Ask a Policeman (1938) - film review

Sergeant Samuel Dudfoot is proud of the fact that since his arrival in the tranquil coastal village of Turnbotham Round, over a decade ago, not one crime has been committed.  Unfortunately, the Chief Constable  sees things differently and concludes that because the villagers are so law-abiding there is no reason to keep the police station open.  Anxious to save their jobs, Dudfoot and his two constables, Albert Brown and Jeremiah Harbottle, decide to instigate a fake crime spree.  Their first idea is to catch speeding motorists, but this backfires when they unintentionally snare the Chief Constable with an improvised speed trap.  They then hit upon the idea of planting a keg of brandy on the seashore, to suggest that smugglers are operating in the area.  As it turns out, there are smugglers operating in the area...

The incomparable Will Hay is on top form in this fast-moving anarchic comedy, one of his funniest and most inspired films.   Again he is partnered with Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott, in what is obviously a reprise of the comic shenanigans seen in Hay’s previous triumph Oh, Mr Porter! (1937).  The setting, plot and many of the jokes echo those of that earlier film, except that on this occasion Hay and his cronies are corrupt policemen rather than inept railway employees.

Ask a Policeman is unusual in that Will Hay plays a character with absolutely no redeeming features, in contrast to the pompous yet disarmingly innocent buffoons for which he is better known.  Hay’s Sergeant Dudfoot is an unappealing amalgam of scoundrel, bully and fool.  One minute he is trying to dish out bogus speeding offences to motorists, the next he is allowing a total stranger to put a light in an upstairs room of the police station.  With his penchant for fabricating evidence, beating up law-abiding citizens and abusing his position for his own gain, Dudfoot is hardly Dixon of Dock Green, and yet Hay somehow manages to make the character a likeable rogue.

Needless to say, the film is a blast of riotous fun from start to finish.  The jokes fall thick and fast, aided and abetted by Marcel Varnel’s brisk direction and Marriott Edgar’s gag-peppered script.   The sequence in which Dudfoot and his two eager-to-please cohorts try to trap speeding motorists, reinventing the laws of mathematics (and physics) as they do so, is a pure comedy delight.  Just as hilarious is the manic chase sequence that closes the film, which ends on an appropriately surreal note, with Dudfoot and his friends being chased round a racetrack by their superiors.  Who says crime doesn’t pay?  Ask a Policeman is a 24-carat comedy bonanza.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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