SPOILERS ALERT!!!

Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

Say, have you ever wondered what a ‘Fawlty Towers’ and ‘Dad’s Army’ combo would be like? Me neither. But my best friend from school, Stephen, shared a YouTube video with me of a Sherlock Holmes spoof film made in 1977, starring John Cleese and Arthur Lowe.

So, that’s a triple combo of ‘Fawlty Towers’, ‘Dad’s Army’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes’. Who would have thought this was a thing? I’m glad my best mate from school shared this film with me. I imagine this is a film that would be very hard to locate and purchase on DVD. 😐

I checked to see if the film was available to purchase online from Amazon, and it is, but it’s very expensive and I believe it would be an import from the USA. So, I decided to see the film on YouTube instead. I found it to be a very entertaining if crazy parody film. 😀

If you haven’t seen the film yet, please feel free to check it out in the video below.

‘The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It’ is quite unusual as a spoof film about Sherlock Holmes. It takes the approach of having Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the present day of 1975, except they’re still wearing traditional 19th century clothes. 😀

You could say this film is in league with the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ films, starring Basil Rathbone, and the ‘Sherlock’ TV series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, by having it set in the present day. Except, John Cleese and Arthur Lowe aren’t really Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

They’re playing the descendants of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in 1975. John Cleese is playing Arthur Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Lowe is playing Dr. William Watson, M.D. Both are excellent in playing comedic versions of their characters, and I enjoyed their double act.

John Cleese as Holmes is very accidental prone, which I found very funny, and he’s smoking a pipe, even in 1975! 😀 Arthur Lowe is very funny as Dr. Watson, especially when his catchphrase is “Good lord!” 😀 He’s also easily impressed by Holmes’ powers of deduction.

Connie Booth plays Mrs. Hudson in the film. This would have been made when she and John Cleese were married at the time and would have been made in-between Series 1 and 2 of ‘Fawlty Towers’. It’s nice to see Connie Booth in a different role compared to Polly.

Her Scottish accent is over-the-top when playing Mrs. Hudson, but then that is quite deliberate, as it turns out Mrs. Hudson is actually Francine Moriarty, Professor Moriarty’s descendant. It was quite a twist, and very funny to hear Connie in her American accent. 😀

It was even funnier to see Connie Booth as Francine Moriarty shooting John Cleese as Holmes with a gun over and over again in the film’s climax. I wonder if this how John Cleese and Connie Booth divorced. 😀 It probably was and would you be so surprised? 😀

The film’s cast also includes the likes of Ron Moody as Dr. Henry Gropinger, Joss Ackland as the President of the United States of America, and Denholm Elliot as the English delegate. I spotted Josephine Tewson (Elizabeth from ‘Keeping Up Appearances’) as Miss Hoskins in this. 😀

There’s Burt Kwouk (who I’ve seen in the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘Four to Doomsday’) as Fo Tong of Peking, the Chinese delegate. There’s also Stratford Johns (who I’ve also seen as Monarch in the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘Four to Doomsday’) as Chief Commissioner Blocker.

It was so surreal to see Stratford Johns without the green frog make-up in this film. 😀 There are also characters like Hercule Poirot (played by Dudley Jones) and Lt. Columbo (played by Luie Caballero) in this. This is where you know that the film’s reality doesn’t make sense. 😀

‘The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It’ has been a very enjoyable comedy film to check out on YouTube and I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing John Cleese and Arthur Lowe together as Holmes and Watson. It’s a comedic duo I didn’t expect to see. 😀

It should be no surprise that John Cleese co-wrote the script for the film with Jack Hobbs and the film’s director Joseph McGarth. There’s a ‘Monty Python’ feel to this film. Even though I’ve not seen much ‘Monty Python’ myself, I’m getting a sense of that throughout the film.

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂