Since it seems like this month is “ID this movie” month, I wish to add 2 more to the mix that have been bugging me for awhile.
Having wailed thru hundreds of movies on YouTube over the past few years (some good, some fair, some meh), a few months back I finally started cataloging the ones I’ve seen (so I don’t waste time looking them up again - YouTube doesn’t always put the “Fool, you saw this” red bar on the thumbnail for me). Tracked down pretty much all of them, even the more obscure ones, but annoyingly I know I watched 2 films years back that I don’t recall the names of.
Normally I like most others find the titles of by searching key words and phrases (e.g., a movie I once watched on TV in the 1980s while doing homework for college so not paying full attention, but I did recall a) the protagonist driving thru an abandoned city scape and b) a director researching on his computer and finding there was less than a month’s work of food stocks left in North America, and that was enough to get me to 1977’s “Deadly Harvest”. However, my search terms of the two movies in question were likely too vague for a good match, since I didn’t get any.
Enough waffling, let’s begin…
Both movies are set in the UK in then-contemporary times (likely 1970s-1980s). Neither are part of any series like On The Buses or Carry On (an aside - the UK film industry seemed to crank out a lot of movies based on ‘Brit-coms’ of the era like On The Buses, Man About The House, Are You Being Served, The Likely Lads, etc. Apparently this was related to tax reasons.
First film is a ‘school class goes to holiday camp’ comedy; it starts off with an exterior shot of a working class neighborhood school, we meet a youngish, somewhat idealistic teacher who ends up talking his entire class into going to the camp. There is an obligatory love interest with a fellow teacher I think, as well as a female student into him. There is some nonsense with a father not wanting to send his kid to camp leading to forged permission slips, and also a kid gets left behind when the bus makes a stop on the motorway, only to get picked up by a sexy woman in a convertible (IIRC). The usual generic camp shenanigans then follow, ones silly, but less silly than Meatballs and FAR LESS SILLY than Meatballs Part II. (Alien campers? Really?). I think there was an happy ending of some sort.
Next up is a police crime drama, set in a UK city with a canal (that should narrow it down…). To make it simple: cop on edge of retirement want to solve a cold case disappearance of a young woman, Supervisor tells him to forget it but of course the cop doesn’t and interviews a number of her (now adult) friends, school-mates, and relatives to various effect, there’s some investigating at the canal which is lined by terraced housing, a bicycle is hidden/thrown over a wall or bush. Toward the end there’s to be a ceremony (retirement? I forget but since it’s not American the cop survives to his retirement) somebody comes to the ceremony with a broken arm or leg, and (spoiler for an decades old film) the cop’s supervisor gets busted as the culprit.
For those who’s Google-Fu/IMDB-Fu are high and so can find and relay the movie names I will say…thank you, I kept turning up nothing great.
Mr. Hedges, the somewhat naive and idealistic teacher of the rebellious Class 5C of Fenn Street School lobbies to have his class allowed on the annual school camping trip despite opposition from the head teacher Mr. Cromwell, the fastidious and officious school caretaker Mr. Potter, snobbish teacher Miss Ewell and the world-weary Mr. Price. Eventually (with Mr. Hedges having won the hearts and minds of Mr. Cromwell and Miss Ewell with a speech about giving Class 5C a helping hand with the benefits of the trip to the countryside) Class 5C get to go on the trip - providing Mr. Hedges comes along to supervise his unruly class.
Second one is Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective, A film starring Bernard Cribbens. Not to be confused with the TV series starring Peter Davison, although they were both based on the same book.
The first story had him drifting into the years-old unsolved case of the disappearance of Celia Norris, a local girl with a dark side. With his friend, the perpetually unemployed and well-read Mod Lewis (he spends all his time at the library to save on heating) he tracks down the culprit, collecting plenty of cuts, bumps and bruises along the way at the hands of the local thugs. At one point he is “binned” — an empty dustbin is placed over his head, pinning his arms, and the outside is then hit with pickaxe handles. He also is the object of attention of Josie Norris, Celia’s sister born after Celia disappeared. Josie is in her early teens, ready to rebel against her over-protective mother and test her budding sexuality with Davies. The case breaks when Davies finds a confession, sent by registered mail to establish its origins, and unopened since it was sent, that implicates a prominent local figure.
Very Good, those are indeed the movies. A quick review thru the ‘Last Detective’ showed a number of other scenes I had forgotten (like them busting up the greenhouse with the trap door in that covers the victim’s skeleton). Completely forgot the names, now I can add them to the list.
Thanks for the quick response (which is a true hallmark of SDMB Cafe Society).
Wait, so Please, Sir was yet another UK feature movie cloned from a Brit-Com? They couldn’t help themselves back then, could they?
No, they couldn’t. Without wracking my brains I remember movie vehicles for Morecombe and Wise [slightly different in that they had a brilliant comedy variety show], Are You Being Served and Dad’s Army. Doubtless there were many others, but they were the shows I followed.
The other way they capitalised on success was to have the cast transfer to Australia on some complex premise and essentially regurgitate old scripts with Australian actor walk-ons.
There is a definite limit to how many videos YouTube remembers that you’ve watched. Also, if you happen to restart one you’ve already watched but quit after a short time, that reduces the red bar to a tiny sliver you might easily miss. I solved this issue by creating “I’ve watched this” playlists, There’s a max limit of 5000 items in a playlist. I’ve filled up three and now working on my 4th since I got systematic about YouTube back in 2017.
I also keep playlists for a quarter watched, half watched, three quarters etc. Frequently even if it still has the red bar, it doesn’t work properly. It will start the video from the beginning and then YouTube forgets what your red bar used to be.
Your description of Please Sir! struck a memory with me, but I couldn’t think of the title. I was going to suggest you do a search for “the guy from No, Honestly,” whose name I couldn’t remember either.
After some Googling of my own, I see I was right on both counts. The actor is John Alderton, and he was the lead in both.
Wasn’t there also a series called Bul, about a retired detective who lived on a canal boat?
