Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River * (1968, Jerry Lewis, Terry-Thomas, Jacqueline Pearce, Bernard Cribbins, Patricia Routledge, Nicholas Parsons, Michael Bates) – Classic Movie Review 8573

‘Jerry’s in London – trying to make an easy million the hard way!’ Director Jerry Paris’s 1968 British comedy Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River has a clumsy title for a clumsy film.

Jerry Lewis is launched on the undeserving British in a boring, slackly paced spy-thriller comedy about a fantasising American called George Lester (Lewis) who tries to win back his estranged English wife Pamela [Pam] (Jacqueline Pearce) with outlandish schemes involving the theft of a new oil-drill’s secrets and their sale to Arabs with the help of a conman named H William Homer (Terry-Thomas).

Lewis gives his usual turn another rather lame and slack workout, though it is welcome as a less slapstick performance. True British movie stalwarts Terry-Thomas, Jacqueline Pearce, Bernard Cribbins, Patricia Routledge, Nicholas Parsons, Michael Bates, Colin Gordon and John Bluthal all deserve a better script to work on. Max Wilk’s screenplay is based on his own novel.

Also in the cast are Sandra Caron, Margaret Nolan, Pippa Benedict, Harold Goodwin, Al Mancini, Colin Douglas, Molly Peters and Jerry Paris.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8573

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