Midweek Mention... The Bulldog Breed

The Bulldog Breed

Dan: I think the computer screen on kind of

Sidey: Watching your pornography on?

Dan: yeah, I'm forced to look at for hours each day

Sidey: Have you noticed I'm increasingly leaving more controversial stuff in at the start of the

reegs: of the

Dan: Well, I I've noticed people are increasingly leaving more more shit in the man cave every time I leave there this board game Just appeared over the weekend No, no, not accusing just finding

Sidey: Four hams!

reegs: is that? Quattro Gammon? What is Quattro Gammon?

Dan: is

reegs: Wow, look at that

Sidey: Okay, Susie should we do this?

reegs: Yeah, let's

Sidey: Grimsdale. Yeah, a bit of left field choice for this week's

midweek mention. It's a Norman Wisdom film. First of many, I hope.

1960.

Dan: British entertainer.

Sidey: 1960.

Yeah. And then when we get into the the main episode, we've got statues and he was the inspiration for that

Dan: that as well.

Sidey: because he has a statue in.

reegs: like that. Yeah, well, he was very popular in Albania, Iran, South America, you know, places that were oppressive regimes.

Sidey: very popular

reegs: popular there,

Dan: But it was one of those kind of entertainers that showed England in a positive light out to a mass audience.

You know, it's family kind of

Sidey: from a different era.

Let's just say that from the get go. This was the bulldog breed

Dan: Yeah,

Sidey: I have a nostalgic connection with this because I had it. We had it at home in my house on a VHS and I've watched it probably 20 plus times when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah. So this was first time revisiting it for oh I don't know 30 years or something like that.

I'm guessing this is your first time.

reegs: Yes, this was. And do you like Slapstick? And because it's some of my least favourite humour, this,

Sidey: I don't know if you were being completely honest, but you did put some of your cards on the table in a whatsapp message. Yeah. And so. I don't know if that added to my enjoyment of watching this, because that was before I had re watched it.

reegs: it. I don't know if I can summon the strength of fury that I had when I finished watching this. But I'll

Sidey: very breezy kind of like 80 minutes or something like that. And it starts off,

reegs: hmm.

Sidey: I think it starts off with, is it like a bit of stop motion kind of claymation

Dan: And it is also worth just reading a bit of the cast list for

Sidey: Well, we'll get into it because they're uncredited. They're uncredited. I think I know what you

reegs: this, I spotted it, and then I looked it up

Sidey: I spotted, I only spotted one of them

reegs: yeah, Michael Caine,

Sidey: No, I spotted Oliver

reegs: Alright, okay, they're in the same scene,

Dan: Well, John LeMessurier is in it

Sidey: Yeah, I knew he was in it.

reegs: So, yeah, it does start with the sort of stop motion animation bit, he slides down, there's a bulldog and all

Sidey: with the credits as they appear on the screen.

reegs: I quite like this bit.

Sidey: Yeah, it's pretty good.

reegs: And then we're introduced to Norman Pockle. He's operating Dalton's delivery service. He's like bringing household goods, boat to boat.

Sidey: to boat. I looked it up, it was a slightly different name,

reegs: it up.

It was a slightly different name, but I, I was definitely not interested

Dan: I wasn't definitely not interested.

You

Sidey: the same character. Down about Mr. Grimmsdale, but they don't have

Dan: have that. In this one, he's, yeah, you're

Sidey: In this one, he's, yeah, you're right, he's going around on a little, like, laser class, little yachting thing with some very basic supplies, going boat to boat. He becomes a bit of a sex pest with a guy and I think he's having an affair with a young lady in a bikini.

Yeah. And he pervs at them. Yeah. Like, right up close and personal. Yeah, yeah. He points out where he hasn't kissed her yet.

reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Which doesn't go down well.

Dan: No.

Sidey: And the lady says that the only thing she wants from him is that he has a box of chocolates. And he says, I can't sell you the chocolates

reegs: you the

Sidey: Yeah, Marlene.

Dan: And Well, he he's

a he's a kind of grocers assistant, isn't he in

reegs: isn't he, in this? Well, I think he does, except to He's

Sidey: has a big set too with the Royal Navy.

gets into the shipping lanes. And they are sending whatever signal it is to say, Get out the fucking way, because we're talking about,

I don't know,

destroyer,

Dan: destroyer, yeah, yeah

Sidey: And he's in the way of them and he keeps

reegs: got the right of way.

Sidey: sail before steam, which apparently is, seems to be true from the, from the film.

It seems they begrudgingly accept but they sort of power away in a way that creates enough swell to capsize his boat. So by the time he gets the flowers and sorry, the chocolates to Marlene, they're all

reegs: Marlene, They're

Sidey: her

And,

reegs: And is this where she says to him, he says, Oh, I might as well kill myself. And she says,

Sidey: no. First of all, there's a bunch of teddy boys.

reegs: Oh yeah. This is for the rockers and the semen.

Sidey: He's, yeah, he's being a pest. And one of the teddy boy dudes just goes, pushes straight to the front and says, the lady said to leave.

And he doesn't get the message, so they rough him up. They give him a shooing on the floor, De Niro style. And it's at this point that the three naval officers

reegs: which is very obviously Michael Caine He

Sidey: See, I didn't clock him at all, but I did get Oliver Reed

Dan: Reed He was a sailor,

reegs: Yeah, he was a

Dan: And,

Sidey: And that's the only time they'd ever appeared a

It's the only time they've ever appeared on screen together in this.

Dan: Wow.

reegs: there's a bit of a scuffle, anyway And then after that, he says he's gonna kill himself And she said, oh, you couldn't even do that, right And she's correct about that as we see a little montage of him

Sidey: Hilariously trying

reegs: Top himself.

He, he tries to hang himself and he pulls through this like light fitting from the ceiling above. He tries to drown himself this bit. I did actually like on the speed boat. It looks really dangerous as he's got, he throws his anchor into the back of a passing boat. And And he gets pulled along by his leg in a stunt that they obviously actually did with the, with the steamboat.

That was definitely the high point of the movie. And then he goes to lover's leap.

Sidey: gonna do Geoffrey's leap, yeah.

reegs: And he's going to throw himself off there. He's just about to do it and he's saved by a passing naval captain. Because they hang out at notorious suicide spots, I

suppose, to to

Dan: I suppose. crew.

reegs: for the Navy.

And he convinces him, basically through the power of

Sidey: You're going to fuck loads of women. You're

reegs: fuck loads of women from everywhere. That's basically what he says.

Sidey: And it goes to kind of a soundtracky thing and we can just see them miming and he's talking about

reegs: it's a load of God. I put a load of God awful physical comedy while the Hawaiian music plays.

Sidey: Yes, so they're specifically talking about Hawaii slash Polynesia, and he's doing the hula dance and all that sort of stuff, which may

reegs: may, may be important. Who knows? So that's it. He's after the Navy. Meanwhile we've got some important military types sat somewhere discussing who should be the test pilot for their new rocket program.

And also when Puckle gets on board, the sort of captain who smooth talked him about all the girls and that greets him and he's an absolute stickler for the rules straight away

Sidey: straight away. Yeah.

reegs: So he fucks things up straight away by saying boat, not ship, and downstairs not below

Sidey: not below

reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: his like fuck ups escalate till he basically has everyone go overboard.

reegs: He, yeah, he calls man overboard on himself having fallen overboard and then has the entire crew jump off looking

Sidey: looking

reegs: Which sounds funnier than it

Sidey: than it is. He triggers the anti aircraft gun

reegs: Which fire for preposterously

Sidey: Yeah, which fire for preposterously

reegs: Anyway. Oh, there's some sort of, he ends up in like doing some sort of like WWE type maneuver to throw some guy over.

Sidey: Well, he just, he seems to get excited about people. I'm starting to

reegs: at this now. That's

Sidey: He seems to enjoy the fact that people are going overboard. So he escalates it by people who are then looking at, on the railings, at the people who've gone overboard. By them either unchaining the railings so they fall in, or then just flat out pushing them in.

And the last guy is the

admin.

guy in the suit.

reegs: That's what I'm saying. And he fucking

Sidey: him. Yeah, he does it like a It's more of a judo move, like he falls and kicks him over and the guy just fucking goes somersaulting into the water and he's well pleased with himself about all that.

reegs: Yeah. Look, I, I'm smiling now as we're talking about this, but I promise you I wasn't at the time.

That's not fair.

Sidey: I was loving it, I honestly was genuinely loving it.

reegs: Yeah.

Dan: was genuinely loving

Sidey: In Bergerac. Bergerac

Dan: and he was in this as well and Norman. I know. Yeah. So, so Norman Wisdom always congratulated him for being able to keep a straight face and then he goes the reason is because I didn't find it. It's all fucking funny.

Sidey: find it at all fucking funny.

So much like

Dan: What was I supposed to say

reegs: All right, okay, great. I'm on the right side of this is then what you're saying.

Dan: about him as well? Yeah,

reegs: So anyway, all of their leave gets cancelled in the wake of all this fucking j Hi I was gonna say hijinks, I think it's just jinx.

Sidey: Low jinx.

Yeah, because he

Dan: hijinx, I

Sidey: He keeps fucking up and he's pissing everyone off, and he kinda doesn't take responsibility.

And

reegs: training is going about as well as you'd expect, we've got some fucking more jinx with some vaulting and stuff, with, like, he ends up, like, in the rafters, and sliding through a bunch of people,

Sidey: great sound effects and stuff

Dan: Do, do you, do you think that these type of oldie type

reegs: No, I don't.

Dan: Suffer more because they're comedy than maybe dramas of the similar age or even musicals and things just because our humor is evolved so much to these

reegs: still think there is a bit of humour like this, although it

it is, you know, because I was thinking about, it's not a million miles away the physical comedy from Jim Carrey and stuff like that, but this is way more slapstick and

Sidey: Yeah, I mean, things evolve.

I mean, this is, you know, this is fucking

Dan: This is bad. You just struggle to realize how many people would laugh at this and even

reegs: you what, it made me think how much Lee Evans is based, not only his look, but like everything about him off of Norman Wisdom watching this.

Dan: not the most compared

reegs: But I actually quite liked Lee Evans sometimes, so yeah,

Dan: he's been brilliant sometimes,

Sidey: what's happening is the All the while that all this jinx is happening, and they're fucking everyone off, and they are, it's a bit of a bit like Full Metal Jacket at this point, because What a bit violent, mate. I hate they were gonna club him. Because they, they hate him, because they've had, now it's been escalated to three weeks of cancelled leave.

So they hate him, they won't share a birthday cake with him, they graffiti on all his pictures, and just generally mean to him.

there's

a conversation going on with the test thing that's, that's being not, we haven't been fully disclosed what exactly they're talking about, but they're looking for a recruit, a recruit.

And they want

reegs: The most

Sidey: best, not the best recruit. They're looking for the most average, but they end up picking the latest

reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: which is

reegs: Intrepid

Dan: be Norman Puckle,

Sidey: yeah. And so he is selected for this special mission and

reegs: And it makes them favour the, the platoon as well. So they welcome him back with open arms when he

Sidey: by smashing his head into the ceiling three times. Yeah. Yeah. And it turns out that what the special mission is is a test flight.

reegs: Oh great, we're skipping past the diving, thank god for that. Oh

my

Sidey: because it's a great bit of anime. Yeah, some of the training he has to go in a diving belt.

Dan: Which is probably one of the funniest bits of the film.

When he's actually

Sidey: It's consistently funny throughout, but this is up there. Because he is a small sort of dude, very slight. And it's the old school diving belt, you know, with lead

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Sidey: yeah. struggles to get across and then they put him in the water and he doesn't, he hasn't, he's cheated in the training by not, he's got the book there and he's making a, you know, a big show of knowing all the answers but in fact he doesn't fucking know what he's doing.

So when he gets put in, he doesn't know how to blow off lol. And so his suit hilariously inflates like a balloon and then it fires off and you get this really crudely animated thing of him like skirting along the water.

reegs: the water.

Dan: yeah, you're well into this

Sidey: Yeah, so that happens. And yeah, we do find out that this is a test flight. It's a rocket y type thing.

reegs: Well, because Naval Command learned there's some there's competition to put a man into orbit, don't

Sidey: It's so like First Man,

reegs: The Russians? Even worse than that, the Army, is what he says. Very good. So there's a race on, which, but you know, ticking clock element.

I'm just going to choose to ignore that comparison to that, to that movie.

Sidey: He

reegs: the admiral asks to see Puckle's progress report, and he says blank. There's like literally no progress at

Sidey: report. He gets one last trip to redeem himself

reegs: he gets one last trip to redeem himself, which is to climb a mountain, which is supposed to be in the UK somewhere, but I don't know, yeah. And it obviously this goes spectacularly well, and they don't cause avalanches and all sorts of shit.

So, should we just, oh, well, when he comes back from that he's court martialed for gross negligence,

Sidey: yeah. I know, it seems like remiss of them not to have done this earlier. Yeah. I mean, after he kicked everyone off the boat, I thought he would have been dishonorably discharged for that, alone. Anyway. Yeah,

reegs: Yeah, but it takes setting fire to your, you know, co captain, your captain, and sending him off a cliff and stuff to get you done, but he does get done, and then there's some big, I really tuned out of this bit where, Tell me, tell me why he was redeemed by the court, because I,

Sidey: the plot needed it to

reegs: I know, he says he lays his heart out to them, and

Dan: Said sorry and

reegs: Basically, he's like, oh, I didn't do him, but he's not he didn't do on purpose.

He's just a bit useless

Sidey: I think they've had no one else, so they're just gonna plot along with it.

reegs: well but they don't know they decide to give the rocket trip to Carruthers or whatever the prick with the glasses. Don't they? Yeah, hold on to that thought

and

Because he ends up right We just skip straight to the end bit, basically, where he's off on, he's given one last job, which is to look after the bulldog, hence the, the, the mascot is called Bosun, because it's also the code word for the thing. And uh, so he has to walk the dog, the titular bulldog, and eventually he's accosted by this girl who's just such a slut for him, takes him out to the woods, basically rapes him in the woods.

He's just about to get jiggy with it, and then the dog runs off, chasing a rabbit. And it takes him into where the launch thing is for the rocket where Carruthers is, who's accidentally got himself locked in the maintenance cupboard. Glasses, glasses,

Sidey: There's just incompetence everywhere you look. Yeah,

reegs: So, Norman Wisdom Puckle sneaks on board the spaceship that was there and ends up being accelerated.

Dan: far away from the woods. Yeah.

reegs: straight away. Basically, he gives the code word, which is coincidentally the name of the, the dog, Boson.

Sidey: really,

reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: ill conceived.

reegs: And so they send him

Dan: he's in the space and he sees the,

reegs: we get some good, another bit of good special effects there.

Dan: you can actually see the lines of the equator on the globe. Can't you? Such as the special effects as if it was a blow up globe.

reegs: Could have been.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's, it's, it's obviously a strong you know, in Albania right now.

reegs: Yeah, it's off the charts, yeah,

Dan: This is still number one. I mean, this is right up there. And, and although, you know, the formula of any normal wisdom film is, you know, useless, lowly kind of clerk or, or assistant finds girl, gets dropped by girl, gets girl.

Lots

Sidey: girls. He gets girls in this because what happens is he goes into outer space and fucks about and kind of by complete chance, you know, brings it back, but crash lands. Guess where? It's where the guy was doing all the hula dancing

reegs: Hula dancing,

Sidey: and now he's going to fuck a load of the locals.

Dan: he's a, he's an

reegs: to go off and rape her after the, during the credits, I guess. Yeah.

Dan: that's where your mind takes you on any Norman Wisdom film, I guess. And this is no different.

Sidey: Oh,

I enjoyed this as much this time as genuinely when

Dan: first watched it. Partly

Sidey: because, Riggs had told us exactly what he thought of this film already. And so when I was watching it back, I think there was an element of me enjoying it on like a trolling level. And also, the missus was watching with me and it took about 10 minutes to say this film is f ing s But I do, you know, it's one of those where I have a connection to it from when I was a kid and I was watching it and enjoying it.

And so I still, still enjoyed it.

Dan: going to

reegs: going to say it's not my style of humor. There is plenty of, you know, you were saying before about comedy from the same sort of time period. I'm going to say Dr. Strangelove,

Dan: love, right?

reegs: a really funny movie with a lot of physical comedy,

Sidey: that's just a different kind, that's a

reegs: I know. So, but this, it's not like I would rule out any comedy from the

Dan: from the 60s. Well, I'll be interested to know what we choose next from the 60s. Or this kind of, you know, early genre of cinema.

Because I think there are better comedies around.

Sidey: Not than this.

Dan: can't think of any off the top of my head either, but there's some really good quality tv So i'm always pleased to to kind of dredge these up and go over them again

reegs: What I think is a bit of a shame is that a lot of people, apart from the regular listeners who, who listen into this, anybody else who stumbles upon this is probably a fan of Norman Wisdom. That's why they're listening to the podcast. So they're going to listen. I'm sorry about that.

Sidey: Well, no, I'm, 'cause I'm, it's just you. You are the naser, which you're entitled to be.

Dan: We're

reegs: No, but the people who are listening, you know, they're going, Oh, you pretty

Dan: I imagine they're part Albanian, if they do like him, and he is, for some reason, just massive there.

I remember whenever England played Albania in a World Cup or something, they would always, you know, there's

Sidey: Oh, they'd always go to

Dan: him there. That's it, you know,

reegs: I think this is, like, I think he makes Mr. Bean look subtle.

Sidey: Well, you could see the you

reegs: like, you fucking despise

Sidey: Mr. I know. I do really, really hate it. I'm like, I know

reegs: about this.

Sidey: I know. Yeah. Isn't that ironic,

Dan: Yeah, he's the old time black and white bean. Go and check him out if

reegs: like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy and all that stuff is, I know you're citing classics, but the few things I've seen are, like, much funnier

Sidey: No way

Dan: Harold Lloyd, he's

Sidey: Harold Shipman.

Dan: Yeah. Oof.