Upper-class innocent Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) has to interrupt his cloistered university education when he is called up in 1942 and sent to Gravestone Camp.
Stanley’s erratic and chaotic progress through the camp – and his singular lack of prowess at the military arts – almost drives his instructor (William Hartnell) to apoplexy.
He is assigned to an Officer Cadet Training Unit. but after incredible interviews with psychiatrists and others, Private Windrush is posted to a Holding Unit, under Major Hitchcock (Terry-Thomas), terrific as the pompous officer who despairs that his men are “an absolute shower”.
He falls in with a gang of spivs and loafers including George Blake (Victor Maddern), Dai Jones (Kenneth Griffith), Horrocks (Ian Bannen) and crafty Private Cox (Richard Attenborough), who tries to teach him how to skive and scrounge – how to make a five-minute job last all day, how to slope off to the cinema without being missed, how a large number of soldiers can travel on the railway with only two tickets and an ATS hat . . .
Stanley chooses a Japanese language course as the biggest and longest “loaf” available, but is contacted by his uncle, Brigadier Bertram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price) – a “chairborne War Office hero” – to join the secret “Operation Hatrack” which, in fact, turns out to be a scam to steal looted artworks from the Germans and sell them on to crooked art dealers.
Receiving no cooperation from the War Office (because the film was thought to be harmful to recruitment), the Boulting Brothers went ahead with hilarious results. It’s a devastating satire on the ways of the British Army.
Narrator
E.V.H. Emmett Private Stanley Windrush
Ian Carmichael Private Percival Henry Cox
Richard Attenborough Brigadier Bertram Tracepurcel
Dennis Price Major Hitchcock
Terry-Thomas Arthur Egan
Peter Jones Sergeant Sutton
William Hartnell Captain Henry Bootle
Thorley Walters Prudence Greenslade
Jill Adams Private Horrocks
Ian Bannen Private George Blake
Victor Maddern Private Dai Jones
Kenneth Griffith Sergeant-Major Gradwick
John Warren Pat
Derrick de Marney Mr Spottiswood
Henry Longhurst Mr Windrush Sr
Miles Malleson Catherine
Sally Miles Gerald
David King-Wood Colonel Fanshawe
Michael Trubshawe Psychiatrist
John Le Mesurier General Tomlinson
Robert Raglan Major Schultz
Christopher Lee Colonel Argent
Basil Dignam Lance Corporal Parsons
David Lodge Sidney
Michael Ward General Von Lembeck
Ludwig Lawinsky Miss Sugden
Marianne Stone Colonel Lench
Peter Stephens Face Ache
Gerald Fox
Director
John Boulting
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Stanley’s erratic and chaotic progress through the camp – and his singular lack of prowess at the military arts – almost drives his instructor (William Hartnell) to apoplexy.
