Ask a Policeman

1939 - Dir.: Marcel Varnel
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 24th September, 2005
Will Hay bears some responsibility for the creation of the FeckenOdeon. In 1999 the second “Night at The Pictures” staged by Feckenham Entertainments Committee featured “Oh Mr Porter” (1937). The audience reacted to the 62 year old film as if it been a recent release - there were gasps and guffaws and wild applause at the end. It set some of us thinking that classic films deserved to be seen more often on the big screen.... and the rest is history!
Music hall star Will Hay became a major screen comedian in the late 1930s in partnership with veteran character actor Moore Marriott and the young Graham Moffatt. Together they bumbled, fumbled and fiddled their way through a dozen pictures before Hay went solo at Ealing Studios in 1941. Tonight’s caper is typical - good British incompetence mixed with a pinch of slapstick and a large helping of daftness as the three good for nothing policemen find themselves out of their depths in a smuggling racket.
“When the tide runs low in the smugglers’ cove, And the ‘eadless ‘orsman rides above,
He drives along with his wild hallo,
and that’s the time that the smugglers go in their little boats to the schooner, and bring back the kegs of brandy and rum and put them all in the Devil’s Cove below!”