Posted: Wed., Dec. 31, 1969, 11:00pm PT

The Bed Sitting Room

(UK)

By Variety Staff

United Artists. Director Richard Lester; Producer Oscar Lewenstein, Richard Lester; Screenplay John Antrobus, Charles Wood; Camera David Watkin; Editor John Victor Smith; Music Ken Thorne; Art Director Assheton Gordon

Rita Tushingham Ralph Richardson Peter Cook Dudley Moore Spike Milligan Michael Hordern

A play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus serves as an ideal springboard for an offbeat anti-war film by Richard Lester which, miraculously, manages to convey its grim message with humor.

Sketch-like pic catches glimpses and comments of the 20-odd survivors of a London shredded by an A-bomb as they dig out of their holes to try and cope with the grey new world before they, too, become animals.

In the manner of vaude blackouts, they soon meld into a general mosaic of stiff-upper-lip acceptance of new conditions, some fizzlers but others very amusing.

Ralph Richardson is superb in a relatively brief stint as the diehard traditionalist who eventually 'becomes' the title's bed-sitting room, but all in a carefully-chosen roster of British character thesps who contribute stellar bits in almost impossibly difficult roles.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1970. Running time: 90 MIN.