Three small time crooks, Jelly Knight, Scapa Flood, and Lennie the Dip (Dudley Sutton, James Beckett, and Kenneth Griffith) get out of prison to find their old boss, The Duke (Anton Rodgers) dead and the money they stole gone. They fail running their own crimes, but a chance encounter leads them to believe that The Duke is alive and his girlfriend, Sara (Charlotte Rampling) might have some answers for them. She appears to be dating an unlikeable military policeman (Ian Bannen) and is also being followed by an ex-policeman, now detective (Eric Sykes) who was hired by her father. Everyone seems to run into everyone, and all of the crooks gather near an army base to pull off a big heist while various people on the side of law try and stop them.
1965 is after the time of Post-War British Comedies, if taken as a genre, and so no longer on my review list. But as a movement, Rotten to the Core is still connected, with the Post-War British Comedy writer/director/producing team of the Boulting brothers in charge, and actors from the genre like Eric Sykes and Raymond Huntley in front of the camera. Peter Sellers was also supposed to be there, but that didn’t work out, which is pretty much the phrase for this film: it didn’t work out.
What a meandering mess. It feels like it was put together from three scripts and no one ever figured out what it was about, or who the lead was. I suspect things were different when Sellers was involved, for better or worse as he would have insisted all focus be on him, but Anton Rodgers is no Sellers. It seems that the trio of thieves will be our join protagonists, but then it shifts to Sara, and then to The Duke. And with each shift (and shift back) the direction of the film changes. We are shunted to a health spa where a joke is being built up around the alcoholic waters given to the patients, and then it is dropped without payoff. Likewise it seems to be important that Sara is a high class girl looking for thrills and to upset her family, but that also goes nowhere. There are a few humorous gags, but since nothing ever leads anywhere, they are nothing but random jokes.
The cast is decent, but can only do so much with what they are given. Charlotte Rampling, definitely the odd-one-out of this group, had her lines dubbed, but it isn’t noticeable, unless you are listening for her voice.
It was shot by Freddie Young, between working on Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, a fact that is even more bizarre than the mess of a script. The cinematography is fine, but Young is one of the greatest of all time, and no one is going to get lost in these images.
The Boulting brothers’ Post-War British Comedies include Private’s Progress (1956), Lucky Jim (1957), Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959), I’m All Right Jack (1959), and Heavens Above! (1963). Previously they made the noir Brighton Rock (1948).