Rent Bedazzled (1967)

Devilishly Funny - Bedazzled review by Count Otto Black

Pete & Dud may have been the greatest comedy double act of the sixties, but like so many comedians who are hugely successful on telly, they never quite managed to break into the movies. Dudley Moore did all right by himself much later on, but Peter Cook simply couldn't act, except in that exaggerated style which is fine for sketches but in a movie is just plain embarrassing. The only other movie the duo appeared in together, apart from a few cameos and the abysmal feature-length documentary "Derek & Clive Get The Horn", was the truly appalling "The Hound Of The Baskervilles", one of the few films with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of zero.

Which makes it all the more surprising that this hilarious modern reboot of the legend of Faust and Mephistopheles works so well. As the hapless Stanley Moon, Dudley Moore is quite likeable in his usual gormless fashion, but Peter Cook, who wrote the script and naturally gave himself all the best lines, is diabolically good as a relentlessly wicked but ultimately rather pathetic Satan. The main reason it works is that the episodic plot, in which Stanley ham-fistedly tries to use the seven wishes he swapped his soul for to win the heart of the woman he's hopelessly in love with, allows everything, including the personalities of the main characters, to change completely every few minutes, in effect turning the movie into a sketch show of the kind Pete & Dud excelled at.

A special mention must go to Eleanor Bron as the unsuspecting object of Stanley's affections. Although it's billed as a Cook & Moore film, it's really a three-hander with Ms. Bron as the only other significant recurring character, who, since she's blissfully unaware of the way reality keeps transforming with her at the epicentre, switches personalities even more drastically than the other two, and ends up being everything from a nymphomaniac to a nun. Of course she goes wildly over the top, but she does it very well indeed. And I got the impression she had a lot of fun doing it.

But what's most surprising and interesting about the film is the way it capitalises on its own deficiencies. Cook's stilted and wildly uneven acting doesn't matter when he's playing a bewilderingly mercurial and utterly non-human Prince of Darkness; if David Bowie had turned the part down, Peter Cook might just possibly have made a very convincing Man Who Fell To Earth. Even his total inability to sing is put to good use in a weirdly catchy musical number sending up pretentious pop stars. And if you can't afford special effects, it makes perfect sense for the Devil's base of operations in London to be a dismal nightclub which is actually a feeble manifestation of Hell, and whose hopelessly inefficient staff are bargain-bin avatars of the Seven Deadly Sins.

It's not a perfect film by any means. It's too episodic to hang together as well as it should, some of the less successful sketches go on a bit too long, Cook's performance is so erratic that sometimes it ends up on the wrong side of the line between strange and just plain bad, and the one time it tries to use any seriously special effects, they're so unspecial they're downright embarrassing. But the truly funny moments are very funny indeed, and there are plenty of them. It also pulls off the rare trick of being about religion without ever getting the slightest bit preachy. If you want to know how good this unassuming little film really is, try watching it as a double bill with the 2000 remake which, taking inflation into account, cost 15 times as much, yet strangely isn't 15 times as funny. In fact, it would be more accurate to say it's the other way round. If only Pete & Dud had made a Justice League movie...

Cook and Moore - Bedazzled review by JD

If you enjoy a diet of satire, python and the fast show, you will see a feast of mirth, some however may see it as very snooty and public school humour, others too dated. I think the production is good for 1967, I like Cook and Moore, distantly insane and daft, (although my admiration of Cook's genius is fading) their impact on modern humour is undeniable. I enjoyed this film, though if you don't already know and like them, this film probably won't change that.