THE WRONG BOX: Blu-ray (Columbia, 1966) Powerhouse/Indicator

Misdirection and charade in the extreme, a la the Ealing Studios’ screwball comedies from the 1940’s, re-fitted for the psychedelic sixties, plus a superb ensemble, featuring such noteworthy Brit-born luminaries as Ralph Richardson, John Mills and Peter Sellers, intermingling with then rising talents, Michael Caine, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, are all great reasons to see, director, Bryan Forbes’ The Wrong Box (1966); heavily rewritten by screenwriters, Larry Gelbert and Burt Shevelove to bear only a passing resemblance to its source material by Robert Lewis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. The picture, parceled off into quirky vignettes, by turns merry and macabre, tumbles forth in fits and sparks – some, more successful at assailing the pinnacle of its tongue-firmly-in-cheek black comedy, while others split under the strain of belabored dialogue and situations that drag and stall the plot into an almost mechanical exercise, slavishly devoted to the precepts of the ole-English farce. Not surprisingly, the best of these vignettes involve Richardson’s pain-in-the-ass donnish quack and Mills’ muddled, dying – yet feisty – fraud as Joseph and Masterman Finsbury respectively; the two, given to wild confrontation in a scene where Masterman repeatedly tries to employ the element of surprise and murder his own brother using all manner of implements, only to be repeatedly foiled by his absurdly obtuse sibling. The other outstanding extract undeniably goes to Peter Sellers’ brilliant lampoon as Dr. Pratt – a disgraced, bumbling and absent-minded lush, living in the squalor of his cat-infested flat and put upon by Cook’s enterprising Morris Finsbury to sign a faulty death certificate so he and his brother, the pervert, John (Moore) can lay claim to a staggering sum of money lying in wait for the last survivor of the tontine.   

The Wrong Box takes its time to get this premise off the ground, but its third act is a slam-bang finish, interpolated by queer departures into unabashed slapstick, and, culminating in an all-out brawl at a cemetery. The picture’s faux Victoriana setting gets marginalized by a veneer of transparently ‘swingin’ sixties social commentary, and, some interminably inserted ‘title cards’ to preface each sequence. Nevertheless, it holds together – enough to convince us we are dealing with a bunch of loose screws from the turn of the century. But The Wrong Box’s roller coaster ride gets erratically derailed by its nauseatingly overwrought romantic subplot, involving Caine’s Michael Finsbury, Masterman’s grandson, and his neighbor, Julia Finsbury (Nannette Newman), momentarily mistaken as his first cousin. Actually, Julia is Joseph’s ward. The joys to be gleaned from The Wrong Box are somewhat dampened by these artistic misfires, also; an extended prologue that lumbers through a series of stage-bound tableau. After introducing us to a roomful of impressionable boys whose enterprising fathers have entered them in the tontine lottery for a fabulous sum, director Forbes wastes no time dispatching with the bulk of its participants in a montage of mishaps that befall each in the full flourish of his manhood: Brian Allen Harvey (Jeremy Lloyd) felled by canon fire, Sidney Witcombe Sykes (James Villiers) mauled to death by his pet falcon, Ian Scott Fife (Graham Stark) taking a frozen tumble off the Matterhorn, Leicester Young Fielding (Dick Gregory) struck in the noggin by a battleship-christening bottle of champagne, Alan Fraser Scrope (Nicholas Parsons), shot through the throat by an arrow during a campaign in India, James White Wragg (Willoughby Goddard) buried under the rubble of a collapsed mine, Oliver Pike Harmsworth (Valentine Dyall) trampled under the hooves of a charging rhino, Vyvyan Alistair Montague (Leonard Rossiter) deliberately executed by a pair of duelists at dawn, and finally, wheel-chair-bound Derek Lloyd Peter Digby (Hamilton Dyce), pushed down a steep slope by his impatiently wicked son (Michael Lees).  

This leaves Masterman and Joseph as the only surviving heirs to this fabulous fortune; each, unable to claim it until the other dies. As Masterman is presently ailing and attended by Michael, a woefully inept medical student, he plans to lure Joseph to his bedside, and then, murder him so Michael can inherit the tontine. Meanwhile, Joseph – an annoying know-it-all in excellent health, is being watched over by his two greedy nephews, Morris and John. Summoned to London by Masterman, this trio depart Bournemouth on a train; Joseph, momentarily eluding his nephews to duck into another compartment and bore a strange, hunchbacked fellow (Tutte Lemkow) with his addlepated pontificating. As it turns out, the stranger is the Bournemouth Strangler, wanted for a series of gruesome murders in the countryside. But as fate would have it, Joseph departs the compartment unharmed for a cigarette, leaving his coat behind. The coat is donned by the strangler at precisely the moment the train is struck by another in a head-on collision. In the hellish derailment and aftermath, the Strangler is killed and Joseph hails a nearby carriage to London, leaving Morris and John, who discover the Strangler’s badly brutalized remains wearing Joseph’s coat, to suspect their uncle – and last chance at the tontine – has died. Determined no one should know this, the boys abscond with the mutilated remains and superficially bury them in a nearby wooded glen.  Morris plots to bide their time until Masterman’s certain death; then, claim Joseph died of a broken heart upon learning the news of Joseph’s death.  Now, the pair quietly ship the strangler’s corpse to their London home in a barrel. Concurrently, a shipping error results in a crate destined for Masterman’s home, containing a benign statue, to instead be sent to Morris’ flat; the strangler’s body arriving at Masterman’s and inadvertently discovered by Michael and the family’s devoted – but dotty – butler, Peacock (Wilfred Lawson).

Suspecting Masterman has succeeded in murdering Joseph on his behalf, Michael conspires with Peacock to spare his uncle from going to prison; first, by concealing the body in a piano (almost discovered by his paramour, Julia, who offers to play for him, but is promptly escorted out of the house) and then, hiring a pair of spurious grave diggers to quietly remove the body under the cover of night, to be ‘disposed of’ without anyone’s knowing. Alas, awakened in the dead of night by these undertakers, Masterman blindly takes a tumble down the stairs; his unconscious body mistaken for the corpse and promptly removed from the house without Michael’s knowledge. This is witnessed by Morris who, still believing it to be Joseph, now furthers his prospects of ruining Michael’s chances to claim the tontine by suggesting to the police that he might be a murderer. Morris also goes ahead with his plans to offer a forged death certificate to the solicitor in charge of the tontine winnings. Again, as fate and irony would have it, Masterman – still very much alive – is dumped in the Thames, but fished out by Major Martha (Cicely Courtneidge) and her stoic troop of Salvation Army workers.

Additional misapprehensions impinge on Morris’ endeavor to possess the tontine winnings as Michael, still unaware the strangler’s body is exactly where he left it – in the piano – is sold (the body discovered), thus, drawing the undue attentions of a Scotland Yard Detective (Tony Hancock). Mistakenly, Morris has a coffin delivered to Masterman’s home; the newly restored, but sleeping Masterman, placed inside it. Mercifully, he awakens just in time to reveal Morris’ fraud. Meanwhile, Lawyer Patience (Thorley Walters) has arrived to present the tontine to Morris and John. As Joseph suddenly resurfaces, thereby revealing to all he is still very much alive – as is his brother – Patience tries to take back the winnings. Instead, Morris and John make off with their loot in the back of a horse-drawn hearse; the pair, leading everyone on a spirited jaunt through the countryside en route to the cemetery. Along the way, the runaway hearse is momentarily concealed in a real funeral procession; the hearses, after an accident, switched – Morris and John, inheriting the body destined for burial and the tontine about to be sent to the great beyond. Fortunately, the whole convoluted affair is interrupted by Masterman, seemingly restored to vigor – and outrage – and wrestling his bewildered brother to the ground. Morris and John also engage in a tussle, leaving Michael and Julia to stroll off together, very much in love and, arguably, destined for better than this.

The Wrong Box desperately wants to be the sort of English farce-laden charmer one best recalls from the mid-forties in British cinema; a sort of Agatha Christie meets Monty Python, with a hint of the Keystone Cops thrown in for good measure. However, the intuitive satire inbred in Brit-wit is occasionally at odds with director, Forbes’ flights into ‘Three Stooges-styled’ slapstick. And the periodic – and repeatedly thwarted – quixotic pas deux between Caine’s foppish med’ student and the naïve and impressionable, Julia really bring the breakneck pace of these proceedings to a screeching halt. It isn’t all for not, as this top-heavy cast of luminaries does its level best to make the host of sins – if not forgivable – than palpable, even when the comedy begins to creek or the undertone of seriousness teeters into the morbidly ill and oblique. The Wrong Box may not be a perfect comedy, or even in the top 50 surveyed ‘best’ of its ilk and generation. Nevertheless, there is a good deal here to admire. John Barry’s lush orchestral underscore is superb, and, Gerry Turpin’s cinematography, capable of capturing all the lushness and squalor of ancient Victoriana in tandem, considerably elevate the tone of the piece, as do Julie Harris’ gorgeous costumes (save, Ralph Richardson’s ensemble. Mr. Richardson agreed to do the film, but only if he could wear the same outfit from the movie, he had just finished shooting – Doctor Zhivago!). In the last analysis, The Wrong Box has an A-list cast and production values to recommend it, marred by a B-grade screenplay that can never entirely make up its mind what sort of movie this should be.

The Wrong Box arrives on Blu-ray via British label, Powerhouse/Indicator, with a hi-def 1080p transfer provided by Sony Pictures (custodians of the Columbia catalog). The results are mostly impressive with minor caveats to be discussed. The pluses: a palette of exceptionally rich and vibrant colors and some exemplary fine details revealed in skin, hair and background information. Intermittently, the image can look just a tad ‘harsh’, as though untoward DNR and edge sharpening have been applied to crisp up the visuals. It isn’t egregious, but it does tend to suggest a more artificial look than necessary. As a result, film grain veers toward the gritty rather than appearing indigenous to its source. Again, these are extremely minor imperfections. An occasional speckle of dirt or minute age-related damage flashes across the screen too, but nothing to distract from this overall solid visual presentation. The original mono audio has been preserved in DTS and sounds wonderful – if limited by the characteristics of the original recording. As with all Indicator releases, this one is sweetened by some well-placed extra features: a fairly comprehensive audio commentary by Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt, and, Nannette Newman affectionately chatting about her participation on the film. At 21 min., this featurette is the most in-depth extra of the lot. We also get 10 min. with assistant editor, Willy Kemplen and 11 min. with second assistant, Hugh Harlow.  Finally, I am really loving Indicator’s commitment to their booklets; herein, 36 glossy pages, teeming with vintage art, stills, and informative essays by Louis Barfe, Bryan Forbes and Michael Caine, as well as excerpts from Robert Louis Stevenson’s source novel. This offering is very nicely put together. For fans of The Wrong Box, this Blu-ray comes very highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

5+