The Man Who Liked Funerals **** (1959, Leslie Phillips, Susan Beaumont, Bill Fraser, Brian Tyler, Anthony Green, Paul Stassino) – Classic Movie Review 13,763

Leslie Phillips stars as a printer who begins attending funerals and blackmails the relatives of the recently deceased to raise money to save a boys‘ club, in the 1958 British comedy B-film gem The Man Who Liked Funerals.

Directed by David Eady’s 1958 British comedy B-film The Man Who Liked Funerals is written by Margot Bennett, Cecily Finn and Joan O’Connor, and stars Leslie Phillips, Susan Beaumont and Bill Fraser.

To help save a boys’ youth club (in Keeley Street) that needs £4,000 to stop it from closure, printer Leslie Phillips begins attending funerals and blackmails the relatives of the recently deceased to raise the money, threatening to publish their scandalous memoirs he has forged but says they have written. It all goes well for a while with the foolish and simpleminded first victims, stacking up the proceeds nicely, though he is getting a bit addicted to funerals. However, just when his £4,000 is in sight, he finds himself in mortal danger when he tries to blackmail the family of an apparently just deceased London Italian gangster.

You couldn’t make up a plot like that, could you? No, wait, somebody did!

The Man Who Liked Funerals (1959) is a quirky and funny, rich and strange, very British, very Fifties, farcical comedy, fast paced, intricate and very satisfying. There’s an interesting dark side to the story, and many sly remarks and cynical jokes. It’s all rather adult in its way, for a farcical comedy set in a boys’ youth club, a nice mix of daft and provocative. It’s farce for grown-ups, and that’s unusual. It’s certainly unusual to make a success of it. Ealing comedies come to mind: Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers. Of course this one isn’t in their league, but it’s not too very far behind. It’s a little gem.

Leslie Phillips is exceptionally good in a precision piece of acting, as the devious printer Simon Hurd. How skilled is Leslie Phillips here! No mugging, no over-acting, just acting. Bill Fraser is an essential co-star as his bluff boss Jeremy Bentham, keeping his turn commendably low key. He seems like he’s going to be the monster boss, the film’s villain, but Fraser makes him a sympathetic character. And there are several gratifyingly funny performances in support, especially from Anita Sharp-Bolster as Lady Hunter, Mary Mackenzie as Hester Waring, Hester Paton-Brown as Senior Mistress, Thelma Ruby as junior mistress, Lily Lapidus as Ma Morelli, and Marianne Stone as Bentham’s secretary. Brian Tyler and Anthony Green are amusing as the fighting club boys Nutter and Tommy.

Susan Beaumont is wasted as Phillips’s love interest Stella, a truly dull role. Shaun O’Riordan is rather ordinary as the club leader, the Reverend Pitt, another dull role. Charles Clay as Colonel Hunter and Paul Stassino as gangster Nick Morelli are both adequate enough, but no more, in potentially lively roles.

Alastair Hunter is okay as the rabid Communist Party leader (a bit of political comment here), but Arthur Mullard has nothing to do as gang henchman Renny Fiasco. Poor young Jimmy Thompson overplays his hand campily and stagily in the film’s weakest performance, though admittedly in a tricky role as the ballet dancing army man Lieutenant Hunter.

Scottish-born screenwriter and author of crime and thriller novels Margot Bennett makes a highly amusing job of the saucy screenplay, taking an obvious relish in its outrageous plot.

Nothing is made of it in the film, but Keeley Street is a small, significant street in the West End of London, home to the City Lit adult education college.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,763

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