The Wrong Box (1966) Any hardcore Anglophile or lover of cozy, quirky British comedy (that's us in both categories) can't help but loving this little jewel box of a movie.......
And go figure.........this near perfect depiction of darkly funny Victorian era mischief was co written by two veteran American comedy writers, Larry Gelbart and Bert Shevelove (the collaborators who concocted the Broadway musical and film "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum")
These USA gagsters took their inspiration from a Robert Louis Stevenson tale about a 'Tontine', which was sort of a 19th century betting pool where everyone kicked in a load of money on behalf of their children and the last adult child who outlived the others inherited all the jointly contributed cash.....which after investments, had swelled to a fortune.
You know right off from the hilarious opening that this romp will fall in the same genre as the classic British films like 'Kind Hearts And Coronets',.......where death is merely used as a punchline for the jokes......
One by one, the now grown Tontine kids meet their ends in various spectacular, or accidental or just plain stupid ways......(one poor soul gets cleaved by Queen Victoria when she tries knighting him with a sword too heavy for her.....).
The two remaining survivors, brothers Masterman and Joseph Finsbury (John Mills, Ralph Richardson) are two cantankerous codgers cared for by their various young relatives...(Michael Caine, Nanette Newman and the bickering Abbott & Costello-like team of Dudley Moore and Peter Cook)
We'll not even try to describe the absurd, dryly witty, dark slapstick antics that ensue as the oddball brothers either disappear entirely or are wrongly presumed dead or mistaken for a serial strangler killed in a train wreck.
As all of this finely orchestrated madness goes on, Caine and Newman engage in an impossibly chaste Victorian romance. Meanwhile, Cook and Moore's schemes to seize the Tontine boodle for their own involve the help of an addled, cat-ridden nefarious doctor. (Peter Sellers doing one of his showstopping, side-splitting cameos that you don't dare miss).
In case you haven't figured it out yet, we LOVE this movie........with the added bonuses of a sweet, lilting John Barry score and colorful designer Maurice Binder main titles. It's a terrific 4 star (****) spirit lifter to escape the ongoing nightmare days of 2020......
Best of all, you don't have to work hard to seek it out......enjoy it free on YouTube. So go enjoy!
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