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Rising Damp: The Last of the Big Spenders (1975)
Can't Pay? We'll take it away!
Rigsby is as pleased as Punch with his furniture, which has arrived that day. It is garish furniture, all bought on hire-purchase. His new lodger Brenda is impressed, and she finagles a dinner invitation from Rigsby. However, Rigsby has no money and fails to borrow some from Philip.
The miserly landlord raids the gas meter, but is foiled by the arrival of the gas man. He has not been paying his bills and his gas is cut off.
Rigsby manages to call off his date with Brenda, and as she changes into normal clothes Rigsby is visited by bailiffs. He has not paid the installments on his furniture and all of it is going to be repossessed. This is done while Rigsby and Brenda are using the furniture. Brenda sees this and leaves in disgust.
Rigsby attempts to find some change down the side of his zebra-skin sofa, but he gets stuck and is removed along with the furniture by the bailiffs.
It has to be said that these bailiffs must be employed by the most assiduous finance company in the world. Rigsby's furniture arrived that morning, and he has only had it for about 8 hours when the whole lot is taken away. I suppose that payments are due daily, and the repo men are on standby, parked near Rigsby's house.
Rigsby has three lodgers, never goes out and is something of a miser. How is it he can't afford to pay his gas bills and hire agreements? Baffling.
This was the first appearance of Gay Rose as Brenda. She was vastly superior to Frances De La Tour, but she did not last too long. This is a shame because she is wonderfully shapely.
Get Some In! (1975)
A Directionless Catastrophe
This really is painful to watch. I feel very sorry for Tony Selby. This was his main starring role in a British TV series and he was forced to play a ridiculous, unpleasant, unbelievable and unfunny bully who is a pathological liar and has psychopathic feeling of hatred towards all new recruits. He hates everyone who is ranked below him and will commit any enormity as long as it causes pain and distress to the people he is meant to be the guardian of.
To his credit he did play the disastrous part as well as he could. He still managed to be upstaged by the young Robert Lindsay, playing the world's only teddy boy who has no trace of teddy-boy-ness about him. There is also a Scotsman in the cast, included to allow Cpl Marsh an uninterrupted stream of vitriol against the Scots.
Because the Erks were training to be nurses there were lots of "jokes" about broken arms, legs, profuse bleeding, concussion, kidney damage: these are the funniest jokes in the series.
Lindsay was lucky: he got a better offer and jumped ship. The producers made the disastrous decision to keep the character going with a new actor. Why? Why not bring in a new character, and an explanation for the old character disappearing?
The theme song chirrups: "You'll be the lowest form of life, You'll wish that you were dead", that's how watching this series made me feel. I am sure that for the people nostalgic for National service in the 1950s this was the best sitcom of all time. For everyone else this was a pointless and inexplicable waste of time and money. The writers were wasting their time and talent on a directionless catastrophe.
The Gourmet (1984)
Fascinating, unusual film
Charles Gray plays a gourmet who has eaten practically everything in the world; animals of every description. At one dinner evening - where something unusual (possibly unique) has once again been served up, a fellow diner mentions to him that it is possible to eat a ghost.
He manages to trap a ghost. It must eaten quickly so he uses a frying pan being used by some down-and-outs by the banks of the River Thames. He finds the experience unsettling.
It is a strange outing for Charles Gray, even though he surely didn't mind appearing in outré films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He is essentially the only person in this film and he is superb. He is actually perfect as the dissolute gourmet.
The film is a little like an episode of The Twilight Zone with a much larger budget. Unlike The Twilight Zone, however, your chances of seeing this film are about 10% - with a bit of luck. I am relying on the memory of a single viewing 25 years ago for all of this!