This made-for-television movie from Yorkshire Television was written by the prolific British comedy writer David Nobbs (author of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin) and resolved around a group of allied prisoners in a German POW camp called Stalag Luft during World War II.
Stephen Fry – as Wing Commander “Big F” Forrester – virtually reprises his character from Blackadder Goes Forth as a pompous officer who won’t listen to anyone else and the unsuccessful leader of the escape committee. Forrester is a hopeless snob whose only redeeming feature is his schoolboy German which allows him to befriend the nervous camp Kommandant, played by a marvellously hangdog Geoffrey Palmer.
When the prisoners plan an escape, the Kommandant (“call me Heinrich”) persuades Big F to let him and his tired old guards come along too, in order to avoid the inevitable retribution of the SS.
The Germans are duped into going first, and without them, prison camp life suddenly seems a lot more fun, so the Allied soldiers decide to stay behind and wait out the war.
To avoid detection in frequent SS inspections, half of them – led by Big F – dress up as German soldiers and feign laryngitis. But power goes to the new Kommandant’s head, and conditions in the camp rapidly become worse than they were under the real Germans.
The SS commander is so impressed that he recommends Big F for the Iron Cross.
But the “prisoners”, led by northern grammar school boy “Chump” Cosgrove (Nicholas Lyndhurst), feel hard done by and plan another escape.
The film was shot on location in Northumberland, Leeds and at Yorkshire Television’s studios. It’s very funny, but perhaps an hour too long.
Wing Commander James “Big F” Forrester
Stephen Fry ‘Chump’ Cosgrove
Nicholas Lyndhurst Kommandant
Geoffrey Palmer Adolf Hitler
Sam Kelly The Prof
David Bamber Sqdn. Ldr. Barton
Hugh Bonneville ‘Einstein’ Price Egerton
Marston Bloom ‘Owly’ Morrison
Todd Boyce ‘Izzy’ Levinson
Roger Hyams Shorty Evans
Wayne Cater Oberst Von Steffenberg
Benedick Blythe ‘Haggis’ Barrington
Simon Donald Donaldson
Tim McMullan Holmes
Henry Webster Stefan
Pavel Bavolets Smithers
Steffan Boje Chef
Robert Packham Tank Officer
John Pirkis (as John Duvall) First Ferret
Carl Duering Second Ferret
Michael Mellinger Eva Braun
Sarah Buckley Hitler’s Attendant
Joerg Stadler
Director
Adrian Shergold
Related Posts
Silent Movie (1976) In a (virtually) dialogue-free movie, Mel Brooks plays film director Mel Funn, who plans to make a modern-day silent movie…
Secret of Blood Island, The (1965) "Blood Island" is the grim nickname given to a compound in the Malayan jungle where British Prisoners-of-War are made to…
Snow Devils, The (1966) In the mid-1960s, Italian director Antonio Margheriti made four science fiction films back-to-back for MGM. All four movies were filmed…
Midnight Clear, A (1992) Just before the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, US Army Major Griffin (John C. McGinley) sends a small…
Shinbone Alley (1971) A year before the release of the X-rated Fritz the Cat, American moviegoers were subjected to the strangeness of the…
Ship That Died of Shame, The (1955) The little British Naval gunboat has no name. She is simply known as 1087. But this has not stopped her…
Shout at the Devil (1976) The period is 1913 - just a few months before the First World War is about to erupt in an…
Handmaid's Tale, The (1990) In the future, America - now called Gilead - is ruled by puritanical right-wing extremists. Nuclear fallout and pollution have…
The Germans are duped into going first, and without them, prison camp life suddenly seems a lot more fun, so the Allied soldiers decide to stay behind and wait out the war.
