The Big Freeze | |
---|---|
Directed by | Eric Sykes |
Written by | Eric Sykes |
Starring | Eric Sykes Bob Hoskins Eila Roine |
Release date |
|
Running time | 45 minutes |
Countries | United Kingdom Finland [1] |
Language | English |
The Big Freeze is a 1993 featurette-length film written and directed by Eric Sykes. The action centres on mishaps involving a father and son plumbing team attending to business in sub-zero temperatures at a retirement home in Finland. Like other Sykes directorial vehicles, the piece is a silent comedy with a star cast - here including Bob Hoskins, John Mills, Donald Pleasence and Spike Milligan.
A silent comedy. Two accident-prone plumbers go to fix the plumbing at a home for retired gentle-folk on the coldest day of the year in Finland. Everything that can go wrong for these plumbers goes wrong.
The film was shot in Hervanta and Teisko, both districts in Tampere, Finland. [4]
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British India, where he spent his childhood before relocating in 1931 to England, where he lived and worked for the majority of his life. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.
The Goon Show is a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme. The first series, broadcast from 28 May to 20 September 1951, was titled Crazy People; subsequent series had the title The Goon Show.
Eric Sykes was an English radio, stage, television and film writer, comedian, actor and director whose performing career spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, John Antrobus and Johnny Speight. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, which include collaboration on some scripts for The Goon Show. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in several popular BBC comedy television series.
Super Mario Bros. is a 1993 fantasy adventure comedy film based on Nintendo's Super Mario video game series. The first American feature-length live-action film based on a video game, it was directed by the husband-and-wife team of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runté, and Ed Solomon, and distributed by Buena Vista Pictures through Hollywood Pictures. It follows brothers Mario and Luigi Mario in their quest to rescue Princess Daisy from a dystopic parallel universe ruled by the ruthless President Koopa.
William Henry Kerr was a British and Australian actor, comedian, and vaudevillian.
Johnny Speight was an English television scriptwriter of many classic British sitcoms.
John Bluthal was a Polish-born Australian actor and comedian, noted for his six-decade career internationally in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Mary Hayley Bell, Lady Mills was an English actress and writer, married for 64 years to actor Sir John Mills. Her novel Whistle Down the Wind was adapted as a film, starring her teenaged daughter, actress Hayley Mills.
William Simpson Fraser was a Scottish actor who appeared on stage, screen and television for many years. In 1986 he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance for his stage role in the play When We Are Married.
The Plank is a 1967 British slapstick comedy film directed and written by Eric Sykes, and starring Sykes, Tommy Cooper and Jimmy Edwards, and featuring many of the top British comedians and comic actors of the time. It was produced by Jon Penington for Associated London Films.
Rhubarb is a 1969 British short film written and directed by Eric Sykes, starring Sykes, Harry Secombe and Jimmy Edwards. The dialogue consists entirely of repetitions of the word "rhubarb", all the characters' last names are "Rhubarb", the vehicle number plates are "RHU BAR B", and a baby "speaks" by holding a sign with the word "rhubarb" written on it. Sykes remade the film in 1980 as Rhubarb, Rhubarb for Thames Television.
Brian Todd, known professionally as Bob Todd, was an English comedy actor, mostly known for appearing as a straight man in the sketch shows of Benny Hill and Spike Milligan. For many years, he lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Edward Ian MacNaughton was a Scottish actor, television producer and director, best known for his work with the Monty Python team.
Sykes and a... is a black-and-white British sitcom starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques that aired on BBC 1 from 1960 to 1965. It was written by Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight, John Antrobus and Spike Milligan. Sykes and a... was the first television series to feature both Sykes and Jacques, who later starred in Sykes and a Big, Big Show and Sykes, the latter of which featured the same characters and reused some of the same scripts.
Beryl Frances Vertue was an English television producer, media executive, and agent. She was founder and chairman of the independent television production company Hartswood Films.
Orders Are Orders is a 1955 British comedy film directed by David Paltenghi, and featuring Brian Reece, Peter Sellers, Sid James, Tony Hancock, Raymond Huntley, and Bill Fraser. It was written by Geoffrey Orme and Donald Taylor. Eric Sykes contributed to the script and appears in a minor role. It was a remake of the film Orders Is Orders (1933), itself based on the 1932 play Orders Are Orders by Ian Hay and Anthony Armstrong.
Watch Your Stern is a 1960 British comedy film directed by Gerald Thomas and starring Kenneth Connor, Eric Barker and Leslie Phillips. It was written by Alan Hackney based on the play Something About a Sailor by Earle Couttie.
Captain Jack is a 1999 British comedy film produced by John Goldschmidt and written by Jack Rosenthal. The cast includes Bob Hoskins, Sadie Frost, Gemma Jones, Anna Massey, Peter McDonald, Maureen Lipman and Michele Dotrice. The film was produced by Goldschmidt's own company Viva Films Ltd. and was distributed on video by Koch Vision.
It's Your Move is the title of two short films written and directed by Eric Sykes. The story of both films involves a married couple moving into a new home and enduring the ineptitude of removal men. As with most other films directed by Sykes, the action unfolds in a style echoing the silent, slapstick comedy era.
Associated London Scripts (ALS) was a writers' agency organised as a co-operative which involved many leading comedy and television writers of the 1950s and 1960s.