Writer-director Frank Launder revived Ronald Searle’s anarchic St Trinian’s schoolgirls for a fifth movie after a 14-year gap in this 1980 British comedy, and seemed to forget to put in the laughs. Launder’s original screenplay is inspired by Searle’s original drawings of the Girls and Staff of St Trinian’s.
It stars Sheila Hancock as Olga Vandemeer, Michael Hordern as Sir Charles Hackforth, Thorley Walters as Hugo Culpepper Brown, Rodney Bewes as Peregrine Butters, Maureen Lipman as Miss Katy Higgs, Julia McKenzie as Miss Dolly Dormancott, Veronica Quilligan and Deborah Norton.
Joe Melia has the unenviable task of taking over from George Cole, who appeared in all the previous four films as Flash Harry: The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954), Blue Murder at St Trinian’s (1957), The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s (1960) and The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966).
The farcical plot, in which the little horrors seize an Arab girl as hostage, is set against a climate of then topical trades union squabbles, with the pupils forming their own union and going on strike, but the jokes remain resolutely traditional. Thorley Walters survives from the earlier films, Blue Murder at St Trinian’s and The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s. The new recruits, many of them admirable performers, do what they can.
Without Alistair Sim and Margaret Rutherford or George Cole, all is lost. And the movie’s comedy dynamism, such as it is, is all faked.
Also in the cast are Barbara Hicks (1924–2013) as Miss Coke, Rose Hill as Miss Martingale, Ambrosine Phillpotts as Mrs Mowbray, Luan Peters as Poppy Adams, Bernadette O’Farrell, Diana King as Miss Mactavish, Rosalind Knight, Patsy Smart as Miss Warmold, Jeremy Pearce, Ballard Berkeley, Frances Ruffell and Lisa Vanderpump.
They eventually revived Ronald Searle’s anarchic girls in St Trinian’s (2007) and St Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold (2009).
RIP British comedy icon Rodney Bewes (27 November 1937 – 21 November 2017).
© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5743
Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com