"Up the Creek" features the sort of plot sitcom writers co-opted and reuse to this very day: the clueless owner/manager/heir who buys/is posted/inherits a ship/motel/manor where the crew/staff/butlers are running all sorts of private "industries" on the side without the owner/manager/heir's knowledge. Then the owner/manager/heir finds out, and "hilarious hi-jinks" ensue. In this version, a certain rocket-obsessed Royal Navy Lieutenant Fairweather has been blowing up naval bases with his homebuilt experimental missiles. Because he is related to the First Sea Lord (the British equivalent of the Secretary of the Navy,) the Admiralty posts him to a Reserve Fleet ship in the wilds of Suffolk. The vessel is the HMS Barclay, an ancient sloop manned by a skeleton crew and "captained" by a wheeler-dealer Irish bo'sun. The ship has been without a captain for two years, and during that time he and the 11-man crew have developed a number of services and products which they sell in the nearby village. Fairweather's arrival puts a crimp in the style of "Barclay Industries, Ltd.", but as long as the crew indulges Fairweather in his plan to make the bridge into a launching platform for his ten-foot rocket, they can camoflage their deliveries in town. However, everything comes to a head as a horserace-obsessed admiral comes to the Navy base to do a quick inspection before hitting the track, but before that he wants soak up the nostalgia of touring his first command...the HMS Barclay. What happens next is like watching one of those monster Japanese domino displays in action.
What really drew my interest were the actors. While "Up the Creek" is programmatic, the cast features David Tomlinson (later immortalized as Mr. Banks, the head of the household in Disney's "Mary Poppins") and Peter Sellers as the Bo'sun. At this period of his career Sellers was switching from playing supporting roles as British "ethnics", Americans, or drag characters to carrying entire movies ("The Mouse that Roared" was made after this, I think.) Both Sellers and Tomlinson make the film work, and the quick pace covers for the shopworn plot. A good rainy day movie.
What really drew my interest were the actors. While "Up the Creek" is programmatic, the cast features David Tomlinson (later immortalized as Mr. Banks, the head of the household in Disney's "Mary Poppins") and Peter Sellers as the Bo'sun. At this period of his career Sellers was switching from playing supporting roles as British "ethnics", Americans, or drag characters to carrying entire movies ("The Mouse that Roared" was made after this, I think.) Both Sellers and Tomlinson make the film work, and the quick pace covers for the shopworn plot. A good rainy day movie.