Down Among the Z Men (1952)

Dim-witted Harry Jones (Harry Secombe) is an assistant in Mr Crab’s grocery shop and an amateur actor in community theatre, where he is currently playing a Scotland Yard inspector called ‘Batts of the Yard’.

When absentminded Professor Osrick Pureheart (Michael Bentine) leaves a secret formula for a “bicarbonate bomb” in the shop, mayhem ensues as two foreign spies (Andrew Timothy and Graham Stark), who have been shadowing the professor, question Harry regarding the professor – none of them realising that Harry now has the formula in his possession.

Convinced by the two spies to follow the professor, Harry goes to Warwell army camp, where he is mistakenly enlisted in the Z Men – ostensibly an elite unit guarding atomic secrets but, in reality, a ragtag group of re-enlisted reservists of marginal competence.

The spies kidnap an adjutant newly assigned to the camp, and one of them impersonates him to gain entry to the camp.

For security purposes, the camp commander, Colonel Bloodnok (Peter Sellers), has been assigned a “daughter”, Carole, who is actually a female MI5 operative (Carole Carr).

Harry soon becomes smitten with the “daughter”, and they work together to foil an attempt by the secret agents to purloin Pureheart’s formula.

The script isn’t particularly funny – and not very ‘Goonish’ – but several of the characters introduced in the film were further developed by Sellers, Milligan, Secombe and Bentine into their beloved radio characters.

While the film was not a commercial success (Peter Sellers later referred to the movie as “downright bloody awful”), the Goons went on to much greater things on the radio.

For an authentic Goons celluloid experience, seek out The Case of the Mukkinese Battle-Horn (1956).

Harry Jones
Harry Secombe
Prof. Osrick Pureheart
Michael Bentine
Pte. Eccles
Spike Milligan
Colonel Bloodnok
Peter Sellers
Carole Gayley
Carole Carr
Stanton
Clifford Stanton
Sergeant Bullshine
Robert Cawdron
Evans
Andrew Timothy
Spider
Graham Stark
Brigadier’s ADC
Russ Allen
Girls in shop
Elizabeth Kearns
Miriam Karlin

Director
Maclean Rogers