Down Among the Z Men (1952) User Reviews

DOWN AMONG THE Z MEN (Maclean Rogers, 1952) **

[Bunuel1976 · 4/10 · 22 December 2007]

This independently-produced British army comedy is chiefly notable now as Peter Sellers' film debut and for being the only starring screen vehicle for comic radio performers The Goons (of which Sellers himself was a member). Actually, it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated – given the unenthusiastic reviews online (chiefly because it's said that their material has been heavily diluted in the transition); still, it's not helped by the dated TV-style technique on display.

Curiously enough, the laughs come mostly from the characterization of a scruffy, absent-minded Professor played by Michael Bentine – the least-known and shortest-lived member of the group! Of the other three, Harry Secombe is the nominal lead – but his character doesn't have a distinct personality (at least in this incarnation); Spike Milligan is a private whose dopey countenance and voice seems to have been inspired by Goofy, the canine star of Walt Disney cartoons!; Peter Sellers, surely the Goon with the most prominent subsequent career (I've just acquired a number of his work from the 1960s and 1970s), is reasonably impressive – if basically playing it straight – as an elderly Major.

The plot has to do with a secret gas formula devised by Bentine, which is coveted by enemy agents who infiltrate the camp (looking out for him is a female member of M.I.5 passing herself off as Sellers' daughter); Secombe, then, is the everyman hero who unwittingly finds himself 'drafted'. Unfortunately, most of the second half (the film runs for a mere 71 minutes) is taken up by a putting-on-a-show routine showcasing a number of resistible song-and-dance performers – though the busy climax, at least, shows three of The Goons all dressed in similar outfits to confuse the villains (a gag probably lifted from The Crazy Gang's THE FROZEN LIMITS [1939], which I've recently watched)...while Sellers, somewhat irrelevantly, does a couple of impersonations on stage (a great talent he possessed and which he would constantly fall back on for the rest of his career).

Not Actually the Worst Movie Ever Made

[vox-sane · 4/10 · 5 February 2007]

"The Goon Show" on radio in Britain in the 1950s starred several young comedy-legends-to-be. Megastar Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. In its infancy, it also starred comic Michael Bentine, who went on to his own shows.

Before "The Goon Show" found its groove, its stars made the movie "Down Among the Z (Zed) Men." While "The Goon Show" was written by Milligan and Bentine in those days (and later, Milligan almost exclusively), the movie was penned by comedy writer and publican Jimmy Grafton, with some bloke named Francis Charles.

The plot itself, not much worse than many more early cold war plots, concerns a silly scientist, a secret formula and spies. It's full of holes, but it's supposed to be a zany comedy. The script itself isn't particularly funny; and what is funny is typically undercut by poor direction.

The actors are another problem. All the four Goon stars are music hall comics and musicians who recently hit it big on the radio. Even Peter Sellers hadn't quite gotten the hang of film acting at the time. Andrew Timothy, the Goon's first announcer (preceding the legendary Wallace Greenslade) gives the best vocal performance, due to his well-honed radio voice.

But the best performances in the movie are by the Toppers. They were beautiful, even by today's standards and they danced with amazing precision. It's too bad the Goons' performances weren't so well-rehearsed.

One problem with the script are the roles doled out to the Goons. Michael Bentine, as I understand it, is in his typical stand-up role -- he even gets a chance to preserve on film the famous bit he did with a broken chair back, making this film a valuable historical document.

Sellers, who did many voices on the radio, is reduced to one role: a pale Major Bloodnok. On the radio, Bloodnok was venal, thieving, lecherous, traitorous, cowardly and flatulent. The flaccid Bloodnok of this film might have been played by any number of lesser talents than Peter Sellers. And suddenly, near the end, Bloodnok shows a trace of talent in an incongruous stand-up routine that allows Sellers two more voices from his arsenal, but which, unfortunately, isn't very funny. Even if this is a routine Sellers used to play in the Windmill (and I don't know that it is), it's pretty rotten.

Spike Milligan is stuck in the role of the famous Eccles, but he seems not to have had a visual idea of how to portray Eccles (he did much better in the later "Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn"). Eccles comes off as stupid, but without the redeeming qualities he had on radio.

Then there's Harry Secombe. He would turn in far better film performances in coming years ("Oliver!"). As "The Goon Show" progressed, Secombe's character, Neddy Seagoon, became the lead. Seagoon was brash, arrogant, confident and dumb as a rock. Secombe's character "Harry Jones" (how much sleep did Grafton and Charles lose before coming up with that name?) is like some of the dumber characters portrayed by Bob Hope and Danny Kaye, while lacking their talent, timing and charm. "Harry Jones" does nothing to show why Secombe deserved to be on a show with three men who showed unquestioned genius. He doesn't hold this misbegotten movie together the way Neddie Seagoon anchored the disparate elements of "The Goon Show." The moment where he breaks a record over his head is probably the lowest of the film's low points.

After the dance routines (which involve the Goons only tangentially), the best part of the movie is the big climax, where one of the spies (Graham Stark) tries to eliminate the professor -- but Mike, Spike and Harry are all dressed just alike. The director killed this routine by cutting back and forth. Perhaps the set wasn't big enough to pull back on, but it would have been drolly amusing to see three professors going up and down stairs, in and out of doors, in one long shot. At least the background music is good.

Despite the horror of it all, these are the Goons and any Goon fan must see this flick at least once. And IF that is the Grafton Arms in the pub sequence, "Down Among the Z Men" becomes an even more valuable historical document. Jimmy Grafton's pub was a watering-hole for much of the comedy talent trying to find its niche after World War II. Not only the Goons, but the likes of Tony Hancock were frequenters. The pub still exists, but it's nice to see it as they saw it.

Historical Interest

[stuhillman · 4/10 · 15 January 2006]

Although poor by today's standards it should be noted that this movie is the first time all the major characters of the Goon Show had worked together on screen. They had not yet worked out which routines worked well in radio but not in a movie. They would do better in subsequent efforts. It helps if the viewer knows something of the Goon Show radio series and, perhaps, has seen the TV series too. Making the transition from a radio program, where the listener's imagination supplies the scenery, to a television or film style is always difficult. The film has its moments, especially the chorus girl's dance routines and a flash-of-brilliance preview of Peter Seller's exceptional talent as he makes fun of an American general and his Staff Seargent under siege by the Germans. It's also apparent why Michael Bentine did not last long as a star although Jerry Lewis must have used this as a training film.

Disappointing waste of major talent

[horrorfilmx · 18 February 2006]

As a fan of the Goons ever since I was a kid (I used to listen to them late at night on the local college radio station) I was surprised and delighted to find this DVD at the checkout counter of a local drug store (for only a dollar!). I suppose I have to be honest and say I was disappointed by the movie, but not by the opportunity to see it. Harry Secombe is the star and seems to be trying to imitate Curly from the Three Stooges (right down to a direct steal when he tries to read the label of a record while it's still playing). Secombe never came off well in his few starring vehicles (although he seemed to shine in Dickens --- he was great in OLIVER and made an excellent Pickwick in a musical TV adaptation of THE PICKWICK PAPERS). Michael Bentine also gets a lot of screen time as the batty professor, but struck me as more bizarre than funny. Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers were totally wasted. Sellers of course went on to great things, but Milligan, surely one of the funniest men who ever lived (and the single greatest creative force behind the Goons) fared no better in films than Secombe. The mistaken identity chase scene at the end provides a few laughs, but that's about the high point. All in all if you're a Goon fan you have to watch this, you really have no choice, but don't expect to like it.

Ugghh...this is horrible...

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 3 January 2010]

In this film, a complete idiot inadvertently helps a group of crooks steal the formula of a professor. The Professor is a man wearing what appears to be a Halloween costume and goofy wig.

This is a film starring the British comedy group, the Goons. I know that they were terribly popular in the UK in the 1950s, though here in the States we never get a chance to see them. This film is the first Goon performance I have seen and I was excited to see it mostly to see Peter Sellers in one of his earliest roles. Sadly, however, after this long wait, I found the results to be mostly bad. While it perhaps played well in the UK back in the old days, now it just seemed incredibly amateurish—with incredibly broad and unfunny humor throughout. While Sellers wasn't bad and it was a good opportunity for him to work on character acting (as his officer seemed quite a bit like the one he played in DR. STRANGELOVE), the rest were just terrible. In many ways, the film seemed like an old fashioned low-brow stage show with such "jokes" as the following: The boss tells his employee "Serve these two ladies and drop everything else"—at which point the employee drops a stack of boxes and waits on the customers. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to get any better than that! Painfully unfunny—don't waste your time on this one unless you are a masochist or unless this is seen for nostalgia's sake.

Down Among The B-Movie Men!

[ShadeGrenade · 1/10 · 7 May 2007]

Imagine if, in the early '70's, the 'Monty Python' gang had been hired to make a movie, but then the producer entrusted the writing duties to others, brought in an attractive female lead, dancers and unrelated novelty acts? The resulting film would have been a disaster.

Yet, in 1952, producer E.J. Fancey did just that with what was then the hottest new comedy team in Britain - 'The Goons'.

I got into 'The Goon Show' in the summer of 1982, when classic episodes were being repeated on Radio 4 as part of the 'Smash Of The Day' series. I knew a little about 'Goon' humour, but nothing prepared me for for my first experience of it. The episode was 'Rommel's Treasure' and, by the end of it, I was in pain from laughter. I went out and bought the cassettes, a book of scripts from a second-hand shop, and even had a go at writing my own. I was hooked.

'Down' represents the first - and sadly, last - time all four of the original 'Goons' were simultaneously captured on film, and the result is a bit of a mess. For one thing, the script was written neither by Spike Milligan or Larry Stephens, but by Jimmy Grafton and Francis Charles.

The plot - such as it is - revolves around a couple of spies after a top secret formula invented by the eccentric scientist Professor Osrick Pureheart ( Bentine ). Harry Secombe plays 'Harry Jones' ( not 'Neddie Seagoon', you'll notice ), a grocer's assistant who fancies himself as a private eye. Peter Sellers reprises his role as 'Bloodnok' ( now a Colonel, not a Major ) and Spike Milligan is 'Private Eccles'. With the exception of the latter, the characters are unrecognisable from their radio counterparts. How could they have left out 'Bluebottle'? Carole Carr wafts around as 'Carole Gayley', and The Television Toppers do their usual high-kicking dance stuff.

Maclean Rogers' other credits include one of the 'Old Mother Riley' pictures, and that's where he should have stayed. The irrelevant musical numbers would have been acceptable had the comedy scenes been strong enough to balance them out, but they're not. Apart from a couple of moments, there's little genuine 'Goon' humour on display here. One such moment is when Private Eccles turns up for parade wearing a chestful of medals. "Do you know how I got these medals?", he asks Jones. "Ten bob the lot!".

The cast are required to do little more than mug. Even Peter Sellers displays little of the talent which, only a few years later, made him one of the biggest movie-stars in the world.

Given a director of the calibre of Leo McCarey, as well as a better script, 'The Goons' could conceivably have made a comedy to rival those Marx Brothers classics such as 'Duck Soup'. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. If you want to know what made 'The Goon Show' great, listen to the radio show instead.

"I'd like to show you a bit of burlesque..."

[The_Secretive_Bus · 2/10 · 14 June 2007]

The Goons revolutionised comedy in their hit radio series but their only foray into films showcases very, very few of their talents; in fact it's an absolute mess. The plot involves some spies trying to steal a formula (quite why British secret service spies are stealing British Army codes is just one problem among many) and um... stuff happens. Most of it irrelevant. The film only lasts 68 minutes and yet that includes two straight musical numbers from Leslie Roberts (who?) and two interminable tap-dancing scenes, none of which feature the Goons in any real way. Why all the padding? All pretence at building a story completely falls apart for about 15 minutes when all the characters involve themselves in a variety show for the army lads. Perhaps this was meant to hark back to the Goons' army revue beginnings, but it's bloody ghastly to watch. The Goons weren't known for their coherent narratives - that's what made them fun to listen to - but this is just taking the mickey.

One central problem is that very little in this film strikes one as being particularly Goonish. The prominence of Michael Bentine points to this film being made during the very early years of The Goons - he'd left by the time they became truly popular - and the few gags sprinkled around just aren't funny. When an army comedy resorts to guerrilla / gorilla puns, you know it's floundering. One of the highlights of The Goon Show was the sheer number of regular characters that the stars portrayed and yet each member is here reduced to only playing one character each, none of them doing so particularly effectively. Only Peter Sellers is really worth watching, being able to show off a few of the chameleonic talents that made him the success he later became, though he's perversely the most underused of the four stars. His understated Colonel Bloodnok completely steps out of character when performing a "comic" scene involving two American soldiers on stage, a sequence which highlights Sellers' fantastic ability to switch between voices and characters at will but something that hardly benefits the film by the point it occurs. Still, it's far more palatable than Michael Bentine's back-of-a-chair stand-up routine, which apparently brought him great acclaim back in the day; I can't think why as it's possibly the most unfunny bit of comedy I've ever witnessed.

What's particularly annoying about this film is that some really very talented minds were behind it. I've never really been a Goon Show fan, truth be told, but it can't be denied that Spike Milligan was an extremely talented comic writer, and Peter Sellers was one of the best comic actors that ever lived. Yet "Down Among the Z Men" is an absolutely diabolical collation of unrelated scenes and sequences with not a single funny line to make paying money for this travesty worthwhile. To think that the RRP for the R2 DVD is £16 is nothing less than astonishing. £2.50 would be pushing it. It's a slice of comedy history but one that's probably best left unremembered.

dreadful, unfunny and amateurously made yet may have some interest.

[trevorwomble · 4/10 · 16 October 2023]

The dancing girls are the only polished act in this whole movie. Even the goons themselves were embarrassed about the final film (it was filmed at breakneck speed due to an extremely short filming schedule forcing them to improvise).

The only reason to watch this film is out of historical interest. It's amazing to see a then 27 year old Peter Sellers showing early signs of his incredible character range, something which would stand him in good stead in the years to come. Spike Milligan (who I once met) looks so young in this but is his usual zany self. Harry Secombe often seems a bit lost in this film, not having a proper script to follow and not knowing how to react to the improvisations going on around him. In some ways he was the most professional of the Goons.

And finally we see Michael Bentine, a man I associate with zany children's comedy from the 1970s. A unique looking individual who's appearance changed quite dramatically once he cut his hair and lost the beard ,Bentine left the goons soon after this movie was made so this film is a unique insight into the group before they became a trio.

It's a shame this film is almost unwatchable and not representative of the fledgling talent within. It tries to play out like a Marx brothers comedy, but contains none of the polish or acerbic wit of those films. However as a snapshot of what was to come it's an interesting curiosity.

Down Among the Z Men

[Prismark10 · 3/10 · 8 June 2022]

An early attempt to bring the Goons humour to the cinema screens is a miss.

Professor Pureheart (Michael Bentine) is the eccentric scientist who has mislaid a top secret formula. Harry Jones (Harry Secombe) is an incompetent shop assistant and a bit part actor who thinks he is a private eye, Bats of the Yard.

Jones has been tricked by two criminals pretending to be cops to find the nutty professor. Spike Milligan is Private Eccles and Peter Sellers plays it straight as Colonel Bloodnok.

Jones ends up in an army camp while a British secret agent has been sent to guard the professor.

There is a variety show element to the movie with dancing girls and a few song numbers.

Of course it is meant to be silly and goonish. It was not written by Spike Milligan and the story is flimsy.

Sadly like a lot of Goons humour this has dated badly.

Peter Sellers shows his star quality though.

A bit confused, even more so for non UK types ;-)

[gina-148 · 7/10 · 16 October 2005]

As already stated, a fairly confusing mishmash of a film.

HOWEVER ! If you are a UK resident over the age of fifty, it *might* just make a bit more sense, as the Goons were the UK's greatest comedy team ever. I have no idea who "the good guys" were (other reviewer's comment), but the Goons were "Gods" in their day - and it's the "in their day" which is most relevant now. Sadly, the film has aged dreadfully, sorry lads.

Bentine as Purehart (whitehead, blackhead, whitehouse etc...) is probably the funniest character, even outshining the immortal Eccles for most of the time. Sellers could have easily played 6 or 7 more characters, easy, but that's the movie industry for you.

1952, early days for the Goons, and most of their fame still to come on BBC radio. Shame Blinbottle couldn't have joined up with Eccles for some naughty sossinges.

An advisory 7/10 for old fart UK types.

Dreadful

[swalbj86 · 1/10 · 22 September 2021]

Just watched this on the TP channel. Most of the dialogue is muffled and incoherent, and what you might call the plot a complete mess. I'm sure the cast had a complete hoot though.

Inspired lunacy

[CynthBage · 8/10 · 1 November 2006]

Since I never grew up watching the Goons, I know of them peripherally from my old vinyl finds of their work released back in the 70's. I found this gem oddly enough at a 99¢ store, and I actually enjoyed it. For older fans of the Goons, it is probably a letdown, but to my fresh eyes, it is rather silly and enjoyable.

To see Sirs Secombe and Sellers and the not-so-sir Milligan in top music hall form was just the sort of tonic to get me through a rather serious bout of the flu. I love the manic performance of Milligan as well as the deadpan of Sellars and of course straight man Secombe did not fail to disappoint. As a fan of old, obscure video, I think of Down Among the Z Men as the bargain video find of the first decade of the 21st Century.

Not as bad as one might think.

[alexanderdavies-99382 · 6/10 · 13 March 2019]

"Down Among the Z Men" is a film that's slightly rough round the edges, due to it being shot on a budget that's about as modest as you could get and that the footage looks grainy. However, there are some highlights along the way. Nothing much in the way of a story but it is a unique opportunity to see all four Goons as a team. The film certainly has the feel of being variety theatre caught on film with a single, stationary camera. This applies to when Peter Sellers performs those different impersonations of military persona. Released in 1952, it would be another few years before Sellers finally settled into the film medium. An interesting curiosity and worth seeing for those who enjoy "The Goon Show."

A little of what you don't Fancey

[trimmerb1234 · 5/10 · 29 May 2017]

E J Fancey productions occupied a space on a quality scale somewhere between educational films and home-movies. While US budget movie-makers had a knack of doing a lot with just a little. E J Fancey had a knack of making very little look even less.

So its a shame that this group of entertainers who were already popular on radio as The Goons, and later went on to better things should have this as part of their legacy.

Who were the Z Men? I'd never known but saw that they feature in another disappointing '50s army comedy "You Lucky People" - starring Tom Trinder in his last film. I see from Wikipedia that they were British army soldiers and officers who'd served in WW2 and became a reserve to be recalled if needed.

simply dreadful

[herbertanchovy · 16 October 2005]

Hmm. as most people who are goons fans have probably done, I watched this film purely out of curiosity having never seen the format "on screen". It didn't work. There is nothing whatsoever to recommend this film, boring, unfunny and unwatchable. as the goons huge popularity in later years goes to show, that's not to say that their talent is in any way called into question, I just think they really hadnt quite decided on which comedic routines would work and which wouldn't as early as 1952. Far better to watch something like "the muckinese battle horn" from 1957, which although doesn't feature secombe, is far nearer the mark to the goons madcap fast moving humour, and fans of the radio show will feel more at home. "z men" is quite frankly embarrassingly bad.

Outdated and Pointless

[jonasskjoett · 2/10 · 19 September 2010]

The Goons have never had my interest, nor had they after I saw this movie. My only interest is the late Peter Sellers, but even him couldn't do anything to save this extremely outdated piece of "cinema".

The storyline is not a big thing, but really, when you look at it, its only a movie based on a radio show, so don't get ready to be overwhelmed by the story, or the comedy for that matter, because the humor is just so boring, that I never had a smile on my face, not even a little one, and this is supposed to be a comedy.

The movie also has a lot of pointless scenes that don't help the story at all, but what the hell, nothing would help... not even Sellers little appearance had a neutral effect on me, and that says a lot.

I only give this movie to stars, the first star goes to Sellers, and the second one goes to a nice (but still a pretty pointless) choreographed gym practice scene... don't see this movie!

Down Among the Z Men

[CinemaSerf · 4/10 · 24 February 2023]

I was never a great fan of any of the "Goons" so approached this with quite a bit of trepidation. Sadly, it is all rather silly and presented in such a stilted fashion as to appear to have been rehearsed to within an inch of it's life - totally devoid of anything that looked convincingly genuine or spontaneous. There is a storyline involving a rather flaky professor who leaves a top secret formula in a grocer's shop. When he attempts to return it, he is mistaken for one of the "Z" (British army reservists) men, dragooned into the army and soon exposed to criminals who are also after this scientific boon. Curiously enough, there are one or two quite redeeming musical performances dotted throughout this featuring Carole Carr and Harry Secombe; but the performances of his fellow goons - Messrs. Bentine, Sellars and Milligan - really have suffered badly from the ravages of time, so much as to make this pretty unwatchable to all but real "Goonies".

What a waste of talent

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 9 November 2016]

DOWN AMONG THE Z MEN is a vehicle for the then-popular GOON SHOW team. I should admit that I know nothing of the Goons although I am familiar with the cast members due to their later performances in lots of other fare. In any case, DOWN AMONG THE Z MEN is a very cheap production let down by a very poor script that goes for lame, puerile humour throughout and wastes a cast that is fantastic in anybody's book.

There is a semblance of a story of sorts in the tale of a mad professor who loses a top secret scientific formula and the attempts that ensue to retrieve it. Michael Bentine plays said professor in the most over the top way imaginable and his acting would be considered overdone in a pantomime. The other cast members include Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, and the delightful Spike Milligan, but their surreal humour and tired jokes are groan-worthy rather than funny and the film is a real chore to sit through.

A criminal waste of comedic talents

[Jolasveinar · 2/10 · 15 March 2002]

Flee from this stinker. The genius that was The Goon Show is not on display here. Milligan, Secombe and Sellers were never served more poorly by their material than in this dreadfully unfunny waste of film.

The only Goon feature film, a disaster

[robert-temple-1 · 3/10 · 7 July 2012]

As marvellous as the Goons often were on the radio (as we know from the audio tapes and CDs preserving those broadcasts today), they were absolutely terrible in this film. As a movie, it is simply awful. The only Goon consistently amusing throughout is the delightfully demented Spike Milligan. Peter Sellers plays an army major (who in one major scene is called Colonel, but then the Goons were never interested in continuity) and is so boring and unfunny one wants to go to sleep. He comes alive only for a brief skit where he impersonates two American army officers, a flickering moment when he is genuinely funny. The film is interrupted by singing and by dance acts performed by a group called the Twelve Toppers, who do nice synchronised thirties-style numbers. But what has all that got to do with a witless farce? Nothing. Michael Bentine goes around in a bushy black wig like Harpo Marx with heavy whiskers, being ridiculously unfunny as a dotty scientist who has lost his formula which has defence implications. Harry Secombe is dead boring, slicks back his hair a few times, and tries to be amusing, without success and without a script. This whole thing is a mess, a waste of precious celluloid, and clear proof that comedy takes a bit more effort than is shown here. The director was Maclean Rogers, who made 87 undistinguished films including three of the four Paul Temple detective films (see my reviews), including one made this same year, and such B nonsense as ASSIGNMENT REDHEAD (1956, see my review). There seems to have been an understanding in the British film industry between 1929 and 1960 that whenever a producer wanted to make something inferior he could turn to Rogers as a safe pair of hands at making a film of suffocating mediocrity. His last film was titled NOT A HOPE IN HELL (1960), which I think describes the possibility of Rogers being admired posthumously. The writers of this disappointing effort were 'Francis Charles', who never wrote anything else and was presumably a pseudonym for one of the Goons, and Jimmy Grafton, whose name is not up in lights in any Comedy Hall of Fame that I ever heard of, nor does it deserve to be. Someone should go out into the pet cemetery and dig a decent small hole for this DVD.

Some Goonish humour.

[mic-daley · 7/10 · 25 July 2016]

By no means is this classic Goons, probably because it wasn't written by Spike Milligan. It does however, provide us with the only film of the four Goons, with Peter's mate Graham Stark. Carole Carr was a big singing star of the day, and does a bit of singing in the film, plus we get to see Sellers and Bentine do bits from their stage acts. Spike also gets to play his trumpet. Personally, I would have like the main players to feature more characters from the radio show, so we cold meet Moriarty, Minnie & Henry, and Eccles. But I suppose Jimmy Grafton had control of the film. I gave this film a 7, as I have always been a massive fan of Spike, since I first heard The GO-ON show, as the BBC thought it was called.

Watching The Goons Is Like Listening To Chaplin

[slokes · 2/10 · 24 March 2012]

On radio, the Goons conquered comedy in the 1950s like a horde of batter-pudding hurling Huns. On screen, their whimsical, surreal genius vanishes like a ghost in the noonday sun.

"Down Among The Z Men" is a badly written, insufferably acted, clumsily directed historical curiosity. The two most famous Goons, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, sit on the sidelines while the third Goon, Harry Secombe, has the lead role as a dim-witted store clerk chasing after a professor. While it's the team's second movie, it has special import in being the only one to feature founding Goon Michael Bentine, who plays the professor with a silly fright wig and a splay-footed walk.

"What's on your mind, apart from your hair?" Bentine is asked, a good example of the weak material on display.

You can say that "Down Among The Z Men" doesn't have much of a plot, indulges in bad puns and groaner jokes, and features several time-killing musical interludes, though you also can say that of the classic radio Goon Shows. The difference isn't the material so much as its handling. Bentine and Milligan make silly faces at the camera, while Secombe does a lot of double takes and pratfalls. They make chicken noises, act like gorillas, and look out of their element.

Sellers seems a pro by comparison, underplaying a stiff-but-decent colonel named Bloodnok who had not yet evolved into the scheming major character of the same name who came later. Yet it's hardly a comic role, except for a strange interlude when Sellers drops character to do a one-man skit involving American army officers. It's a wan premise with a zippo ending, something you can say of the entire movie.

People note that Milligan had nothing to do with the script, though Jimmy Grafton, who did write it along with Francis Charles, was a writer of early Goon Shows and even ran the pub where the Goons originally met. The premise, a spy romp involving something called a "bicarbonate bomb" has potential, but director Maclean Rogers seems unable to draw it out. He shoots every scene in the same flat way, with endings punctuated by someone falling or tripping on something. Pacing is non-existent.

The Goons are upstaged by Goon Show announcer Andrew Timothy and frequent collaborator Graham Stark as a pair of convincingly nasty spies, not to mention a dozen pretty dancing girls who kick out a couple of fun numbers. Rogers' low-angle shots of the girls are the only evidence he knew how to move a camera.

Though billed at the opening as a starring vehicle for the Goons, with the four popping out to introduce themselves as such in the opening credits, the film has only two short scenes when the Goons are all together, one when a laughing gas bomb goes off and they all guffaw for a minute, and at the end when they sing the title song. Any chance to see the gang's chemistry with Bentine in the mix is largely lost. You can say they added by subtraction as Bentine is pretty weak in the acting and comedy department, but so are Milligan and Secombe going by this alone.

The Goons must have realized film was not the best way to capture what they were about: They made no more movies as a four- or even three-man unit after this. Instead they focused on their radio work, which stands up to this day and is far worthier of your time than the lazy "Z Men".

Pathetic British film.

[rxelex · 6/10 · 9 January 2020]

Like so many other products of British film industry this one is a pathetic boring and quite embarrassing mess. It has a cast from a radio comedy show and ridiculous story line and characters. We can laugh at radio comedy with actors using silly voices but it doesn't transfer to film. It's only good feature as with similar date films is the street scenes show a vanished town scape with few foreign cars where people were friendly and life had little stress.

Rubbish

[oiyou · 1/10 · 11 September 2001]

This attempt to transfer the Goon Show humour from radio to the big screen fails dismally. It was made early in the Goon Show's run and before the GS had developed it's later format of one story per show. The film seems to be made up of sketches which don't flow together well and are in most cases cringe inducingly poor. For a better Goon film seek out The Case of the Mukkinese Battlehorn which does the job far better. Better still buy the Goon Show tapes or CDs.

A waste of good talent

[Doctor J-2 · 14 December 1998]

I once had the pleasure of meeting Michael Bentine and we discussed this film. Michael told me that the director would only allow one take of each scene unless an absolute disaster occurred. There is one scene near the end that is quite funny. Two or three other members of the cast disguise themselves as Michael Bentine and many confusions occur, probably inspired by the mirror scene in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup.