Gasbags

This wartime farce concerns the Crazy Gang -- you may think of them as a precursor of the 'Carry On' series, if you like -- who get involved in World War Two, which for them means running a fish and chips shop off a barrage balloon, floating accidentally into Germany, being interned in a concentration camp, acting as Hitler doubles and escaping. Don't worry if it makes no sense, it's the Crazy Gang, meaning about eight music hall performers taking every opportunity to engage in pratfalls, puns, cowardice and risqué jokes. The Crazy Gang starred in something short of a dozen movies in the late 1930s and early 1940s, a sort of all-star supporting comics' series.

The director of this and other movies in the series was French-born Marcel Varnel, a specialist in high-speed farce for Gaumont and Gainsborough until his untimely death. When he worked with Will Hays and his group of comics -- Moore Marriott appeared in both series -- he produced some very fine situational farces. Here, in this looser-plotted work, with every comic fighting for screen time, the result is something that would have been a very popular home film in Britain, but which does not, alas, travel well in time or space to a modern American viewer like me.