Martin Crookall – Author For Sale
Be careful of what you ask for: you might get it. I Only Arsked is an interesting film, though only in what it is, not the watching of it. It's a 1958 black-and-white British comedy film, released the same year as Carry on Sergeant, the first film in the long-running Carry On series, which had…
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Martin Crookall - Author For Sale
Be careful of what you ask for: you might get it.

I Only Arsked is an interesting film, though only in what it is, not the watching of it. It’s a 1958 black-and-white British comedy film, released the same year as Carry on Sergeant, the first film in the long-running Carry On series, which had a similar theme but, unlike Carry On Sergeant, it was based on an existing property, the very popular sitcom The Army Game.

The Army Game debuted in 1957 and ran for four thirty-nine episode series until 1961. It was ITV’s first sitcom and was incredibly popular, spawning books, a board game, a top 5 hit single, an equally popular spin-off (Bootsie and Snudge) and, of course, a film. It wasn’t until the Seventies that film versions of successful sitcoms became a fad, so I Only Arsked was a ground-breaker on that score too.

The ‘sit’ of the series was based on the still-extant National Service (not ended until 1960). Four useless conscripts share hut 29 at a General Supplies depot spending all their time devising ways to do as little as possible (shades of Sgt Bilko). I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode of it though I loved Bootsie and Snudge as a kid. But it was big.

The film re-unites most of the original cast: Michael medwin as the conniving spiv-like Corporal Spring, Norman Rossington as the Scouser Private ‘Cupcake’ Cook, Charles Hawtrey as the over-intelligent Private ‘Professor’ Hatchett, Alfie Bass as the flat-footed Private Montague ‘Excused Boots’ Bisley and Bernard Bresslaw as the intellectually challenged and very tall Private ‘Popeye’ Popplewell. The film was a quick cash-in as Rossington, Hawtrey and Bresslaw all left the sitcom after the first series. The only major absentee was William Hartnell as the red-hot disciplinarian Sergeant Major Bullimore, who was replaced in the film by David Lodge as Sergeant Major ‘Potty’ Chambers. Hartnell, incidentally, played the same role as the titular Sergeant of the Carry On film.

It’s interesting to see I Only Arsked anticipating the ploy used by so many writers in the Seventies to totally bog up their sitcom spin-off films, by taking the cast out of the usual environment and sending them abroad. The British Middle-East Protectorate of Daruwa (spelling?) calls for troops to protect it. King Fazim is drilling for oil to enrich his people (yeah, right) but the moment he strikes it rich, he will be deposed by his evil brother Mahmoud (a browned-up Francis Matthews). Though the British Resident strives hard to convince him he’s got a Brigade of Guards, the truth is he’s got Hut 29 plus Chambers and C/O Major Upshott-Bagley (Geoffrey Sumner, who also left after series 1)

There’s no real point in descriing the plot, which is rudimentary and prone to cliches. Mahmoud and his rebels are played seriously but as Saturday morning serialbaddies, the gang clump about, there’s a harem for them to break into via a tunnel constructed by the last British troops to be stationed here in 1892, and there’s a horribly trite and racist portrayal of an Arabian wheeler-dealer that I was shocked to find carried out by Michael Bentine: ghastly. The harem, incidentally, offers the only female roles in the entire film, about two dozen gorgeous girls who between them get to utter precisely zero words of dialogue.

The Army Game turned Bresslaw into what we’d now call the ‘break-out’ star (though as it ultimately led to his becoming a Carry On star, I’d query the exact extent of what it did for him). The film supposedly centres upon him – Bresslaw is the first named cast and the film’s title is his catchphrase, though it’s only used once, as the last three words of dialogue – but he didn’t come over as especially featured to me. Though as he was 6′ 7″ tall, he did stand out onscreen.

The main thing is that, however funny The Army Game was in its day, it isn’t funny now. I mustered one laugh and one half-suppressed giggle in its 75 minute length, though given the Seventies sitcom films, that’s not so bad an average (honourable exceptions: The Lovers, Dad’s Army and Porridge, as you might expect). It wasn’t so bad as to make me want to switch off (except in Bentine’s scenes) but it did do a brilliant job of exposing nostalgia as what it so often is: wishful thinking turned up until the knobs fall off.