Miss MacTaggart Won’t Lie Down *** (1966, Barbara Mullen, Eric Woodburn, Andrew Downie) – Classic Movie Review 12,885

Miss MacTaggart Won’t Lie Down stars Barbara Mullen and Eric Woodburn.

Francis Searle’s inventive and amusing 1966 Screen Miniature independent featurette film Miss MacTaggart Won’t Lie Down stars Barbara Mullen and Eric Woodburn from TV’s Dr Finlay’s Casebook.

Director Francis Searle’s inventive and amusing 1966 Screen Miniature independent featurette film Miss MacTaggart Won’t Lie Down stars Barbara Mullen. It brings together two quirky stars of BBC TV’s long-running Scottish medical series Dr Finlay’s Casebook (1962–1971): Barbara Mullen and Eric Woodburn, who played housekeeper Janet MacPherson and Dr Snoddie.

While Dr Finlay was detailing his casebook on the popular Sixties BBC television show, his canny housekeeper Mullen returned to the big screen where she had started for this humorous short support feature, playing the title’s Miss Jeannie MacTaggart.

It is an enjoyable, very droll little comedy thriller about a spinster who breaks the law in her attempts to prove her identity when she is mistaken for her sister and pronounced dead.

When Miss Jeannie MacTaggart returns to her home village of Drumlochie after a trip to Glasgow, the locals think she is a ghost. She is supposed to be dead but it was her twin sister who died while on a visit. So Jeannie has to go about proving who she is though she is now officially deceased and in Scottish law a death certificate cannot be revoked. So Miss Jeannie MacTaggart goes on a one-woman crimewave so her arrest and prosecution would force the authorities to declare her alive again. She steals a royal tiara, plays the bagpipes at midnight, breaks a police station window, leaves a haggis disguised as a bomb in the House of Commons and pesters the Prime Minister.

Luckily Mullen’s Irish charm won’t lie down either, though a few more famous names among the support players would have helped, but Eric Woodburn is good as Mr John ‘Stuffy’ Morrison and so are Andrew Downie as Sergeant MacLeod and Jack Lambert as Lord Longbrae.

Miss MacTaggart Won’t Lie Down is directed by Francis Searle, runs 28 minutes, is made by Chairene Productions, is released by Monarch Film Corporation (UK), is written by Elwyn Ambrose (story and screenplay), is shot by Terry Maher, is produced by Francis Searle, is scored by Peter Jeffries, and is designed by C Wilfred Arnold.

The cast are Barbara Mullen as Miss MacTaggart, Eric Woodburn as Mr John ‘Stuffy’ Morrison, Andrew Downie as Sergeant MacLeod, Jack Lambert as Lord Longbrae, Tim Barrett as manservant, Patrick Jordan as reporter, Frank Sieman as policeman, Katharine Page as postmistress, Laurie Leigh as mother, Pat Mason as Mrs Murray, and Joe Ritchie as news vendor.

It is the first and best in a series of 30-minute films Francis Searle called Screen Miniatures, which he made between 1966 and 1972. Others in the series are The Pale Faced Girl (1968), Talk of the Devil (1968), Gold Is Where You Find It (1968), It All Goes to Show (1969), A Hole Lot of Trouble (1971) and A Couple of Beauties (1972).

It is shot in the studio at Bushey Studios, Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, and on location at 10 Downing Street and Houses of Parliament, London, and at Kenmore, Perthshire, Scotland.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,885

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