The Bed Sitting Room – Cult Film Club

Dexter Gordon once said, “In nuclear war all men are cremated equal”; in Richard Lester’s comedic dystopia the hoity-toity Lord Fortnum (‘top drawer to put it mildly’) finds himself slumming it amongst guttering folk after the Third World War has put paid to civilisation. To make matters worse – and immeasurably more surreal – he’s also mutating into a bedsit (the bed sitting room of the title).

Set in a ravaged London – obliterated by a ‘nuclear misunderstanding’ – now populated by a mere handful of survivors, The Bed Sitting Room begins in deadly serious fashion: a trumpet toots a melancholy tune accompanied by images of desolation, desertion and destruction.

And then, cascading down this solemn opener are the names of its illustrious cast, listed – cheeky as you like – ‘in order of height’. For a moment it’s not so sad anymore but splendidly silly.

It’s this delicate balance of the daft and doleful which gives The Bed Sitting Room its considerable charm. This is stiff upper lip territory, with its relentless, almost weary good-humour and miscellaneous preposterousness in the face of a truly diabolical situation.

The characters’ deluded antics have a strange poignancy of their own but are lent further pathos by the haunting beauty of Ken Thorne’s score. Its production design too is marvellous (sterling work by Blow-Up’s Assheton Gorton, who worked wonders with a disused quarry).

Each of Britain’s previously glorious institutions are represented by an individual – the BBC is one chap (Frank Thornton) doing the rounds with old news, the post office is personified by Spike Milligan, dutifully delivering custard pies, and the NHS is no more than one deranged male nurse (Marty Feldman). All that’s left of the monarchy is the Queen’s charlady Mrs Ethel Shroake (Dandy Nichols) who is recognised in a revised national anthem.

London’s last family – headed up by Arthur Lowe – have been residing on the Circle Line which, in turn, is being powered by one man on a bike (Henry Woolf), who is incidentally providing electricity for the whole nation (about twenty people).

Watching over all of this madness are two Orwellian coppers – an Inspector and Sergeant (played by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore respectively) – who float about in a rusted police car attached to a hot air balloon, or drive round in a digger, warning people to keep moving lest they become targets for an unseen (and presumably long gone) enemy.

The Bed Sitting Room started out as a 1963 play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus and was adapted for film by Antrobus and Charles Wood. Its elevation to the screen, towards the end of the decade, came about after another Lester project (Up Against It, based on a Joe Orton script) fell through.

The Bed Sitting Room consequently inherited a million dollar budget, courtesy of United Artists, and due to the success of the play and the chops of both cast and director, the money men trusted Lester and co to produce something commercially viable, keeping their collective nose out. Unfortunately, UA were appalled at the unconventional result and the film gathered dust for over a year before a cursory release in 1970.

If it’s shabby beauty, superior whimsy or a shrewd satire you’re looking for, then The Bed Sitting Room will be right up your street. Those who missed the BFI’s 2009 reissue should seek this great British curio out immediately – the end of the world has really never looked so fine.

The Bed Sitting Room – Cult Film Club (text) by Emma Simmonds is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.