Bless This House (1972) - film review

Sid and Jean Abbott are a happily married middle-aged couple who live in a respectable suburban neighbourhood with their teenage children, Mike and Sally.  With Mike’s enthusiasm for early morning car maintenance and Sally’s determination to save the planet from waste and pollution, it isn’t long before the family is at war with its new neighbours, Mr and Mrs Baines.   Unaware that Mr Baines is a customs and excise inspector, Sid happily sets about converting his shed into a whiskey distillery, whilst Jean opens an antiques stall with the mountain of bric-a-brac she has accumulated with her friend Betty.  Meanwhile, Mike gets a job in a café and meets an attractive young woman named Kate.  As Mike and Kate embark on the perfect romance, neither realises that they are next-door neighbours.  Mr Baines’s blood pressure is likely to go through the roof when he learns that his beloved daughter is about to tie the knot with one of the odious Abbott brood...

Bless This House was one of numerous British TV sitcoms which somehow found their way onto the big screen in the 1970s (presumably in a misguided attempt to lure audiences out of their cosy living rooms).  Although by no means the worst offender of this unedifying genre, Bless This House clearly struggles to get beyond the confines of its half hour small-screen format and merely looks like a weak entry in the Carry On series.  It may seem quaint by today’s standards, but the original sitcom was phenomenally successful in its day and ran to 65 episodes over six series in the early 1970s.

It is no accident that this resembles a Carry On film.  It was directed and produced by Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers, the team that helmed this popular institution for two decades, and it features many of the series’ most popular stars - Sid James, Peter Butterworth and Terry Scott, to name just three.  Even the score was supplied by Carry On regular Eric Rogers.  The film also features Robin Askwith, just before he went on to make the raunchy Confessions films, and Terry Scott is partnered with June Whitfield in what looks like a dry run of their long-running partnership in the TV sitcoms Happy Ever After and Terry and June.

Whilst its screenplay is frankly abysmal (its author Dave Freeman would go on to script some of the absolute worst of the Carry On films and the even more dire TV spin-off), Bless This House still has a certain charm, thanks to the sheer talent that is placed in front of the camera.  Sid James and Peter Butterworth are two of the great giants of British comedy and have little trouble salvaging this third rate comedy disaster.  If Sid’s hopeless attempts to plaster a wall don’t get you laughing then the sequence in which Sid and his buddy very nearly blow up half of London with their homemade distillery almost certainly will.  Sally Geeson’s attempts to drown Terry Scott with a hosepipe in a frantic bid to save the planet (young Gesson was ahead of her time folks) are just as amusing.  It’s definitely not a classic but Bless This House is still a mildly entertaining diversion if you have nothing better to do with your time.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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