St. Trinians - The Pure Hell Of St. Trinians [DVD] [1960]

Product Information

Please feel free to visit my Just For Laughs list to see where I ranked The Pure Hell Of St Trinians. Frankie Howerd plays the lead crook, Alfred Askett, whose front operation is as a fancy male hairdresser, "Alphonse of Monte Carlo". Howerd's character has a little fake quiff that he removes when the customers have gone, which must be some sort of in-joke, as it means that the famously badly wigged Howerd is wearing another wig on top of his actual one. I can't claim to be an expert on THE ST TRINIAN series . I have some vague notion that it's about some hellcat girl pupils which in today's political climate would probably never been considered as a film series Sim succeeds admirably in making Miss Fritton a plausible character, albeit a comic one, without resorting to cheap laughs or mugging as a man in a dress. Being much too good an actor to descend to the level of a simple drag act, he is careful to allow Miss Fritton her dignity as a character in her own right. Inevitably, the sight of an actor as obviously masculine and as lugubrious as Alastair Sim playing a woman means that the part has a slight element of the grotesque about it, but Sim himself never plays to that.

It has some hilarious moments - particularly the opening trial sequence and the striptease to the soliloquy from "Hamlet" - but it's on the same level as the first two films. As I said yesterday, Alastair Sim's virtual absence from "Blue Murder at St. Trinian's" was a blow to the film while his complete absence from this one is a major blow to it. Considering the importance of Miss Fritton to the first film and the fact that the school burns down, it's bizarre that she isn't even mentioned. Prominent among the older girls is Georgina, played by James Mason's daughter Portland Mason, in her penultimate film before she retired from acting. Portland, apparently named after Portland Hoffa and not the city in Oregon, was about 17 at the time the film was made. Production company London Film Productions, in association with British Lion Films Distributor British Lion (UK)

The music for the film was written by the English composer Malcolm Arnold. The music was arranged as a concert suite for orchestra with piano four hands by Christopher Palmer. [8] [9] The suite was performed at the BBC Proms in 2003 and 2021. [10] [11] Reception [ edit ] Box office [ edit ]

Malcolm Arnold: The Belles of St. Trinians – Comedy Suite: Orchestra". Music Room . Retrieved 10 October 2021. Alfred's daughters are played by Maureen Crombie, as the older Marcia, and Susan Jones as her grubby little sister Lavinia. A little unfairly, Susan Jones isn't even credited on the film, despite having a decent part. Sources online give Maureen Crombie's date of birth as 1943 or 1944, meaning that she was over 20 at the time this was made, and apparently married to her first husband, which is hard to believe as she makes quite a believable younger teenager. For the 2007 film, see St Trinian's (film). For the actual progressive school, see St Trinnean's School. Cover of a modern re-issue of St Trinian's drawings The plot of The Belles of St. Trinian's is a slightly convoluted effort, involving a Sultan(Eric Pohlmann), who chooses the school for his young daughter Fatima (Lorna Henderson), because it's close to the stables where he keeps his racehorses.

The pupils, though, have ideas of their own. The fourth form girls want to make sure that Arab Boy takes part in the race, while their counterparts in the sixth form are equally determined to make sure that it doesn't. They kidnap the horse and attempt to hide it in the school, as their money is on a rival. Barchester and Barset were used as names for the fictional towns near which St Trinian's School was supposedly located in the original films. In Blue Murder at St Trinian's, a signpost was marked as 2 miles to Barset, 8 miles to Wantage, indicating a location in what was Berkshire at the time of filming (transferred to Oxfordshire in 1974}. Oh, thank God for the girls of St. Trinians. These little hellions know how to make me laugh out loud. Their creator Ronald Searle was a satirist, and Pure Hell is one of the more satirical outings for the young ladies; thanks to the writing talents of Gilliat and Launder. There are plenty of asides and snide japes to keep you giggling, however, some of them are of the time and may fall flat with today's younger crowd. But the dancing civil servants always busts my gut. You have to love them. Webb, Kaye, ed. (1959). The St Trinian's Story. London; New York (respectively): Perpetua Books; London House & Maxwell. pp.44–45. OCLC 2898524. It's a quaint British comedy and I'm feeling a trifle warm just thinking about. I should have taken the tablets.