I've just made my way through the three films that comprise Slam Dunk Media's DVD box set The Peter Sellers Collection. For your money and your pains you get Orders Are Orders (1954), Where Does It Hurt? (1973) and The Blockhouse (1973). I won't lie, it's almost entirely dreadful. I also won't lie that I bought it solely because I wanted to see The Blockhouse and it's the only DVD I'll be keeping - the others can grace the shelves of a local charity shop.
Like most people I was introduced to Peter Sellers through the Pink Panther films and then rolled back to The Goons. Sellers is one of those iconic actors who get passed from generation to generation as an established comedy genius. Some years back now I got very interested in Sellers and started looking at his work beyond radio and the Blake Edwards films. I also read Roger Lewis's biography - a thorough and unforgiving tome after which I don't believe it's possible to view Sellers or his work in quite the same way again. It affected me greatly and I got put off the man, not having viewed that much of his offerings but at least having covered Casino Royale, Doctor Strangelove and Being There. I recalled The Blockhouse very clearly from Lewis' biography as a brilliant oddity so it was a film I purchased immediately upon finding it had been released. It's taken me some time to find myself in the mood to tackle it.
To take the films in this set in chronological order:
Orders Are Orders: I left this one till last, because on the face of it this looks like a cracker. It's purging the BBC radio comedy talent of the time with Tony Hancock, Sid James, Peter Sellers and a bit of Eric Sykes both as a cameo cymballist and taking credit for writing additional material. It's Sellers first proper, non-Goon film and you really want it to be great, but on the whole it's terrible. It's difficult to know if it's the script, the direction or the actors that make it so unfunny, but thank heaven it's only 74 minutes long. Sellers is pretty good actually, and it's difficult not to be drawn to him when he appears, or see promise in him for larger roles. He's young and fat and apparently doing a slightly calmer version of his Goonish Bluebottle persona. Bill Fraser, with whom he shares all his scenes, is entirely forgettable which can only aid Sellers. Sid James is an energetic, brash and unfunny caricature. Tony Hancock is also awful in a part that should be hilarious. Perhaps he's mis-cast? He never did well on celluloid, after all. Most of the time he looks like he's waiting for the audience to laugh, so he can respond (a bit like Frankie Howerd) - not a good technique to use on film. Other than Sellers the only person who is worth watching is Clive Morton who swans in for the third act as a visiting General and appears to be having the time of his life. Too little too late though.
Having started with Sellers at the beginning of his film career the next offering, Where Does It Hurt?, sees him at a point where he was trying to mend his charred Hollywood reputation following a series of disasterous egotistical efforts and some heart problems. It's difficult to know where to start with this one so I'll begin with the one gag I liked: the Pepsi vending machine that isn't actually a vending machine and backs into Hopfnagel's (Sellers') bathroom where he collects the money instead. Nice. The other point worth making about this film is that it is the only one of the three that can justifiably be called a Peter Sellers film. The other two are really ensemble pieces and it's a shame to reduce them to one name as if he's the star. But here, though, Sellers is the star. He's given a cast of nondescript US TV-types to work with, the kind of faces you'd expect to see in supporting roles on Columbo or Perry Mason. They do a solid job but they're no threat to him. He swans through the piece with his Richard Nixon voice, fromage grin and brown shades, embodying early 70s Hollywood. It's an incredibly smug film considering how appalling it is. You can actually feel the schmaltzy grease oozing out of the screen as it plays. It comes from that fictional TV sitcom world of racial & cultural sterotypes, where medical malpractice is accepted, people don't have real conversations, love and passion can be summed up by a quick fumble in a linen cupboard and nobody seems to have any integrity beyond the flimsy walls of the set they're occupying. The viewer sits waiting for the corrupt Hopfnagel to get his comeuppance, and the longer it goes on the less funny it gets and the less satisfactory his comeuppance will be. It has no appeal as a film, and again we have to be thankful that it's only 85 minutes long.
The Blockhouse is a little longer (92 minutes) and is the only one of the three that doesn't claim to be a comedy. It's anything but - there is no light relief in this gruelling psychological masterpiece. I watched it first, which may explain why I was willing to give the others a chance after. If I'd viewed them in chronological order I'd have been desperate by this point. The Blockhouse is brilliant, bleak and totally unforgiving. Sellers and Charles Aznavour are the 'names' but it is so very much an ensemble piece it's a shame to put anyone's name forward. It sucks the viewer in and you feel just as claustrophbic as the seven POWs who find themselves hopelessly trapped in a Nazi store after a sudden pre-D-Day raid by Allied bombers. They have air, wine and food and candles aplenty. Slowly relationships gets strained, their sanity gets challenged, there is illness, some die. Sellers' suicide is so magnificently played, so pitch-perfect it's difficult to credit that this is the same actor who refused to do re-takes on Doctor Strangelove even when he'd caused his fellow actors to corpse, or brought Casino Royale to its knees with his ridiculous fears and demands. The finest moment for me comes when the final survivors realise they have only a handful of candles left from the dozens of boxes they started with. There are only three left alive at this time. Do they want to stay alive indefinitely but remain in total darkness, or is that not a life worth living? It's a tough decision and one that is left unanswered for two of them at the end.
Sellers himself was most proud of Being There. But The Blockhouse is easily his finest, subtlest dramatic performance and the film has a balance and integrity throughout that is possibly unmatched in any of his others. I think it is a shame and to his discredit that he didn't take on more of these serious roles.
This box set serves one purpose only. Someone has scraped around the Peter Sellers film barrel and found two pieces of utter trash that would never be marketable on their own, packaged them with the more desirable Blockhouse and sat back, their work done. That wouldn't be quite so bad if a little bit of care had been taken and it wasn't quite so obviously a total money-making exercise with no consideration to the film fan or viewer. Slam Dunk Media have obviously spared no expense in restoring these films in their DVD transfer. No expense. At all. Orders Are Orders is the worst, with jumps, drop-outs and scratches galore. It can't make a bad film good, but at least watching a well-presented print with good sound helps the viewing experience. A lazy effort all round.
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