Ask a Policeman **** (1939, Will Hay, Moore Marriott, Graham Moffatt) – Classic Movie Review 6623

Director Marcel Varnel’s 1939 British comedy vehicle for loveable rogue comics Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt is unmissable for their many fans.

Hay stars as Police Sergeant Samuel Dudfoot, and Marriott and Moffatt play his silly sidekick coppers Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Harbottle and Albert Brown, who together stumble into action uncovering a smuggling plot and a headless horseman in their sleepy village of Turnbottom Round – a comic echo of George Arliss’s 1937 hit Dr Syn.

Ask a Policeman is episodic, irreverent fun, with a particularly inventive comedy script that inspires Hay onto his top form. Great though Hay is, he is helped immensely by the irrespressible duo of Marriott (in two roles as Harbottle and his dad) and Moffatt.

Based on a story by Sidney Gilliat, this consistently funny comedy thriller excels itself with a boisterous finale filmed at Brooklands motor-racing track.

The future James Bond movie Q, Desmond Llewelyn, makes his film debut in the role of a ghost.

Also in the cast are Glennis Lorimer, Peter Gawthorne, Herbert Lomas, Charles Oliver, Patrick Aherne, Cyril Chamberlain and Brian Worth.

It is written by Marriott Edgar, Val Guest and J O C Orton, shot in black and white by Derick Williams, produced by Edward Black, scored by Louis Levy and designed by Alex Vetchinsky.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6623

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