Product Details

• Actors: Leonard Rossiter, Malcolm McDowell, Brian Pettifer, John Moffatt, Fulton Mackay
• Directors: Lindsay Anderson
• Writers: David Sherwin
• Producers: Clive Parsons, Davina Belling, John Comfort
• Format: Color, EP, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Republic Pictures
• VHS Release Date: February 3, 1997
• Run Time: 111 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303234410
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,661 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Item Name: Britannia Hospital; Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!!!, October 6, 1999

By 

Chris O'Loughlin (Brisbane, Queensland Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Britannia Hospital [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Britannia Hospital, an allegory for what was transpiring in England at the time, was released in 1982, and is the final part of Lindsay Anderson' brilliant trilogy of films that follow the adventures of Mick Travers as he travels through a strange and sometimes surreal Britain. From his days at boarding school in If.... (1968) to his journey from coffee salesman to film star in O'Lucky Man (1972), Travers' adventures finally come to an end in Britannia Hospital. Mick is now an investigative reporter, and is investigating the bizzarre activities of Professor Miller, played by the always interesting Graham Crowden, whom he had had a run in with in O'Lucky Man. Checkout the Pig Man scene. This is well before Seinfeld.

The events in Britannia Hospital take place over tyhe course of a day. The hospital administration, headed by the perpetually agitated Mr Potter, performed with great aplomb by Leonard Rossiter, prepares for the arrival of a royal visitor (a Queen Mum type figure) to open its new ultra modern Miller wing. His job is not made easy due to the fact that the majority of the staff are out on strike. the union, lead by Ben Keating, is causing waves. And that Professor Miller is conducting bizzarre scientific experiments. Checkout the scene where Miller eats a piece of human brain, after cutting it in half and liquefying it in a blender. A nutricious drink, no less.

Amongst all this mayhem, there is a full scale riot later on, Travers tries to get the goods on Miller. With the assistance of Nurse Persil, played by Marsha Hunt, stiffy inducing in her tight uniform, and Red and Sammy, played by Mark (Star Wars) Hamill and Frank Grimes respectively, both of whom end up getting stoned out of their brains on a cocktail of drugs, Mick infiltrates the Miller wing and soon finds himself witnessing, and unwittinglly participating in, one of Miller's outragous experiments.

Meanwhile, chaos ensures as Britannia Hospital runs out of control and all of Potters plans are sent awry. He is even forced to resort to commit murder.

As is usual with an Anderson film the acting, by a top notch cast, most of whom had been in the previous two, is uniformly good. It is professionally shot by Mike Fash, although his work doesn't have the same feel to it that Miroslav Ondricek brought to the proceeding istalments, and is well produced.

All three films have recurring characters from each. Some of the charaters from If...., that didn't turn up in O'Lucky Man, returned for Britannia Hospital. The film was lambasted by the English critics on release, with one actually comparing it to a carry on film??? Yet, this wasn't wholly unexpected, as the other two weren't exactly welcomed with open arms, more so O'Lucky Man than If....

All three films are skillfully written by david Sherwin, with O'Lucky Man being based on an idea by Malcolm McDowell., who plays Mick travers in all of them.

From its opening scene where an elderly patient is left to die on a gurney to its final revalatory scene of Miller unvailing his greatest scientific achievement, the film is choc full of surprises. One character is played by a dwarf and another by a man in drag. Yet one of the more pleasant surprises is the performance of Robin Askwith as Ben Keating, the school bully from If...., Askwith' film debut. Keating has organised a strike by the kitchen staff in retaliation for Potter ordering sixty-five ambassador class lunches from Furtnum's. Askwith handles his role with skill, making Keating quite a likable character. It just goes to show what a good director and good dialogue can achieve. It is certainly a far cry from his sex film days. And it is good to see what he is capable of, given the chance. Unfortunately, it was all a bit too late, and after appearing in two seasons of the telly series the Bottle Boys, he slipped into obscurity, doing panto and clubs, only to reappear sixteen years later in Eastenders.

Britannia Hospital also proved to be one of the last decent films Malcolm McDowell was to appear in. The British film industry was in dire trouble by this time. Arab oil money had dried up and the Americans were pulling out. Also, the notorious film Caligula, which McDowell had filmed back in 1977, had recently been released to universal outrage, combined together, this put the kybosh on his career in England. However, he didn't fair any better in the states, where he had moved to after making Time After Time (1979). And his career since then has been an almost endless stream of B-grade drivel.

Over the years Britannia Hospital, as with the other two, has been reivaluated and is now considered another classic from the Anderson stable. I could have told them this when I first saw it back in '82.

Trivia:

*McDowell didn't take a fee for the film as a favour to Anderson, due to the fact the budget was so low.

*Alan Bates plays a patient who is murdered by Miller, so he can use his head in his latest experiment.

This was Arthur Lowe's last fim. He died not long after the film came out.

So put a day aside, grab If...., O'Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital and take an epic journey into the humorously dark and surreal world of Lindsay Anderson. There will never be another.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Off the Rails, August 7, 2007

By 

James Carragher (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Britannia Hospital (DVD)

Something happened to Lindsay Anderson between O! Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital. They, like If..., are both ferocious satires, but where O! Lucky Man attacked its targets with wit and energy, Britannia is an angry, predictable bludgeon. It's as if all the ingredients in the film are, like half a brain in one particularly witless scene, tossed into a blender, whirled together and served frenetically for nearly two hours. All in all, it's misanthropy times 10, mitigated only by an equally savage, but appropriate, satire of the mad, egocentric doctor's purported improvement on humanity. Remember Anderson for If.. and Lucky Man, but not this.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars NOT PART THREE, February 15, 2007

By 

Michael Osborn (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Britannia Hospital (DVD)

Britannia Hospital was initially a disappointment because it is generally considered to be the third part of the Mick Travis trilogy, which it isn't. The script and preproduction were already under way before Malcolm McDowell became involved with the film, and he was added only as an afterthought and was wasted. One of the minor and somewhat incidental character's name was changed to Mick Travis. This decision to "cash in" was fatal to the millions of fans of `O Lucky Man' and `If.." who came to see the further adventures of Mick Travis. And it subsequently killed this film like a James Bond movie would if it didn't have much James Bond in it.
On its own, it is a quirky tale of a British government hospital that caters to the elite members of society as it prepares for a visit from H.R.H. (Her Royal Highness). The hospital director will stop at absolutely nothing to make this happen, to the point of absurdity. He persists despite the fact that outside the gates appear thousands of violent, communist, anti-monarchial protesters who despise the exclusivity of Britannia Hospital and also will stop at nothing to achieve their destructive goal.
Between these two clashing groups is the staff research scientist, the Dr. Frankenstein-like Prof. Miller, who has perfected his technique for the revivification of flesh which he plans to use on a body he has sewn together from parts of dead bodies, nothing will stand in his way either.
It is like the philosophy puzzle with a third element, "What happens when the unstoppable meets the immovable and the impossible?" Entertaining but very English in that the humor is dry and more of a `heh-heh' rather than a `HA HA'.