Holiday on the Buses * (1973, Reg Varney, Stephen Lewis, Doris Hare, Michael Robbins, Anna Karen, Bob Grant) – Classic Movie Review 6877

Director Bryan Izzard’s 1973 British comedy is the third and final film spinoff from the hit TV show and sees comedy god Reg Varney back as bus conductor Stan Butler, who goes on a busman’s holiday with his family and ends up driving a coach at a Welsh holiday camp. Sacked by their bus company for crashing two buses, Stan and Jack Harper (Bob Grant) get jobs as drivers ferrying punters to and from the holiday camp and arrange for the family to come and stay, only to find to their horror that Inspector ‘Blakey’ Blake works there as chief security guard.

The regulars Stephen Lewis (as Inspector Cyril ‘Blakey’ Blake), Doris Hare (as Stan’s Mum Mrs Mabel Butler), Michael Robbins (as Arthur Rudge), Anna Karen (as Olive Rudge) and Bob Grant (as Jack Harper) also star again.

Holiday on the Buses is the usual lowbrow British seaside humour, Seventies style, only less well done than in the original TV programmes, veering too often from the amusingly saucy to the inanely smutty, though no worse than the first two films.

The familiar crew jolly the nonsense along but the format has taken one too many journeys along the same route and needed far more than a sun-oil change to get it back on course. You could drive a coach and horse through producer/ screen-writers Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney’s script.

Still, it is redeemed by some funny moments and of course it is always good to see stalwart Brit character actors Wilfrid Brambell, Kate Williams, Arthur Mullard, Queenie Watts and Henry McGee again, upstaging the stars in the comedy class department.

Also in the cast are Adam Rhodes, Michael Sheard, Hal Dyer, Franco De Rosa, Gigi Gatti, Eunice Black, Maureen Sweeney, Sandra Bryant, Carolae Donoghue, Tara Lynn and Alex Munro.

Holiday on the Buses is directed by Bryan Izzard, runs 85 minutes, is made by Hammer Films and Anglo-EMI Films, released by MGM-EMI, written by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, is shot in Technicolor by Brian Probyn is produced by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, is scored by Denis King, and is designed by Don Picton.

It follows On the Buses (1971) and Mutiny on the Buses (1972).

On the Buses, Mutiny on the Buses and Holiday on the Buses are available together on a Region 2 DVD.

Doris Hare (1905–2000) then went on to play Timmy Lea’s mum in Confessions of a Pop Performer and its sequels.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6877

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