Night We Got the Bird, The (1960)

Gullible antiques “expert” Bertie Skidmore (Brian Rix) is taken in by Cecil Gibson (Ronald Shiner), a crooked junk shop dealer.

Bertie discovers he has sold a fake to Wolfie Green (John Slater), a menacing wide boy, and while he and Cecil are trying to remedy things, Cecil is killed.

Later, Cecil’s widow Julie (Dora Bryan) becomes Bertie’s bride and they receive a talkative parrot as a wedding present. It turns out that the pesky bird is actually Cecil reincarnated and it starts to cause trouble as Bertie and Julie prepare for their honeymoon.

The bird eventually goes to an aviary, but Wolfie Green demands the return of the four-poster bed Cecil had chiselled him out of.

There’s some monkey business at a girls’ school but all ends well and Bertie and Julie begin their honeymoon, despite unencouraging words from the parrot, now in orbit!

Your heart will go out to the splendid cast that found itself lumbered with this turkey. Ronald Shiner has the most luck, as he at least gets to spend much of the picture as a reincarnated parrot, thus leaving doltish egghead Brian Rix to carry the can for his misdemeanours as an antique forger.

With bedroom mix-ups, courtroom chaos, St Trinian’s-style aggro and a break-in at a top-secret space lab, there’s enough going on, but it’s all so dismally unfunny, even though accomplished farceur Ray Cooney had a hand in adapting the script from the stage play The Lovebirds.

Bertie Skidmore
Brian Rix
Julie Skidmore
Dora Bryan
Victor
Leo Franklyn
Ma
Irene Handl
Fay
Liz Fraser
Wolfie Green
John Slater
Chippendale Charlie
Reginald Beckwith
Dr Vincent
Robertson Hare
Mr Warre-Monger
Kynaston Reeves
Court clerk
John Le Mesurier
Cecil Gibson
Ronald Shiner
PC Lovejoy
Terry Scott

Director
Darcy Conyers