Whisky Galore!
Original post date: 21 March 2019
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
This is the comedy that made the UK’s Ealing Studios an international success. Other classics like Passport to Pimlico and Kind Hearts and Coronets would follow quickly the same year, 1949. The film’s fortunes, however, nearly foundered like the ill-fated ship transporting the titular spirits. It was the first film of Boston-born Scottish filmmaker Alexander Mackendrick, and his insistence on filming on location in the storm-lashed Outer Hebrides nearly proved disastrous. Because of a US ban on mentioning alcoholic drinks in titles, the film was initially dubbed stateside (as was the source novel by Compton MacKenzie) Tight Little Island. (James Thurber suggested an even better one: Scotch on the Rocks.) Loosely based on an actual incident, the film recounts how the residents of the island of Todday, under war rationing, become ever more desperate for their customary dram of whiskey. Their prayers are answered when a cargo ship, bound for Jamaica with 50,000 cases of scotch, runs aground nearby. The only things lying between these Calvinists and their desperately desired water of life are the Sabbath and the local no-nonsense, by-the-book English Home Guard captain. Genre-wise this falls squarely into the category of delightful films about quaint remote villages filled with quirky and endearing characters, who come together to pull off a caper. It is thus a forerunner to such flicks as The Quiet Man, Local Hero and Waking Ned Devine. The large cast are entertaining and convincing, including Basil Radford as pompous Capt. Waggett. Sadly, he would die just three years later of a heart attack at the age of 55. Helmer Mackendrick would go on to make more Ealing comedies (The Man in the White Suit; The Maggie, aka High and Dry; The Ladykillers), as well as The Sweet Smell of Success (with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis); the African adventure Sammy Going South, aka A Boy Ten Feet Tall (with Edward G. Robinson); the pirate adventure A High Wind in Jamaica (with Anthony Quinn and James Coburn); and the California beach comedy Don’t Make Waves (with Curtis and Claudia Cardinale).
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
This is the comedy that made the UK’s Ealing Studios an international success. Other classics like Passport to Pimlico and Kind Hearts and Coronets would follow quickly the same year, 1949. The film’s fortunes, however, nearly foundered like the ill-fated ship transporting the titular spirits. It was the first film of Boston-born Scottish filmmaker Alexander Mackendrick, and his insistence on filming on location in the storm-lashed Outer Hebrides nearly proved disastrous. Because of a US ban on mentioning alcoholic drinks in titles, the film was initially dubbed stateside (as was the source novel by Compton MacKenzie) Tight Little Island. (James Thurber suggested an even better one: Scotch on the Rocks.) Loosely based on an actual incident, the film recounts how the residents of the island of Todday, under war rationing, become ever more desperate for their customary dram of whiskey. Their prayers are answered when a cargo ship, bound for Jamaica with 50,000 cases of scotch, runs aground nearby. The only things lying between these Calvinists and their desperately desired water of life are the Sabbath and the local no-nonsense, by-the-book English Home Guard captain. Genre-wise this falls squarely into the category of delightful films about quaint remote villages filled with quirky and endearing characters, who come together to pull off a caper. It is thus a forerunner to such flicks as The Quiet Man, Local Hero and Waking Ned Devine. The large cast are entertaining and convincing, including Basil Radford as pompous Capt. Waggett. Sadly, he would die just three years later of a heart attack at the age of 55. Helmer Mackendrick would go on to make more Ealing comedies (The Man in the White Suit; The Maggie, aka High and Dry; The Ladykillers), as well as The Sweet Smell of Success (with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis); the African adventure Sammy Going South, aka A Boy Ten Feet Tall (with Edward G. Robinson); the pirate adventure A High Wind in Jamaica (with Anthony Quinn and James Coburn); and the California beach comedy Don’t Make Waves (with Curtis and Claudia Cardinale).
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