oscaralbert Review of The Entertainer

The Entertainer (1960)

"Let me know where you're working tomorrow night . . . "

[6/10 · 6 May 2021]

" . . . I'll come and see you," the old geezer on the Gurney of Death threatens the execution chamber witnesses as the final curtain shrouds down over THE ENTERTAINER. As anyone who's seen an episode of Monty Python or The Royal Family well knows, what passes for "humor" in the "British Empire" is regarded as pestilent pus among the Lands of the Living. Though England is known primarily for rotten food, rotten drink and rotten teeth, who can forget Prince Hamlet's immortal observation that "there's something rotten in London." Doubtless that moody "Royal" had just emerged from a first-run performance of the Archie Rice Show, and was vowing that it would be over his dead body if he ever saw THE ENTERTAINER again.