Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (Roberts, 1980): Cinema Museum, 7.30pm
This film is presented by 'Some Kind of Kick', who present 'celluloid rock ‘n’ roll trash on a Saturday night.' Here is their full programme at the Cinema Museum.
Time Out review:
Sir Henry's disgusting ancestral home has spawned an industry: a Radio 4
sketch, Peel-show episodes, Bonzo track, complete album, stage
readings. His motto is 'Omnes Blotto'; his home is Knebworth outside, and a dusty heap of rotten food, excrement, and empty bottles within. Vivian Stanshall
has pieced together a shambolic poem, stuffed with extraordinary
one-liners, with the sad, manic skeleton necessary to all great comedy; a
satire tempered with nostalgia. Fixing this down visually is ultimately
as self-defeating as filming a Goon Show: Steve Roberts has opted for a grainy monochrome, and has fortunately resisted the temptation to 'explain'. With the surprising exception of Denise Coffey, the actors quite correctly play the farrago dead straight: Trevor Howard,
in particular, relishes the role of Sir Henry as if shooting for an
Oscar. Too many favourite album lines are missing to prevent a little
disappointment, and the edifice gets close to collapse on occasions, but
this is one film it would have been impossible to get irrefutably
'right'.
John Collis
Here (and above) is an extract.
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