The Plank (1967)
Directed by Eric Sykes

Film Review

Recycling an idea that he had previously used in a 1964 episode of his popular television series Sykes and a..., the multi-talented comedian Eric Sykes wrings every last drop of humour from the old 'man-with-a-plank' vaudeville routine in this minor classic of British cinema.  Here Sykes is brilliantly partnered by the well-loved comedian Tommy Cooper, a last minute stand-in for Peter Sellers who had to pull out because of other work commitments.  The ample supporting cast includes several faces that would have been very familiar to British television audiences at the time, including Jimmy Edwards, Hattie Jacques, Roy Castle, Stratford Johns, Bill Oddie, Jim Dale, and Jimmy Tarbuck - it is almost a Who's Who of British comedy.

This short hilarious film, apparently influenced by the work of the legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati, relies on visual humour and has little intelligible dialogue.  Whilst many of the gags are entirely predictable, and a few that are laboured to the point of excruciating tedium, most are inventive and well-realised, offering a fair quota of belt-bursting laughs.  Never one to waste a good gag if he could help it, Eric Sykes would cheekily re-use some of the jokes in his subsequent film Rhubarb Rhubarb (1980) and later remade The Plank in 1979 for Thames Television.

Film Synopsis

Two workmen have almost finished laying the floorboards in a new house when they realise that they are short by one plank.  Without delay, they head off to the nearest timber yard and, with some difficulty, finally manage to find a piece of wood of the right size.  But on the way back to the house, the plank somehow manages to become detached from the roof of the men's battered car and seems to take on a life of its own, bringing chaos and disruption to the inhabitants of a busy London suburb...