What a Carve Up! ** (1961, Sidney James, Kenneth Connor, Shirley Eaton, Dennis Price, Donald Pleasence, Michael Gough, Esma Cannon, Michael Gwynn) – Classic Movie Review 10,280

What a silly title! The Americans did not fancy What a Carve Up! and the 1961 horror comedy was released in the US as No Place Like Homicide!

London West End farceur Ray Cooney (Run for Your Wife!) co-writes a skeletal haunted-house comedy, based on Frank King’s novel The Ghoul, about a rich, supposedly dead madman who summons his relatives to Yorkshire to bump them off, which he proceeds to do with some imagination and aplomb.

Kenneth Connor stars as Ernie Broughton, whose rich uncle Gabriel has just died and leaves him his inheritance but he must spend the night in the creepy ancestral home with the other relatives to inherit, sparking a series of deaths. Sidney James plays Syd Butler and Michael Gough plays the actual butler – Fisk.

Director Pat Jackson’s 1961 British broad farce What a Carve Up! is a remake of the much better vintage movie The Ghoul (1933). It is sabotaged by slack handling of a plot we have seen too often before with much better results, and by a tone problem with the addition of out-of-place Carry On films-style humour. And there is surprisingly lazy acting from some of the famous names having a bit of an off day. Even so, it’s still good to see them on screen again. Iconic Sixties pop star Adam Faith appears as himself.

It stars Sidney James, Kenneth Connor, Shirley Eaton, Dennis Price, Donald Pleasence, Michael Gough, Esma Cannon, Michael Gwynn, Valerie Taylor, Philip O’Flynn, George Woodbridge, Timothy Bateson, and Frederick Piper.

What a Carve Up! is directed by Pat Jackson, runs 87 minutes, is made by New World Films and Baker-Berman Productions, is released by Regal Films International (1962) (UK) and Embassy Pictures (1962) (US), is written by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton, based on Frank King’s novel The Ghoul, is shot in black and white by Monty Berman, is produced by Robert S Baker and Monty Berman, and is scored by Muir Mathieson, with Art Direction by Ivan King. The music is played by Sinfonia of London.

It is shot at Twickenham, Middlesex, England.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,280

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