
The very eccentric English peer Sir Henry Rawlinson attempts, with the help of his mad family & servants, to exorcise the ghost of his brother Humbert.... (Full plot summary below)
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The very eccentric English peer Sir Henry Rawlinson attempts, with the help of his mad family & servants, to exorcise the ghost of his brother Humbert.
Leave your thoughts about Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.
| Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)Ken HankeA deliberately outrageous satire of a kind of English life taken to extremes by former Bonzo Dog Band frontman Vivian Stanshall. |
| User ReviewRobin S"Black as the bonnet on yer Rolls"; the bale of barbed wire that dividing the matrimonial bed, and the spirit optics on the headboard. |
| User ReviewAndy SViv Stanshall was a national treasure. This is part Benny Hill, part Monty Python, part Merchant Ivory and part acute observation. |
| User ReviewAdrian Mbeautiful, surreal, stimulating and entertaining - what more do you want? it's a curious mix of a very unsympathetic view of 'old england', but it still manages to be appealing. |
| User ReviewNick MAbsolute TOP Banana.. ... never to be surpassed! |
| User ReviewMichael MIf you love language and have a surreal sense of humour then this one is for you. This is possibly my favourite film of all time. |
| User ReviewMark WHow do you turn one of the most bizarrely funny radio series into a film? Simple. You put all the emphasis on the lines instead of the screen. Every time I watch this, I've spotted something new. If you haven't listened to the radio series, you'll be really confused, but it's worth it. Just don't expect a normal film: as one critic puts it in the commentary: "a film with a wonderful disregard for plot." |
| User ReviewNicholas CSplendid piece of work. "Mustard!" |
| User ReviewBurqa BQuintessentially British. They can't make films like this in the US. The arse. |
| User ReviewPrivate UPractically everything the genteelly unhinged Vivian Stanshall did lends itself to untold repeated scrutiny - we only just noticed the other day how his early '90s Ruddles Real Ale adverts contain a bizarre homage to Purple Haze - and nothing of his is more dense and packed with detail than the decrepit pile and inhabitants of Rawlinson End. Translated from the LP monologues and Peel Sessions, but crucially not losing the bite of the original riotous routines, the sepia-tinted world of musty armour, itinerant staff and gin-senile gentry is there in all its incontinent majesty, with Trevor Howard topping off a fine cast as lord of the manor. The plot, such as it is, involves Patrick Magee's attempted exorcism of the trouserless ghost of Henry's invisible toy dog-walking brother (played by Stanshall), but that's almost a formality amongst the dovetailing vignettes of Harry Fowler's spying spiv, Denise Coffey's tapeworm advice, Sir H's personal PoW camp, etc. etc. If it has a failing, it's that there's too much going on - as soon as one gag has unfolded, it's superceded by another one as the script gets seemingly bored with itself. Not that the audience is in danger of following suit - it takes an effort to keep up with the pace of invention. But it's well worth it. Stanshall's wistful theme song, The Cracks Are Showing, is a corker, too. |