Alastair Sim

Compilation of classic British comedy moments

In 1939, Sir Robert Thorndyke takes aim at Adolf Hitler with a high powered rifle, but the shot misses its mark. Captured and tortured by the Gestapo and left for dead, Sir Robert makes his way back to England where he discovers the Gestapo has followed him. Knowing that his government would turn him over to German authorities, Sir Robert goes underground in his battle with his pursuers.

When the owner of a Yorkshire coal-mine decides to mechanize to increase profits, the mine's pit ponies are scheduled to be destroyed. So, three children plan to steal them to keep them safe. But when they're caught, it's up to the mine owners and the miners themselves to decide what's right.

Cowardly rogue Harry Flashman's (Malcolm McDowell) schemes to gain entry to the royal circles of 19th-century Europe go nowhere until he meets a pair of devious nobles with their own agenda. At their urging, Flashman agrees to re-create himself as a bogus Prussian nobleman to woo a beautiful duchess. But the half-baked plan quickly comes unraveled, and he's soon on the run from several new enemies who are all calling for the rapscallion's head.

An elderly priest recruits a young woman as housekeeper in the presbytery he shares with two young priests, but temptation and jealousy soon sew discord and doubt in some minds.

When Mrs Hinch, the sinister charlady, decides to move in, General Suffolk fights his last battle.

When the Earl of Gurney dies in a cross-dressing accident, his schizophrenic son, Jack, inherits the Gurney estate. Jack is not the average nobleman; he sings and dances across the estate and thinks he is Jesus reincarnated. Believing that Jack is mentally unfit to own the estate, the Gurney family plots to steal Jack's inheritance. As their outrageous schemes fail, the family strives to cure Jack of his bizarre behavior, with disastrous results.

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

When her father dies, Epifania Parerga, an Italian in London, becomes the world's richest woman. She feels incomplete without a husband and falls in love with a humble, Indian physician, Ahmed el Kabir, much loved by his indigent English patients.

Hapless Henry Palfrey is patronised by his self-important chief clerk at work, ignored by restaurant waiters, conned by shady second-hand car salesmen, and, worst of all, endlessly wrong-footed by unspeakably rotten cad Raymond Delauney who has set his cap at April, new love of Palfrey's life. In desperation Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship to learn how to best such bounders and win the girl.

At the Earndale by-election natural history expert and TV personality Bob Wilcot for the Conservatives finds himself up against Billingsgate girl Stella Stoker for the socialists. Amateur politician against committed activist. But could it become boy-who-fancies-girl against girl-who-fancies-boy? The party agents are soon colluding against such a disaster.

Four doctors face a serious dilemma when the beautiful wife of a TB-stricken artist begs one of them to cure her brilliant, but amoral, husband.

With their headmistress under lock and key in her majesty's prison, the St Trinian's girls find themselves under the protection of the army. However, when the sixth form take a fancy to winning a trip to Italy through means fair or foul, the army discover this is one battle they can't win. Let loose in Europe, it is not long before St Trinian's have succeeded in endangering European relations.

Unknown to everyone but his shady Middle Eastern bosses, watchmaker Hawkins is actually a professional hired assassin with a predilection for killing his targets with bombs. After disposing of a dictator and millionaire, Hawkins is assigned to kill a politician who is heading to a remote hotel, The Green Man, for a secret tryst with his secretary. There, however, Hawkins' plot is discovered by vacuum salesman William Blake, who determines to stop him.

To acquire a fresh supply of cadavers for use in his medical school experiments, Dr. Knox turns two of his inept students into graverobbers.

Concerned about his small stature, a young Scottish boy applies for a mail-order body building course, successfully gaining both height and strength. The film was released as "Wee Geordie" in the USA.

A look at some of the events that took place as part of the 1954 Edinburgh Festival.

An English pacifist's (John Mills) sons run away from school and hijack a plane to Vienna to petition for peace.

The unruly schoolgirls of St Trinian's are more interested in men and mischief than homework and hockey. But greater trouble than ever beckons when the arrival at the school of Princess Fatima of Makyad coincides with the return of recently expelled Arabella Fritton, who has the kidnap of a prize racehorse on her mind.

An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?

Romantic comedy about a group of Britons flying to Paris for the weekend.

A newly-arrived army chaplain is put in charge of camp entertainment and has the idea of putting on a Brains Trust with local notables. Unfortunately for him, it emerges from a question on the rights and wrongs of marriage that there is more going on between three of the panelists than he wants to know about - though the audience obviously thinks differently.

Ebenezer Scrooge malcontentedly shuffles through life as a cruel, miserly businessman, until he is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve who show him how his unhappy childhood and adult behavior has left him a selfish, lonely old man.

Marjory Clark wins a competition in her Midland town and finds herself in a Festival of Britain procession as Lady Godiva - though not in the buff. This leads by way of a suspect beauty competition to the show-business world of London. But it could be a slippery slope for simple home-town Marge.

When an eccentric practical joker dies, he divides his fortune among four heirs. But before they can collect the cash they must each do something which goes completely against their nature. NB: This is the film which introduced Audrey Hepburn.

Nutbourne College, an old established, all-boys, boarding school is told that another school is to be billeted with due to wartime restrictions. The shock is that it's an all-girls school that has been sent. The two head teachers are soon battling for the upper hand with each other and the Ministry. But a crisis (or two) forces them to work together.

A struggling actress tries to help a friend prove his innocence when he's accused of murdering the husband of a high-society entertainer.

Classic British drama about the residents of a large terrace house in London between Christmas 1938 and September 1939. Percy Boon lives with his mother in a shared rented house with an assortment of characters in central London. Although well intentioned, he becomes mixed up with gangsters and murder. The story focuses on the effects this has on Percy and the other residents.

In 19th-century Ireland, when poverty-stricken tenants dispossessed by greedy landowner Captain Charles Boycott band together to assert their rights, patriotic farmer Hugh Davin leads the rebels. Choosing nonviolent resistance, the villagers ostracise their nemesis, who squanders his fortune to repair his ruined reputation and wagers what's left on a horse race.

A gang of street boys foil a master crook who sends commands for robberies by cunningly altering a comic strip's wording each week, unknown to writer and printer. The first of the Ealing comedies.

In the midst of Nazi air raids, a postman dies on the operating table at a rural hospital. But was the death accidental?

During WW2 a former railway employee who had been drafted, goes AWOL to hunt down the spiv and draft dodger who is having an affair with his wife.

An out-of-work comedian persuades a drunken nobleman to join a protest against the closing of a village hall.

Allied spies and Nazi Agents insinuate themselves at a Scottish cottage (converted to a wartime hospital) with interests on an inventor's nearly perfected bomb sight.

Third and final film in the 'Inspector Hornleigh’ series of comedy-thrillers. Inspector Hornleigh (Gordon Harker), disappointed at not being handed an important spy case, is assigned by Scotland Yard to an army barracks to investigate the mundane thefts of supplies from the stores. This accidentally leads Hornleigh and Sergeant Bingham (Alastair Sim) to a nest of fifth columnists when his dim-witted assistant carelessly talks to a girl in the cafeteria – and that night, news of Hornleigh and Bingham’s arrival is embarrassingly transmitted back to Germany.

On the eve of WWII a young defence lawyer, assisted by his wife, invaigles his way into a gang of foreign saboteurs. Comedy thriller, ably executed by a satisfactory cast.

During a holiday by the British seaside, Hornleigh and Bingham grow bored and turn their hand to investigating a local crime.

A man beset by creditors invents a fictitious partner

A British reporter and his wife, on vacation in Paris, run into a gang of counterfeiters.

When a landlady finds one of her tenants murdered, Inspector Hornleigh is sent to investigate. Inspector Hornleigh's assistant, Sergeant Bingham, soon finds an attaché case that had been stolen from the murdered man. When Hornleigh examines the case, inside it he finds a bag that was used to carry important government documents. The documents have been taken, and to make things even more confusing, a duplicate of the stolen bag soon turns up.

Wealthy Nicky finds himself engaged to gold-digger Lady Constance, but he really loves scatty model Diana. Complications, slapstick and mountaineering are the result.

A newspaper reporter keeps beating the police to clues in a current murder case. This makes the police think he may be involved in the crime.

Alf discovers that one of the buttons on his pyjamas is made from the metal of Aladdin's lamp and that when he cleans it a genie appears.

For ten years, The Terror has laughed at both police and public. And for ten years, two of his erstwhile associates, Joe Conner and 'Soapy' Marks, have plotted revenge on the mastermind whose double-crossing sent them to Dartmoor prison without their share of the bullion stolen in a daring raid.

A barge-owner's adopted daughter falls in love with his son, and gives up her chances of stardom to be with him.

London's jewel thieves are under the thumb of a mysterious fence, who ruthlessly exposes any thief who crosses him. Desperate, Scotland Yard re-hires ex-Inspector Barrabal who, as a known drunkard, is ideally suited to go undercover with a faked criminal record (which may spoil his chances with lovely Carol Stedman).

Newspaper reporter becomes involved with gang of crooks who take her for a tough American gangster.

Doctors perform brain surgery to reform a hardened criminal

During World War I, in Flanders, Berry and Morley were in love with the same girl, Yvonne. During a battle in the Widow's Island sector, Morley is wounded and abandoned by Berry. Morley being reported missing, Berry now has a clear path to marry Yvonne. Two decades later, Yvonne incidentally meets a tourist guide in the former combat zone region who looks fiendishly like - Morley. —Guy Bellinger

A mild-mannered, somewhat mousy man is astounded when his reflection in a mirror comes to life and begins to do all the wild and crazy things that he always wanted to but never could.

Despite being on his uppers, George is still prepared to pawn his beloved banjo in order to help his girlfriend save her niece from the orphanage. Help seems to be at hand when George is left a fortune by his old auntie, but unfortunately his inheritance is hidden inside a chair which has already been auctioned off! Can George and his chums track down his rightful due before his grasping solicitor (Alastair Sim, in an early film appearance) snatches the lot? It's hard to say, but he still finds time to perform both the title song and the classic 'When I'm Cleaning Windows'.

James Mason is teamed up once again with Virginia Cherill whom he appeared with in his debut film, 'Late Extra'. He plays a government agent (John Merriman) who makes a few enquiries and follows leads. Cherill plays June Elkhardt.

A clerk in an oil company is promoted ostensibly to take the blame when it looks like the bosses' dodgy dealings will be found out by the authorities.

A newspaper reporter sets out to track down the murderer of a policeman.

A timid and dim-witted clergyman is duped into helping a playboy avoid his creditors, inherit his uncle's fortune and get the girl.

A pair of friends robs from a jewelry shop, and buries their loot in a field out in the country before they get caught. They spend ten years in prison, and when they're let out they go back to the burial ground, only to find out that it's no longer a bucolic pasture but the site of a large department store. Despite that setback, they're still determined to dig up their stash.

Investor Robert Norman murdered before meeting. Police investigate. Journalist Claire Haines pursues story to impress editor. Intertwining narratives of crime solving and reporting unfold.