Fantastic!

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

If you want to laugh then see this show. This is sketch comedy at its finest, as Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook riff on pretty much everything under the sun from religion, Philosophy, music, the end of the world and being a miner. Its a wild mix of nothing is sacred humor with a very clever edge.If you want to trace the history of British comedy one would start with the music halls move on to the Goons stopping at this show before moving on to people like the Goodies, Monty Python and Eddie Izzard. These are the guys and this is the show that began, in part the draining of the colleges and setting them to work for places like the BBC. Python took the anarchic sketch comedy found here and welded the insanity of Spike Milligan and the Goons. If you need more proof consider that a good number of bits from this show ended up in the Secret Policemen's Balls that were staged by the members of Python for Amnesty International. They used the material because its funny.Historical importance aside this is a very funny show. Certainly there are bits that have dated since it was first performed but on the whole the show remains relevant, and above all funny. If you like to laugh see this show.

I snapped up this video the moment it was released as one of the rare Original London (and Broadway) cast performances recorded complete as it was done on stage (recorded at its final London performance). It was also the source of two hilarious LPs from Capitol Records that saw many of us through our college years.The classic revue - which later led to such heady intellectual fare as TV's THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS - is just as good as remembered and makes one long for the days when comedy wasn't afraid to make you think....THE FRINGE still had its share of buffoonery with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore embarking on their long careers as clown princes, but the BRIGHTEST of the bunch, Alan Bennett, is an even greater reason to spend an evening BEYOND THE FRINGE (the title an oblique reference to the famed annual Edinburgh Cultural Festival and its burgeoning "Fringe" Festival of entries which could not be booked into the main festival venues).Bennett would soon leave the performing field (mostly) to concentrate on an even longer and more fulfilling writing career. As I write this, I'm still in the heady glow of one of the early Broadway performances of what may be Bennett's masterpiece, THE HISTORY BOYS, which transferred from London with most of its cast in tact after being filmed for later release. If half as good as it is on stage, THE HISTORY BOYS will be another movie/video to be cherished and the ultimate "Bennett Double Feature" as it expands the intellectual gamesmanship Bennett first started to develop in BEYOND THE FRINGE to full mature power.A Brit recently told a newsman en-route to interview Bennett that "in England he's a God!" High praise indeed for a country which has also given us such relatively recent cultural deities as Tom Stoppard (ROSENCRANCZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD and Shakespeare IN LOVE) and Michael Frayn (NOISES OFF and COPENHAGEN), but also well merited.It all started BEYOND THE FRINGE.

I was delighted to view this tele-recording for two reasons. Firstly, it's well and truly hilarious. Secondly, the recovery of this long-lost recording vindicates for television something I've long maintained for cinema films: no movie or TV programme should be considered 'lost' unless it was deliberately destroyed. Sadly, the BBC are notorious for wiping their own programmes and taping over them ... and so, far too many great moments of British television history are indeed gone forever. Unless the transmission patterns are still bouncing off Alpha Centauri.Another IMDb contributor, Elena-48, has already reviewed this recording. Elena's review is perceptive but contains one niggling error: Alan Bennett's sermon is ostensibly about Esau and Jacob, not Ezra. Bennett's sermon is hilarious, as he piously and pretentiously draws metaphors between sardine tins and human existence. ('I wonder: is there a little bit you can't reach under the sardine tin of your life? I know there is under mine.') Here's something which this recording doesn't mention: an audiotape of Bennett's hilariously pretentious sermon is now used as a training tape in the Anglican church, warning newly ordained priests of the sort of claptrap they must avoid.The opening sketch, with its references to the Cold War and Harold Macmillan, is necessarily dated but still funny ... especially when Peter Cook warns the gaunt Jonathan Miller to 'try to look well-fed'. Elsewhere, we have Miller as a prisoner in a death cell: Cook bookends this routine, setting the scene and then returning for the punchline.Cook and Dudley Moore perform their brilliant 'One Leg Too Few' sketch, with Moore as the one-legged 'unidexter' auditioning for the role of Tarzan. Over the decades, Cook and Moore performed this routine hundreds of times, forcing Moore to spend many cumulative hours hopping on one foot. As Moore actually had a clubfoot (only partially corrected), the effect on him was not pleasant. But the routine is uproarious.At intervals throughout, Moore performs his brilliant piano solos. The entire cast perform 'So That's the Way You Like It', skewering Shakespeare hilariously. Less effective is a routine in which all four portray camp homosexuals. A high point is Jonathan Miller's bizarre monologue, 'The Heat-Death of the Universe', pondering the fate of trousers that are abandoned on British Railway trains.My own favourite here -- a quietly hilarious set-piece -- is Cook's solo turn, as a demented monologist sitting on a bench, explaining why he could have been a judge but ended up being a coal miner. Although the character is never named here, Cook privately named this creation E.L. Wisty, and depicted him many times over the decades. Cook's E.L. Wisty routine changed significantly at each performance, as Cook introduced new improvisations.Periodically throughout this taped performance, the camera cuts away to show the audience. I felt this was a mistake, as the laughter on the soundtrack makes it clear that there's a live audience. Much more effective are the close-in shots, enabling us to see the expressions on the faces of the cast as the sadistic Cook ad-libs, trying to 'corpse' his castmates (especially Moore) and make them break character as they burst out laughing.With Cuddly Dudley and 'Cookie' now both dead, and Bennett and Miller having largely forsaken performance in favour of their other talents, it's a delight to be able to see this crucial record of these four comedic geniuses at their peak. And this show is pretty damned funny, too. I'll rate it absolutely 10 out of 10.

We saw a tape (in glorious Black and White) of the Closing Night of Beyond The Fringe (1964) at the New York Museum of Television and Radio. There was a remark in the Website that the full tape of this show is lost or erased but this tape was 2 hours long.Although the tape quality was not always good (especially the sound!) and the audience looked oddly wooden we so enjoyed seeing this. Dudley Moore was such a great Parodist and Musician. He does parodies of Brecht, Schubert and Britten (Britten's Little Miss Muffett was especially funny). How sad that both he and Peter Cook are now dead. We also enjoyed seeing Alan Bennett again doing his bit as the Vicar giving a long rambling sermon based on Ezra "My brother is a hairy man but I am a smooth man..." Was this once once broadcast on PBS?Could some industry executive PLEASE put this out on DVD as soon as possible!!! And while we're at it what about Bennett's Talking Heads? At present it is only available in the UK.