The Bed Sitting Room

1969 post-apocalyptic black comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: It's three or four years after the misunderstanding and unfortunate incident, namely the accidental start of a nuclear war that lasted two minutes and twenty-eight seconds including the signing of the peace treaty. Characters wander through a decimated and desolate England filled with broken dishes and mounds of shoes and dusty abandoned traffic jams. You've got a couple parents trying to take care of their daughter, a young woman who is seventeen months pregnant. You've got her beau, a guy in a white suit. You've got a guy who is convinced that he is turning into the titular bed sitting room. They all search for hope and peace in post-apocalyptic England while the new queen-by-default, Mrs. Ethel Shroake, sits atop her horse in front of an arch constructed of washing machines.

This absurdist Richard Lester film based on a play by Spike Milligan is a surreal, post-apocalyptic trip, like a more consistent and headier Monty Python. No, it's not a laugh-a-minute comedy. It's wry and dry and dreamily English, a Puddin' Pop for the subconscious. I was hooked during the opening credits when the actors are listed according to height instead of the typical order of appearance or billing. Dudley Moore was the second shortest on the list, by the way. I have a high tolerance for the absurd in movies and, ironically perhaps, a low tolerance for the absurd in everyday life. I realize that some people probably wouldn't find a movie where so many characters randomly and maybe senselessly turn into bed sitting rooms, parrots, and wardrobes very funny at all. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing though. Along with Dudley Moore, you get his partner-in-funny Peter Cook as his co-police-inspector riding in a funky hot-air balloon and Marty Feldman (you'd recognize him) as a nurse. I was most impressed with the landscapes assembled for post-apocalyptic England. Nearly vacant, a vast expanse of abandoned junk, those aforementioned shoe hills and broken china, and escalators leading to nowhere, I really bought the world and it's handful of inhabitants. It's all darkly cheeky and drearily comedic. And there may be some Swiftian satire packed in with all the garbage and ash, but I was missing too much context to pick up on it. I was just in it for the Puddin' Pop anyway. Next time I see this, it'll be back-to-back with Dr. Strangelove, by the way.

Look at that poster! No wonder nobody saw this movie in 1969!