You Must Be Joking! (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Michael WinnerRelease Date(s)
1965 (February 23, 2026)Studio(s)
Ameran Films/Charles H. Schneer Productions/Columbia Pictures (Indicator/Powerhouse Films)- Film/Program Grade: C-
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region B-locked British Blu-ray import.]
Whether you’re a fan or not, it’s easier to appreciate It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) when one compares it to its many imitators, almost all of which are terrible. You Must Be Joking! (1965) is a smaller-scale pretender, visually influenced by the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night (1964). The premise of You Must Be Joking is simply not believable, its good cast of British comedy talent is not just wasted, but many are egregiously miscast, as if they were randomly slotted into their particular parts. The film has a frenetic energy, but the humor is painfully forced, and instead of coming off as hip and contemporary, there’s an odd undercurrent affirming traditional British class and gender roles, even more than the usual mid-1960s British film.
The hard-to-swallow set-up has British Army psychiatrist Major Foskett (Terry-Thomas) assembling five varied military men for a test of initiative: USAF Lt. Morton (Michael Callan), Scottish Sgt. Major McGregor (Lionel Jeffries), wealthy, entitled-class Capt. Fitzroy Tabasco (Denholm Elliott), and lower-class Sgt. Clegg (Bernard Cribbins) and Staff Sgt. Sidney Mansfield (Lee Montague) first must escape a hedge maze and then, within 48 hours, like a scavenger hunt, collect a series of oddball items—the Spirit of Ecstasy from a Rolls-Royce, an electric hare from a greyhound race track, the Lutine Bell from Lloyds of London, etc. Although a measly 10-day trip around the world is offered to the first to reach the finish line, that incentive plays little part in the story.
Capt. Tabasco arrogantly uses his wealth and influence to have others do his dirty work, he luxuriating from a home base eating gourmet cuisine with girlfriend Poppy Pennington (Tracy Reed, late of Dr. Strangelove), who ends up doing more work than he does. Poor Sgt. Clegg spends nearly the entire film clumsily trying to tunnel his way out of the maze. Lt. Morton teams up with English girlfriend Annabelle (Gabriella Licudi), but flippantly dumps her for singing sensation Sylvie Tarnet (ill-fated French actress Patricia Viterbo).
Laughs are scant. Clive Dunn is pretty funny as the doorman/gatekeeper at a TV station where Tarnet is appearing, and Miles Malleson, in his last film role, is expectedly funny as a doddering Rolls-Royce salesman, but many of the other actors are miscast, and/or thwarted in their attempts to be funny. London-born Lionel Jeffries, for instance, had a background in the British Army and excelled playing pompous, over-the-top military types (as in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) but here is required to play a “mad Scotsman” and, despite his many talents, a Scottish burr was not one of them—Jeffries’s accent is singularly unreal, anything but Scottish. Terry-Thomas’s specialty was playing cads and bounders, but in You Must Be Joking!, for most of the film he plays straight man to the other characters, a rather ordinary military medico of little interest. Leslie Phillips specialized playing libidinous ladies’ men but here, perversely, he’s cast in the irate husband part, who goes ballistic when he thinks his wife is cheating on him. And poor Bernard Cribbins, who would have been ideal as the story’s clumsy protagonist, spends most of the film out of sight, trying to tunnel his way out of the maze. He’s bumped from the leading role because someone thought it needed an American in the cast, hence Michael Callen, who had appeared in producer Charles H. Schneer’s Mysterious Island a few years before. He’s not bad, particularly in the physical slapstick vignettes, but his character is paper-thin and not at all appealing.
Director Michael Winner had a peculiar career, starting out with modest but occasionally good British films (Play It Cool, The System) and later he began a long association with Charles Bronson during that actor’s European period, Winner helming several good Bronson vehicles, including The Mechanic and peaking with the often-misinterpreted Death Wish. After some embarrassing missteps (Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, The Sentinel) he reunited with Bronson for a series of schlocky action-thrillers with Bronson at Cannon Films, including the appalling Death Wish II and the hilariously over-the-top Death Wish 3, undermining the original picture’s qualities.
He wrote an entertaining if self-serving memoir, The Winner Takes It All, countering critics who dismissed even his good movies, contending all his films were bad. Partly this was fueled by Winner’s terrible reputation as a screamer on the set, who put stuntmen into unnecessarily dangerous situations and, worst of all, that for decades he sexually harassed women during casting sessions and filming. Helen Mirren, for instance, alleged that Winner had sexually harassed her during the casting of You Must Be Joking! (She didn’t get the part.)
Winner’s misogyny is on display here, in a film whose story he developed and co-wrote (with Alan Hackney, of I’m All Right Jack); all the women are either pieces of meat or nitwits. Winner, as he makes clear in his autobiography, fancied himself part of the British elite, a gourmand, art collector, political conservative, etc. In this regard he’s closest to Denholm Elliott’s character whom, as presented in the film, Winner clearly admires over the others, who are, by turn, foolish, thick-witted, or mad.
Once again, The Digital Bits was sent only a check disc, with no booklet, no Blu-ray case, etc.. The Region “B” encoded Blu-ray, a worldwide premiere, presents the film in its original black-and-white, 1.66:1 widescreen aspect ratio. Detail is strong as are blacks, and the LPCM 1.0 mono audio is more than adequate, supported by optional English subtitles.
Supplements consist of a new audio commentary by film historians Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby; From Stage to Screen (2016), a 72-minute interview with actor Lee Montague; The Guardian Event: Michael Winner on Censorship (1990), an 83-minute audio recording of Winner; The Guardian Lecture with Bob Godfrey, a 53-minute audio interview from 1985 with the designer of the film’s animated title sequence (one of the few really good things about the picture); The BEHP Interview with Bernard Gribble, another audio-only piece, this running 100 minutes, with the film’s editor; a trailer and image gallery. This release is limited to 3,000 copies.
This is one of those British films worth seeing for its cast, except that this cast has been handed mediocre material and the film is fitfully amusing at best.
- Stuart Galbraith IV