Like a lot of '70's sitcoms, 'Steptoe & Son' was turned into a movie. So successful was the movie in question it was granted the rare honour of a sequel. I used to think the first was the better of the two, but after recently viewing both I have changed my mind. The second is the funniest by far. Unlike the first, the plot is episodic, slightly macabre at times, particularly the opening where Diana Dors' housewife wants to make love to Harold with her dead husband in the same room to the last section where Harold fakes Albert's death in order to pull off an insurance scam.
Brambell and Corbett are as excellent as ever, and the supporting cast includes old reliables such as Frank Thornton, Geoffrey Bayldon, Sam Kydd, Neil McCarthy, Yootha Joyce and Milo O'Shea ( as drunken 'Dr.Popplewell' ).
Unfortunately, the Steptoe family are a different bunch to the one we got in the classic episode 'Oh What A Beautiful Mourning'. It would have been nice to have seen 'Potty Ada' ( Rita Webb ) and bible-thumping Nobby ( Tommy Godfrey ) again, and not just for reasons of continuity.
Henry Woolf's self-styled 'Godfather of Shepherd's Bush' Frankie Barrow appeared the following year in the episode 'The Seven Steptoerai'.
Plenty of visual comedy ( more so than the first film ) including the sight of the Steptoes trying to train their greyhound Hercules, Albert killing and eating his neighbour's chickens, Harold almost frightening his father to death with the head of a shop window dummy, Albert rising out of his coffin and screaming, and Harold being knocked out when a van door hits him in the face.
Funniest moment - Harold, emerging from a crypt, wearing a hospital gown and his head wrapped in bandages. He looks like one of the living dead, and almost causes the Vicar ( Geoffrey Bayldon ) to drop dead of fright! Directed by Peter Sykes, who made a number of the 'Tara King' episodes of 'The Avengers' and the Frankie Howerd classic 'The House In Nightmare Park'.
Brambell and Corbett are as excellent as ever, and the supporting cast includes old reliables such as Frank Thornton, Geoffrey Bayldon, Sam Kydd, Neil McCarthy, Yootha Joyce and Milo O'Shea ( as drunken 'Dr.Popplewell' ).
Unfortunately, the Steptoe family are a different bunch to the one we got in the classic episode 'Oh What A Beautiful Mourning'. It would have been nice to have seen 'Potty Ada' ( Rita Webb ) and bible-thumping Nobby ( Tommy Godfrey ) again, and not just for reasons of continuity.
Henry Woolf's self-styled 'Godfather of Shepherd's Bush' Frankie Barrow appeared the following year in the episode 'The Seven Steptoerai'.
Plenty of visual comedy ( more so than the first film ) including the sight of the Steptoes trying to train their greyhound Hercules, Albert killing and eating his neighbour's chickens, Harold almost frightening his father to death with the head of a shop window dummy, Albert rising out of his coffin and screaming, and Harold being knocked out when a van door hits him in the face.
Funniest moment - Harold, emerging from a crypt, wearing a hospital gown and his head wrapped in bandages. He looks like one of the living dead, and almost causes the Vicar ( Geoffrey Bayldon ) to drop dead of fright! Directed by Peter Sykes, who made a number of the 'Tara King' episodes of 'The Avengers' and the Frankie Howerd classic 'The House In Nightmare Park'.