Raising a Riot *** (1955, Kenneth More, Shelagh Fraser, Mandy Miller) – Classic Movie Review 8116

Director Wendy Toye’s bright and breezy 1955 Technicolor British comedy Raising a Riot stars Kenneth More as Tony Kent, who has just had three years in the Navy and returns home to discover that his children are strangers.

Then his wife Mary (Shelagh Fraser) takes a trip to Canada, and then he finds that he has his hands more than full trying to bond with his three sweet but naughty children Anne, Peter and Fusty (Mandy Miller, Gary Billings, Fusty Bentine) when they go on a country holiday to his father’s old windmill.

Director Toye keeps this unsurprising, cosy but pleasant enough lightweight comedy whizzing along, so it is entirely painless. It is based on a novel by Alfred Toombs. More is his usual crabby but loveable self and the smiling co-stars help to keep it merry.

Also in the cast are Ronald Squire, Bill Shine, Ronald Squire, Olga Lindo, Lionel Murton, Jan Miller, Nora Nicholson, Michael Bentine, Erik Chitty, Sam Kydd, Jessie Evans, Mary Laura Wood, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Dorothy Dewhurst, Robin Brown and Victor Maddern.

Raising a Riot is directed by Wendy Toye, runs 90 minutes, is made by Wessex Film Productions and London Film Productions, is released by British Lion Film Corporation (UK) and Continental Distributing (US), is written by Ian Dalrymple (adaptation and screenplay), Hugh Perceval (adaptation and screenplay) and James Matthews (adaptation), is shot in Technicolor by Christopher Challis, is produced by Ian Dalrymple and is scored by Bruce Montgomery, with art direction by Joseph Bato.

It was shot at Shepperton Studios, Middlesex, England; Barham Windmill, Barham, Kent, England; and Conyer Quay, Teynham, Kent, England.

Fusty was the real-life daughter of Michael Bentine who plays The Professor. She died of cancer in 1987 at the age of 37. It is her only film.

The book is based on American writer Alfred Toombs’s real-life experience of having to look after his children after having been away from them at war for three years.

An uncredited Caroline John plays one of the children in the film. She later played Liz Shaw in Doctor Who.

The film was the eighth most popular movie at the British box office in 1955 and made a nice profit (it took £231,148 in the UK).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8116

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