great talent he possessed and which he would constantly fall back on for the rest of his career).