Product Details

• Actors: Benny Hill, Patricia Hayes, Eira Heath, Henry McGee, Nicholas Parsons
• Directors: John Robins
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Hbo Home Video
• VHS Release Date: January 20, 1998
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301930959
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,658 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Benny Hill's talent for visual comedy made him one of the world's most popular comedians. This compilation, which offers a typical selection of sketches from his long-running TV show, stars the lad himself along with Henry McGee, Bob Todd (who frequently demonstrates just how bad a middle-aged man can look in women's underwear), and Jack Wright (the little old man who was always getting slapped on the head).

Two hours is an awful lot of Benny, and this tape is best dipped into unless you have a very high tolerance for buxom blondes being chased at high speed by lecherous men. Hill's silent sketches, filled with rapid-fire sight gags, are what made his show successful in so many different countries. Comparisons with Chaplin and Keaton might be stretching the issue (and he does steal one gag from Jacques Tati's M. Hulot's Holiday) but this tape shows that Hill was an inventive comic writer. Highlights include a spoof of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and a sketch in which Benny portrays a gallery of '70s TV detectives, from Kojak to Ironsides.

It's impossible to escape the fact that some of the racial and sexual stereotypes in The Benny Hill Show are more likely to cause offense than laughter today. Nevetheless, if you can fast-forward through the most embarrassing sketches (Benny as an incomprehensible, squinting Chinaman, for example), there are some great gags, and although skeptics are unlikely to be converted by this marathon compilation, fans of Benny Hill will be thoroughly entertained. --Simon Leake

From the Back Cover

Benny Hill's particular brand of humor is probably the most unexpected British conquest of America since the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. His zany sketches have take the country by storm - and who can get enough of him? For all his established fans, and those new to his name, this is the very best of Benny Hill, rapid fire, unabashed and brilliantly funny - a hilarious good time! 120 Minutes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Funny, May 29, 2000

By	[e-mail] "mistermaxxx" (usa) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Best of Benny Hill [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Benny Hill is One Of the Greatest Comedy Talents Ever!His Vision on His Shows always had me Rolling.He was not Only The Writer&Director but also Wrote The Music as Well.He was A Genius Of Humor.this is a Must.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Benny Hill sampler has some funny material, October 31, 2000

By	Scott MacGillivray (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Best of Benny Hill [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a feature-length compilation of sketches from Benny Hill's long-running TV series. If you're at all familiar with the genial British comedian, you'll know what to expect: plenty of girls, plenty of puns, plenty of obvious visual humor, and plenty of eccentrics dashing from here to there. Some of the sketches run on a bit longer than necessary, others are short and sweet. Movie buffs will love two sketches in particular: 1) Benny is the star of a 1930s late-show movie, but the print is terrible (Benny and the cast ingeniously simulate splicy dialogue, projection at the wrong speed, etc.); 2) A cineaste -- Hill's straight man Henry McGee in a delightfully over-the-top performance -- interviews famed French director Benny, asking searching questions and getting matter-of-fact answers. Benny's monologues are fun, too -- his story of a little boy who befriends a bird is timed beautifully. A technical note: this was released as a theatrical movie but much of it was originally shot on videotape. Thus the image transferred to film is sometimes a little grainy, but it's nothing distracting. If you like simple, lowbrow burlesque comedy, you'll certainly enjoy this tape.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uh yeah this IS the best of Benny Hill!, December 14, 2002

By	Gary Demirdjian (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Best of Benny Hill (DVD)

Having grown up in Sydney, Australia during the 1970's I was exposed to a lot of Benny Hill and this DVD contains but a small portion of the funny and brilliant comedy programming Benny made which I grew up watching. I happen to like his early stuff from the 70's as opposed to the later stuff he did in the 80's. Lucky for me this compilation movie was made in the mid-70's and has made it to DVD. The skits on this DVD represent the original years of Hill's brand of humor and I love it. The only drawback is that since some of the skits were shot on video the quality isn't as good as the superb quality of the skits shot on 16mm. On the contrary the other DVD(s) available that covers Hill's later years contains the boring, mundane humor in my opinion. I am very much hoping that I can get some more Hill programming on DVD from the 1970's, as presented on this DVD because as I said this is but a mere taste of Hill's early era of original and very funny yet risque humor. There's a lot more he did back in the 70's which hasn't made it to DVD yet. A lot more.

This DVD is the game and the others are lame.