… and the hero learns that to eat on the diner he has to slide the dish to the left to use the knife, cut and then slide the dish to the right to use the fork?
(The length of the chains was too short to use both the fork and the knife at the same time, the regular customers did not mind the effort)
It is bugging me because this thread:
Turned to the proper or un-proper use of forks. And then my brain unearthed that funny scene, but it failed on summoning the title, [shakes [del]recorder[/del] head] maybe one of those Disney live comedy movies of the 70’s.
I also wonder if any restaurants or diners in the past had the cutlery chained like that (to prevent theft?), of course I assume that it was chained with the proper amount of tiny links to reach a comfortable length for the customers.
Not quite the same thing, but I’m picturing a movie where the people at the table are chained together at the wrist, so they have to cooperate to eat, moving back and forth.
I’m pretty sure the central actor was Peter Sellers and I remember the casual attitude of the regular diners in sliding their plates left-and-right to alternate use of the cutlery.
Memory stirring… I think you are correct on the giant chimpanzee, now that you mention that, IIRC the movie was about a giant dog that turned that way because of a chemical formula, the chimp becoming giant was the punchline of the movie. And it was a happy ending with the dog back to normal size.
With that kind of plot, I still think it was a Disney production. I’m still getting a blank for the movie title.
This featured in a sketch in Not Only But Also, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore … the skit has Cook, as a French travel writer, doing a spoof guide to travel on the English motorways. At one point, he’s eating like this in a motorway cafe (“Cafe Fred”).
Iconic Sixties comedy show, now mostly wiped … this particular sketch was in black and white, though the series went colour in its later years … could this be what you’re thinking of? There was no giant chimpanzee, though. At least, not in that particular scene.
I remember it was a young guy in a restaurant (The young scientist paused on a dinner on the way to get the antidote to the dog that was on the run in middle America?), and the scene was in color, so I don’t think it was Not Only But Also. It is most likely that the B movie of the 70’s I’m thinking about just swiped a classic sketch.
Googling for ‘movie plot dog chimpanzee chemical’ brings some IMDB user comments about a movie called ‘Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World’. There is a mention of a chimp at the end.
Does this fit?
Actually, the point of the scene was that the guy was in a pretty tough bar/diner and that the theft of silverware was rampant. I don’t think that the matter of cleanliness was a thought of the owners of the place, only that they didn’t have to keep replacing the silverware all the time. Nor do I think that any such place would pass a health inspection, so I’d say that the odds of it having any basis in reality are exactly nil.
Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas used to have the knives chained to the tables. I’d assume that it was done to prevent theft and to keep the knives at the table.
Great! I was looking for this. The restaurant is “Good Companions CAFE”, The scene starts in 40:28.
[Digby, The Biggest Dog in the World] - I’ve watched this movie plenty of times!
Just found about this bump. I must say that it generates other questions, like: Why did the British movie company had to go to Holland to get to film that bit? And also: was it ever that way with the chained cutlery in that restaurant? Most likely that it was just exterior shots, and the crazy fork and knife scene was shot in a studio in Britain.
