The Bed Sitting Room (1969)
Directed by Richard Lester; screenplay by Charles Wood.
There used to be this huge film festival in Los Angeles known as Filmex. Every year, as part of the festival, they ran a fifty-hour marathon of films in a particular genre. As a student at the University of Southern California in the 1970's, I was able to attend a couple of these things. One year it was the horror film marathon, where I saw such classics as Psycho, The Haunting, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Les Yeux sans visage, and a bunch more, along with the world premiere of The Howling. Another time the theme was science fiction. I was only able to attend part of the marathon, and I don't remember much about which films were shown. (I do remember that Robbie the Robot made a special guest appearance on stage.) Two unusual films, however, remain in my memory after all these years.
One was Peter Fonda's offbeat time travel movie Idaho Transfer.
The other was The Bed Sitting Room, and I've never seen anything quite like it. (Although another surreal satire directed by Richard Brooks, How I Won the War, comes pretty close.) Stir together bits and pieces of Eraserhead, Dr. Strangelove, Brazil, along with some seasoning from Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goon Show, and you have some idea what you're in for.
Based on a play by John Antrobus and ex-Goon Spike Milligan (although I can't imagine how anything like this film could have been presented on stage), the setting is England after some sort of holocaust has left only a handful of survivors. The visual impact of the film's sets are stunning. We see gigantic piles of rubble; we see a half-sunken cathedral. Two police officers fly over the ruins in a car tied to a hot air balloon. (Their only purpose seems to be shouting "Keep Moving!" to everyone they see.)
There's not really a plot here, as much as a series of very strange vignettes. People mutate into parrots (which are eaten), dogs, pieces of furniture, and, yes, even a bed sitting room. (One-room apartment to us Americans.) A young woman is seventeen months pregnant with something. The survivors patriotically sing "God Save Mrs. Ethel Shroake" to the closest living relative to the Royal Family.
The cast is made up of fine British actors. Rita Tushingham is the extremely pregnant woman. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are the flying policemen. No less than Sir Ralph Richardson plays the title role.
A hint of the mood of this strange, endearing comedy; the actors are listed in the credits in order of height.
I still have no idea what it's about. One further mystery is the hypnotic effect this film has had on me . Whenever it came on tv, I felt compelled against my better judgment and my will to watch it.
