I just bought and watched the German DVD (which does include the English audio as well) and I must say I'm disappointed. I love many British comedies from this period in both their series and movie versions although I had never seen this one before. Unfortunately I found it a terrible mess, and worse than that - it did not make me laugh, or smile, once. I'm not sure if I was expecting standard or black humour but in my honest opinion this contained neither. What did I get? 65 minutes of story telling based around a non-sensical plot regarding a "sort of" mix up* between a corpse, a wax-work of the corpse and a coffin containing hashish cigarettes smuggled into the country by the rival firm. Why do I say 65 minutes, well this is where the movie feels like it has ended, with the cremation of the hashish cigarettes and arrival of the police. We then have another 15 minutes vaguely related to a secret formula for a fizzy drinks recipe which the deceased had secreted upon his person and should have been cremated with the body...
*I say "sort of" because the characters themselves create the mix up, or don't try to revolve it. The strange thing is that vague plot points come and go without anyone noticing them only to be picked up by chance by someone later and forgotten again. Also the motivation of "the badies" is completely unfathomable, they are classy hippy drug smuggling funeral directors.
I'm not sure what the series was like but this film makes me think they wanted to make a comedy but were too scared to put in any jokes in case they offended somebody. I also wonder why the film appears to be popular enough to be released in Germany but not over here, perhaps during the dubbing they actually introduced some jokes and made it a funny film?
*I say "sort of" because the characters themselves create the mix up, or don't try to revolve it. The strange thing is that vague plot points come and go without anyone noticing them only to be picked up by chance by someone later and forgotten again. Also the motivation of "the badies" is completely unfathomable, they are classy hippy drug smuggling funeral directors.
I'm not sure what the series was like but this film makes me think they wanted to make a comedy but were too scared to put in any jokes in case they offended somebody. I also wonder why the film appears to be popular enough to be released in Germany but not over here, perhaps during the dubbing they actually introduced some jokes and made it a funny film?