Helter Skelter *** (1949, Carol Marsh, David Tomlinson, Mervyn Johns) – Classic Movie Review 12,456

Ralph Thomas’s 1949 British romantic comedy variety revue film Helter Skelter is a wild and wacky farce, in which a radio detective (David Tomlinson) is on the case of a silly socialite (Carol Marsh) with a bad case of the hiccups. 

Director Ralph Thomas’s 1949 British romantic comedy variety revue film Helter Skelter is a wild and wacky Gainsborough Pictures studios farce, in which a BBC radio star detective called Nick Martin (David Tomlinson) is on the case of a silly socialite, the wealthy heiress Susan Graham (Carol Marsh), with a bad case of the hiccups after laughing too hard at a ventriloquist’s routine.

A psychiatrist recommends laughs as the tonic, so they set out to find some famous comics. But it’s a ghost who cures her, just in time for it to start up all over again when a suitor proposes marriage.

More of a freewheeling variety programme than a coherent narrative film, Helter Skelter recalls the 1941 US film Hellzapoppin!, even in its title. The extremely silly, and all too conventional, script goes for the British cinema of the era’s usual idea of zaniness: custard pies and guest stars (Glynis Johns as her Miranda character, Valentine Dyall, Dennis Price as his Bad Lord Byron character, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as unnamed versions of their Charters and Caldicott-style characters).

Though the film isn’t really very funny, mostly through making the mistake of trying too hard and being too obvious, it is still good fun for nostalgia buffs, especially to relish the guest stars and the welcome appearances of comic luminaries such as Bill Fraser as Oliver Cromwell, Jon Pertwee as King Charles II, Harry Secombe, Wilfrid Hyde White as Jekyll and Hyde, Jimmy Edwards as Dr James Edwards, Terry-Thomas as a frantic disc jockey, and Richard Hearne as Mr Pastry. And there are even clips from Walter Forde’s 1929 silent film, Would You Believe It!, shown by the psychiatrist to Susan in a vain attempt to make her laugh.

The cast are Carol Marsh as Susan Graham, David Tomlinson as Nick Martin, Mervyn Johns as Ernest Bennett, Peter Hammond as Spencer Stone, Richard Hearne as Professor Pastry, Peter Haddon as Major Basil Beagle, Geoffrey Sumner as Humphrey Beagle, Jon Pertwee as Headwaiter / Charles II, Zena Marshall as Giselle, Terry-Thomas as himself, Jimmy Edwards as Dr James Edwards, Colin Gordon as Chadbeater Longwick, Judith Furse as Mrs. Martin, Edmund Willard as Ezekial, Harry Secombe as Alf, Henry Kendall as Lord Bruce Carlton, Wilfrid Hyde-White as Dr Jekyll/ Mr Hyde, Patricia Raine as Maid/ Amber, Bill Fraser as Oliver Cromwell, George Benson as Temporary Waiter, Ronald Adam as Director General of the BBC, Peter Haddon, Geoffrey Sumner, Zena Marshall, Patricia Raine, Robert Lamouret as the ventriloquist, Shirl Conway, Sandra Dorne, Esma Cannon, Valentine Dyall, Kenneth Griffith, Glynis Johns, Dennis Price, Harry Secombe, Anthony Steel, and Michael Ward.

Ralph Thomas recalled: ‘I said I’d enormously admired a crazy American picture called Hellzapoppin!, We cast Helter Skelter well and enjoyed making it, although I never quite understood the storyline. Funnily enough it has become a sort of cult picture in odd places.’

Radford and Wayne in Night Train to Munich (1940).

Radford and Wayne’s four official Charters and Caldicott film appearances are in The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), Crook’s Tour (1941), and Millions Like Us (1943).

But they also appeared in The Next of Kin (1942) as careless talkers on train, Dead of Night (1945) as Parratt and Potter, A Girl in a Million (1946) as Prendergast and Fotheringham, Quartet (1948) as Garnet and Leslie, It’s Not Cricket (1949) as Bright and Early, Passport to Pimlico (1949) as Gregg and Straker, unnamed in Helter Skelter (1949), and Stop Press Girl (1949) as The Mechanical Types.

Radford and Wayne also appeared as Charters and Caldicott in two BBC radio serials, Crook’s Tour (1942, remade as the film) and Secret Mission 609 (1942).

Radford and Wayne appeared in various guises on radio with their Charters and Caldicott-style characters renamed for rights reasons. Their self-contained eight-part radio series, made roughly annually, were very popular on BBC radio and they starred as Woolcott and Spencer in Double Bedlam (1946) and Traveller’s Joy (1947), as Berkeley and Bulstrode in Crime Gentleman, Please (1948), as Hargreaves and Hunter in Having a Wonderful Crime (1949), as Fanshaw and Fothergill in That’s My Baby (1950), and as Straker and Gregg, their characters in Passport to Pimlico, in May I Have The Treasure (1951) and Rogue’s Gallery (1952). But Radford died suddenly of a heart attack at 55 in mid-production on Rogue’s Gallery, with Wayne left alone to complete the programme.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,456

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com