Description

With IAN CARMICHAEL, TERRY-THOMAS, JANETTE SCOTT, ALASTAIR SIM, DENNIS PRICE. This witty and thoroughly entertaining farce is aptly subtitled "How To Win Without Actually Cheating." It is the story of Henry Palfrey, a self-described failure. Henry is a bona-fide wimp, the type of poor soul who fades into the wallpaper at parties. He has just met April Smith, the girl of his dreams. However, he quite rightly senses that he is in danger of losing her to the more aggressive and self-assured Raymond Delauney (played in his own peerless style by Terry-Thomas). Henry is not only desperate to capture Aprils heart but is weary of going through life being pushed around and ignored. So he enrolls in the "College Of Lifemanship," where he hopes to transform his personality. The headmaster (a perfectly cast Alastair Sim) promptly informs him that "the world is divided into winners and losers. In a word, the one-up and the one-down. Lifemanship is the science of being one-up!on your opponent at all times, making them feel less desirable and less worthy." Who are your opponents? Everybody in the world who is not you! At the college, Henry takes courses in "Gamesmanship" and "Woo-Manship." He proves to be an apt student, learning his lessons well and even receiving personalized tutoring from the headmaster. Then he gets to put his classroom learning into real-life practice, with surprising and hilarious results. Anyone who has ever owned a British car is in for a special treat...and you deserve one! You will be cheering for Henry as he attempts to one-up the caddish Delauney. The finale is especially clever and revealing. We wont be giving too much away if we say that it involves that most dreaded of emotion-sincerity! Recommended. Letterboxed. 90 minutes. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

He who is not one up is one down! This movie, 5-up!
"... the moment when Adam bit into that apple. At which moment, the first loser was born. Yes, the pattern was set. The world was divided not into male and female, that's a mere superficial division of minor importance. No, there is another division, another dichotomy more basic, more profound. At that fateful moment, the world was divided into winners and losers, top men and underdogs. In a word, the one up and the one down." --from Professor Potter's lecture at the College of Lifemanship, Yeovil.

Or How To Win Without Actually Cheating. That's the subtitle of School For Scoundrels, this brilliant piece of British comedy from 1960, a title my father saw long ago and which I got him for a Christmas present, with a screenplay by Peter Ustinov no less adapted from three Stephen Potter novels.

Poor Henry Palfrey! Clearly, he's constantly in a one-down position to the whole world. In a flashback, we see how despite being an executive in his late uncle's firm, he's dominated by his chief clerk Gloatbridge, who treats him like a non-entity. He literally bumps into the girl of his dreams, April Smith, a stunning but sweet, clean girl who's a brunette version of Betty Grable. However, a rascally, gap-toothed, smooth-talking acquaintance, Raymond Delawney, impresses April with his savoir-faire in wines and food, and even his snazzy Bellini sports car. Palfrey ends up getting a lemon and horribly losing a tennis match, where Delawney replies with a plummy "hard cheese!" every time he misses a point, causing him to lose face in front of April.

He thus enrolls in Professor Potter's classes on lifemanship. What is lifemanship? It's "the science of being one up on your opponent at all times. It's the act of making him feel that somewhere, somehow, he's becoming less than you, less desirable, less worthy, less blessed." After graduating in classes of gamesmanship, onemanship, businessmanship, and that most important one, woo-manship, he gets back at those who caused him to lose face, and how! Next time I find somebody's who a life of the party, I'll use Potter's technique in deflating him/her. If Dingle, the gangly student in the class where that technique was demonstrated is familiar, that's Jeremy Lloyd, who would have a bit part jumping up and down in a club in A Hard Day's Night and the co-writer of Are You Being Served? in the 70's, and Allo Allo in the 80's.

There are some misogynistic references on the "woo-manship" part, where Potter advises Henry to use a blase attitude to April in one scene. "Leave her alone and she'll come back home wagging her tail." Ouch, but good ones, Prof!

Ian Carmichael (Henry) would later be known to American audiences watching PBS's Mystery as Lord Peter Wimsey in the Dorothy Sayers series. Terry-Thomas (Delawney) has another one of his comedic supporting roles, and it's incredible to see how he's suave when with poise, to a point where his frustration causes him to lose his temper. But hands down, veteran Alistair Sim as the impish Potter steals the show with his characteristic expressive eyes, toothy grin, and droll wit. Janette Scott shines as April, showing she could handle adult roles as well as child roles (James Stewart's super-intelligent daughter in No Highway In The Sky). Six years later, she'd have singer Mel Torme as her second of three husbands.

Being someone constantly in a one-down position to the world, taking Potter's class would've been better than all those years I wasted in college. If I could do it all over, I'd take those classes and be one-up on everyone. However, Potter leaves the audience with a final warning: "once sincerity rears its ugly head, lifemanship is powerless." Me sincere? From now on, never! This movie is clearly one-up-up-up-up-up!

"How did you meet this not-quite-blonde?"
In the British comedy, "School for Scoundrels" Ian Carmichael plays mild-mannered, docile Henry Palfrey. Palfrey is a nice man--too nice. His employees are disrespectful, waiters are rude to him, but the final blow comes when acquaintance Raymond Delauney (Terry Thomas) steals Henry's girlfriend. In desperation, Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship.

At the college, Henry learns that "the world is divided into winners and losers," and he is instructed in the art of Lifemanship or "the art of being one up on your opponent." The college's founder and head scallywag is Mr. Potter (Alistair Sim). He takes a special interest in Henry, and soon Henry learns how to manipulate circumstances to his advantage.

This is an extremely funny and clever film. It does not seem dated at all as the issues have not altered one bit in the last 40 odd years. The scenes between Sim and Carmichael illustrate the subtle nuances of one-up-man-ship in social settings, and after watching these scenes, it's easy to see how poor Henry is maneuvered by everyone in his life. Henry has his revenge on all the cads in his life--including Terry Thomas and a couple of unscrupulous car salesmen. Terry Thomas is at his fiendish best here as the playboy Delauney--he is such a great comic actor. "School for Scoundrels" is a black and white film, and the copy I saw was excellent quality--displacedhuman ... Read more

Reviews (10)

Joan Fontaine in a superb performance
A classic Hammer chiller, THE WITCHES, which is also known as THE DEVIL'S OWN, is an engrossing story of the occult set in the seeemingly harmless English countryside.

Haunted by the terrors she saw in Africa, schoolteacher Gwen Mayfield (Joan Fontaine) accepts a teaching position in a local Haddaby School run by Alex Bax (Alec McCowan) and his sister Stephanie (Kay Walsh).

Soon, however, as mysterious occurances start, such as a boy falling into a coma, a headless doll found impaled with pins, Gwen starts re-living her African nightmare again.

Very good story, although the climactic witch-coven scene draws more laughs than gasps, with the Witch Queen looking like a cross between Edina from AB FAB and Bullwinkle the Moose.

In deluxe widescreen (aspect ratio of 1.66:1), and original trailers of the film under the DEVIL'S OWN title, and paired with another Hammer film PREHISTORIC WOMEN.

Joan Fontaine and the Coven of the Kooky
In her last appearance on the silver screen, Joan Fontaine, who won an Academy Award for her performance in Suspicion (1941), stars in this Hammer Studios release of The Witches (1967). While the material here is certainly not of the caliber of some of the previous films she's appeared in, it is fun to watch. Maybe I have some lurid fascination of seeing once great stars reduced to appearing in roles they probably would have never considered in their prime.

Joan plays Gwen Mayfield, a teacher who has just been accepted to assume a position as head teacher of a private school in a small English village. The film starts off with Gwen teaching at a mission school in Africa, and, after an incident with a native witch doctor that caused Gwen to have a nervous breakdown, she has now returned to England to put the pieces of her life back together.

After formally meeting with her employers, Alan and Stephanie Bax, played by Alec McCowen and Kay Walsh respectively, the well-to-do resident benefactors of the town who are also brother and sister, Gwen settles into her new surroundings. The situation seems idyllic, a nice, quiet position in a small town where little happens, but, as the saying goes, still waters sometimes run deep. The oddness begins when two of her pre-teen students, a boy and a very weird girl, exhibit closeness to each other, one borne of a budding romance. This causes consternation among some of the townspeople, and soon the boy falls ill of a mysterious coma. Apparently there was more than just a passing concern about what might happen if the relationship between these two continued, specifically in respect to the girl.

Rumors of witchery begin to reach Gwen, and the deeper she probes, the more ominous the proceedings. As the notion of witchery becomes more and more viable, the idea that there may be more than one witch, a coven, operating within the town, involving various members of the small village. Gwen soon finds herself at odds with unseen forces, and suffers a relapse, forcing her to be institutionalized. She has also lost her memory of everything that's transpired after leaving Africa. She does regain her memory, bits at a time, and the horror begins to return as she understands what is about to transpire, and rushes back to the town in an attempt to save the girl from an unknown fate, and ultimately learn that witchery is not limited to third world peoples but is alive and well here in this small, English village.

Joan Fontaine does a great job here, still exhibiting the sheen of a Hollywood star, even if some of that sheen has dulled since her prime. I have to say, even pushing 50 she still looked pretty good, despite the oddish, bowl bouffant she sported through most of the film. Fontaine's older sister, Olivia de Havilland, didn't fare as well, career wise, in my opinion, starring in dubious films like Lady in a Cage (1964), and Irwin Allen 70's disaster pics like Airport '77 (1977) and The Swarm (1978). The creepy factor develops nicely as the film progresses, and as the mystery deepens about who's involved in the coven and what their purpose is, but this is soon replaced by a goofy factor as we see the coven in action, performing a ritual, half-nekkid dance of sorts in a decrepit, abandoned church, eating greasy dirt as their leader spouts incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo while clad in colorful robes and donning a crown with birthday candles adorning the top. I kept waiting for someone to make a wish and blow out the candles, but the others were to busy bumping and grinding to their chanting, and, as I said before, masticating the mud.

Anchor Bay Entertainment releases a great print, in wide screen anamorphic format. Special features include a theatrical trailer, television promotional spots and a World of Hammer episode titled Wicked Women. Also included in the DVD case on the flipside of the card listing the chapter stops is a reproduction of promotional material used for the film. I really find much enjoyment in these little touches, as it seems to indicate thought was actually put into the release, and a sense that one's getting their money's worth, even though this release seems a bit pricey.

Cookieman108

Excellent Hammer movie without Peter Cushing
Joan Fontaine is a teacher who was traumatized by a frightening voodoo ritual while in Africa. Years later, she accepts a job at a small private school and then strange things start to occur.

The DVD is released by Anchor Bay, there is excellent color and the sound is also outstanding. Extras include the original theatrical trailer, two TV spots that advertise the film as a double feature with Prehistoric Women, and the episode "Wicked Women" from the World of Hammer series.

It's always the quiet chills that "get" you!
Lucky me--I'm both a big fan of Joan Fontaine and Hammer Films, so "The Witches" is heaven-sent! I'd read about this movie years ago and have even caught snippets of it over the decades, but nothing prepared me for Anchor Bay's excellent DVD release! Crisp, clean, with deluxe packaging and interesting "extras," The Witches is a quality product all the way. Ms. Fontaine--whose screen persona ranged from innocent and shy (see Hitchcock's "Rebecca" and "Suspicion") to connivingly evil ("Born to Be Bad")--gives a low-key and totally convincing performance as "Gwen Mayfield," ex-missionionary teacher. Her new assignment, acting as headmistress to a private church school in quiet Heddaby (Cornish England) would seem to be an ideal move, considering her traumatic turn at the hands of African witchdoctors (shown in an exciting prologue). But what's this? There are strange "undercurrents" in Heddaby! Drownings, headless voodoo dolls, a burned-out church, and "the mangle!" Could it be? Is there actually (gasp)witchcraft afoot? Well, needless to say, with a movie called "The Witches," you can draw your own conclusions! It's interesting to see Fontaine at work--she lacks the bombast of, say, a Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. Instead, she handles her duties as Hammer horror heroine with great subtlety and panache. Watch for British film vet Kay Walsh, who practically steals the film--she's excellent! "The Witches" gets my highest recommendation!

Good Brit Witchcraft Film
Interesting story of African withcraft in Britain. Some suprising moments make the movie interesting. ... Read more

Reviews (13)

Sci-Fi that actually is well written!!
An excellent series from 1970 that ran one year. It was re-tooled into "Space 1999" by creator Gerry Anderson. "A question of priorities" is an excellent episode that has Straker wrestling with the problem of what is more important: Finding a downed UFO pilot or the life of his son. Very little "crash-boom" effects but excellent writing and without the "it all works out at the end of the hour" ending!

Alien Invaders in Swinging London
Purple-haired go-go dancers who live on a geodesic-domed Moonbase, submarines which launch military aircraft from their nose cones, liquid-breathing aliens wearing freaky contact lenses and weird body paint, and a movie studio that conceals the headquarters of the world's last best hope for alien defense, SHADO. I mean, come on, people, what's not to love here? This was one of the first shows I used to watch with my parents, and we all loved it! Commander Ed Straker is just so icy and unflappable in the face of a seemingly hopeless alien invasion, the aliens are weird and yet kind of pathetic (they're stealing our bodily organs, it seems their world is badly polluted...so they came to Earth???), and well, you gotta love the Interceptors, Moon buggies, Skydiver (the flying sub thing), and of course, SID, Space Invader Detector, a kind of orbital watchdog which sounds like an English butler. Is this show serious drama? Of course not! Is it as camp as a Boy Scout gathering? You bet your knee-high Mod boots it is. It is enjoyable, spooky, exciting? Damn right. If "The X-Files" had been made in late-Sixties England, this is pretty much how it would've turned out. "UFO" is flat-out cool; it's not "Star Trek" or "Twilight Zone," but it is FUN.

Nostalgic.
This series brings me back memories of my childhood, an epoch that is gone and will never come back, sigh... sigh....

Long time missed series! Hope more are made available soon!
Of the four sets, this is the best! I have them all and am patiently waiting for more to be made available.

i knew i didn't imagine this show...
For years i spoke about how much this show impacted me as a child for it seemed "real" to a kid, unlike star trek which seemed pure fantasy, this show seemed to me as a ten year old watching it in re-runs as if it could be a live broadcast of the adults encounter's with "aliens"...yet none of my friends knew of the show for it didn't have the U.S. following Star Trek did. I'm just glad to know i didn't imagine moonbase, or SHADO, but that someone else did and my childhood fantasies of space exploration were the better for it. Now if only someone else of great foresight will see to it that the show is saved in it's entirety on DVD, for there obviously is a market for other grown-up Kids like myself who enjoy a pleasant reminder of our childhood fantasies acted out on t.v. by other adults who also refused to let being a grown-up intrude on their imaginations. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Show That Had It All
UFO had it all. Incredible futuristic military hardware, aliens who were smart enough to never say a word, (I always thoght it was a little dubious that aliens on other shows always spoke perfect English even though they were from millions of light years away) catchy music from beginnng to end, and then there were the female operatives from SHADO with their purple hair, silver catsuits and magnificent figures one and all! These two episodes are fairly good examples of the sreies with "Conflict" being the better of the two. In "Conflict" the aliens use a piece of space junk to hide a device programmed to attach itself to lunar flights and destroy them. A very good episode. In "The Dalotek Affair" the aliens plant a device in a moon crater to cause heavy interference with moonbase communications. A fairly good episode. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Not two of the best episodes...
The series that had decent writing takes a break in these two episodes and enters the land of "cliches and plot devices". The Psycho-Bombs starts with an interesting theory that adrenelline driven people could do superhuman things but degenerates from there to the point that they can only be beaten by the heroes and that the aliens were too stupid to make more of them. "Court-Martial" is the story of the wrongly accused man who no one believes (except the main hero). It's an ok episode but really predictable with the usual cast you find in these kind of dramas. And of course the one "amatuer detective" that is able to deduct what all the investigators can't. You might want to give this one a miss but if you're trying to get the whole series, go ahead!

Strange but Good
I absolutely LOVED this series as a boy and I loved watching this video as an adult. Vol. 4 contains one of the very best scripts for this sci-fi cult classic in the episode "The Psychobombs. Three ordinary citizens fall under mind control of the aliens when a UFO lands in rural England. The aliens have given them super-human strength to destroy SHADO installations. There is a BRILLIANTLY directed scene where Psychobomb # 2 tries to gain access to a SHADO submarine but gets no further than the conning tower when the order is given to submerge. This episode also has an unusually strong soundtrack of mysterious music courtesy of the brilliant composer Barry Gray. The other episode on this video is "Court Martial", a rather mediocre episode but "Psychobombs" alone makes this volume worth buying. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

The Saucer Hunters
This is an odd video release. One excellent episode and one dreadful episode. First the bad one, "Confetti Check A-OK". This is a rare episode without a UFO in it! This one's a real stinkeroo! Now let's talk about the good one, "Sub-Smash". This is a submarine drama akin to the recent blockbuster movie U-571. The saucer-hunters learn the aliens now have a craft that can fly AND function as a submarine. Commander Straker assembles the best possible sub crew to search for it but are ambushed and the crippled sub sinks to the bottom. Can SHADO raise the sub to the surface before the crew's air is depleted?

UFO r Vitrup /Joelw
Growing up in San Diego Ca friend Russel V. and I saw all episodes and for many years wonder what happened to the show .All the episodes showed realistically the emotions s\and family stuggles of the main characters d,definetly a show far ahead of its time.

Sincerely Joel Wirth

STORY is what makes a good TV show!!
"Confetti-Check A-OK" is another of the good "character driven" episodes that made this series one of my favorites. It shows how SHADO was funded and started at the same time Straker got married. As Shado got more stronger, his marriage got progressively weaker. The episode asks would you sacrifice all your happiness and personal life for an organization. It also shows that we could be under alien attack and the bureaucrats would be arguing over the budget!!

Good character development, average model work.
Both episodes on this tape provide excellent charater development. Only the second (SubSmash) shows decent model footage. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A Taut Chiller!!
A British thriller from 1963, this movie concerns a young wife who is the victim of a psychotic stalker. Filmed in Hitchcockian style, it kept me on the edge of my seat. Not only does the story concern itself with the stalker, but also the terrifying events cause the main character (played wonderfully by Anne Heywood) to reexamine her own deep inner feelings and her personal life as well. A young Jeremy Brett makes an excellent psycho--hard to believe that many years later he would bring the wonderful detective Sherlock Holmes to life as no actor has done before or since. If you like old-fashioned thrillers, you will love this movie. The fact that it is in black and white seems to add to the atmosphere. A nice film which deserves more attention then it has gotten. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A "hidden" Connery gem!
I had never even heard of this movie, so I bought it on a whim and was pleasantly surprised. This is one of Sean Connery's first films. Set during WWII, he plays a not too bright private and Alfred Lynch plays his smart scheming friend. The two of them get into all sorts of trouble with the "brass" and the "birds". Somewhere along the way they also manage to become WWII heroes. I highly recommend this film to anybody who enjoys a war movie with a few laughs.(Kelly's Heroes, 1941) Also a great movie if you want to see Sean Connery B.B.(before Bond) ... Read more

Reviews (2)

He who is not one up is one down! This movie, 5-up!
"... the moment when Adam bit into that apple. At which moment, the first loser was born. Yes, the pattern was set. The world was divided not into male and female, that's a mere superficial division of minor importance. No, there is another division, another dichotomy more basic, more profound. At that fateful moment, the world was divided into winners and losers, top men and underdogs. In a word, the one up and the one down." --from Professor Potter's lecture at the College of Lifemanship, Yeovil.

Or How To Win Without Actually Cheating. That's the subtitle of School For Scoundrels, this brilliant piece of British comedy from 1960, a title my father saw long ago and which I got him for a Christmas present, with a screenplay by Peter Ustinov no less adapted from three Stephen Potter novels.

Poor Henry Palfrey! Clearly, he's constantly in a one-down position to the whole world. In a flashback, we see how despite being an executive in his late uncle's firm, he's dominated by his chief clerk Gloatbridge, who treats him like a non-entity. He literally bumps into the girl of his dreams, April Smith, a stunning but sweet, clean girl who's a brunette version of Betty Grable. However, a rascally, gap-toothed, smooth-talking acquaintance, Raymond Delawney, impresses April with his savoir-faire in wines and food, and even his snazzy Bellini sports car. Palfrey ends up getting a lemon and horribly losing a tennis match, where Delawney replies with a plummy "hard cheese!" every time he misses a point, causing him to lose face in front of April.

He thus enrolls in Professor Potter's classes on lifemanship. What is lifemanship? It's "the science of being one up on your opponent at all times. It's the act of making him feel that somewhere, somehow, he's becoming less than you, less desirable, less worthy, less blessed." After graduating in classes of gamesmanship, onemanship, businessmanship, and that most important one, woo-manship, he gets back at those who caused him to lose face, and how! Next time I find somebody's who a life of the party, I'll use Potter's technique in deflating him/her. If Dingle, the gangly student in the class where that technique was demonstrated is familiar, that's Jeremy Lloyd, who would have a bit part jumping up and down in a club in A Hard Day's Night and the co-writer of Are You Being Served? in the 70's, and Allo Allo in the 80's.

There are some misogynistic references on the "woo-manship" part, where Potter advises Henry to use a blase attitude to April in one scene. "Leave her alone and she'll come back home wagging her tail." Ouch, but good ones, Prof!

Ian Carmichael (Henry) would later be known to American audiences watching PBS's Mystery as Lord Peter Wimsey in the Dorothy Sayers series. Terry-Thomas (Delawney) has another one of his comedic supporting roles, and it's incredible to see how he's suave when with poise, to a point where his frustration causes him to lose his temper. But hands down, veteran Alistair Sim as the impish Potter steals the show with his characteristic expressive eyes, toothy grin, and droll wit. Janette Scott shines as April, showing she could handle adult roles as well as child roles (James Stewart's super-intelligent daughter in No Highway In The Sky). Six years later, she'd have singer Mel Torme as her second of three husbands.

Being someone constantly in a one-down position to the world, taking Potter's class would've been better than all those years I wasted in college. If I could do it all over, I'd take those classes and be one-up on everyone. However, Potter leaves the audience with a final warning: "once sincerity rears its ugly head, lifemanship is powerless." Me sincere? From now on, never! This movie is clearly one-up-up-up-up-up!

"How did you meet this not-quite-blonde?"
In the British comedy, "School for Scoundrels" Ian Carmichael plays mild-mannered, docile Henry Palfrey. Palfrey is a nice man--too nice. His employees are disrespectful, waiters are rude to him, but the final blow comes when acquaintance Raymond Delauney (Terry Thomas) steals Henry's girlfriend. In desperation, Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship.

At the college, Henry learns that "the world is divided into winners and losers," and he is instructed in the art of Lifemanship or "the art of being one up on your opponent." The college's founder and head scallywag is Mr. Potter (Alistair Sim). He takes a special interest in Henry, and soon Henry learns how to manipulate circumstances to his advantage.

This is an extremely funny and clever film. It does not seem dated at all as the issues have not altered one bit in the last 40 odd years. The scenes between Sim and Carmichael illustrate the subtle nuances of one-up-man-ship in social settings, and after watching these scenes, it's easy to see how poor Henry is maneuvered by everyone in his life. Henry has his revenge on all the cads in his life--including Terry Thomas and a couple of unscrupulous car salesmen. Terry Thomas is at his fiendish best here as the playboy Delauney--he is such a great comic actor. "School for Scoundrels" is a black and white film, and the copy I saw was excellent quality--displacedhuman ... Read more