Okay, so the second Steptoe movie isn't up to the best of the television series, and doesn't reach the same bitter-sweet place that the first movie finally does, yet there's some decent laughs to be had along the way to a riotous last twenty minutes.
The Steptoe's horse has to be retired, so the pair cash in the old man's life savings and go off to buy a new horse. Things get complicated when Harold, the son, wastes the money on a blind greyhound who loses every race. This little "investment" puts them in hock to a local gangster, and they must find £160 or some serious violence will be inflicted upon them (it's amazing the amount of 70s Brit comedy that revolves around being threatened by heavies - what does that say about the then society and economy?). Hope arises from the fact that Steptoe senior has an insurance policy on his life, so the two of them fake his death.
Laughs are to be had from the pair's attempts to make the blind greyhound run, and from the blind drunk doctor's signing of Dad's death certificate. Things get better when all the local rag and bone men, and their vulgar wives, turn up for the wake and proceed to have a drunken rave up. More complications, and the living old man is taken to the grave in a coffin, surrounded by a quite magnificent rag-man's funeral procession, which is a bit of a wake for a dying way of life (as one of the characters admits). But the best is yet to come: at the graveyard, the Priest utters meaningless words about the resurrection of the body but, when he sees the body being resurrected, he runs afrighted about the graveyard as if he was encountering a cockney version of the Night of the Living Dead! The film manages to show up the hypocrisy of a faith that has come to be no more than words intoned without belief behind them; genuinely Ortonesque comedy, far better than the Loot film adaptation which Galton and Simpson screwed up completely.
The film ends with father and son restored to life, and linked in the ownership of a racehorse with another fading British institution: the royal family. In such ways does the film subtly suggest that an old vision of Britain will soon to run its last race. It is an afterlife that both the Steptoes and the Windsors are living now...
The Steptoe's horse has to be retired, so the pair cash in the old man's life savings and go off to buy a new horse. Things get complicated when Harold, the son, wastes the money on a blind greyhound who loses every race. This little "investment" puts them in hock to a local gangster, and they must find £160 or some serious violence will be inflicted upon them (it's amazing the amount of 70s Brit comedy that revolves around being threatened by heavies - what does that say about the then society and economy?). Hope arises from the fact that Steptoe senior has an insurance policy on his life, so the two of them fake his death.
Laughs are to be had from the pair's attempts to make the blind greyhound run, and from the blind drunk doctor's signing of Dad's death certificate. Things get better when all the local rag and bone men, and their vulgar wives, turn up for the wake and proceed to have a drunken rave up. More complications, and the living old man is taken to the grave in a coffin, surrounded by a quite magnificent rag-man's funeral procession, which is a bit of a wake for a dying way of life (as one of the characters admits). But the best is yet to come: at the graveyard, the Priest utters meaningless words about the resurrection of the body but, when he sees the body being resurrected, he runs afrighted about the graveyard as if he was encountering a cockney version of the Night of the Living Dead! The film manages to show up the hypocrisy of a faith that has come to be no more than words intoned without belief behind them; genuinely Ortonesque comedy, far better than the Loot film adaptation which Galton and Simpson screwed up completely.
The film ends with father and son restored to life, and linked in the ownership of a racehorse with another fading British institution: the royal family. In such ways does the film subtly suggest that an old vision of Britain will soon to run its last race. It is an afterlife that both the Steptoes and the Windsors are living now...