The League of Gentlemen (1960)
Directed by Basil Dearden
Involuntarily-retired Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.
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What critics compared The League of Gentlemen to
(For a subtler journey through such gradations, I recommend “The League of Gentlemen,” a British caper from 1960, about a gang of ex-soldiers, of varying ranks, who perpetrate a heist; in the opening shot, one of them emerges from a manhole, clad in a tuxedo, and gets into a Rolls-Royce.)
Its nastiest sight gags — a dead man’s head comfortably buried inside a smashed television set, a swimming pool filled with fresh corpses, an Alsatian leg twirling lovingly over a patio fire — recall the show “The League of Gentlemen,” which was both pitch black yukfest and demented horror.
The film was directed and co-written by Sarah Smith, a producer on the British sketch comedy "The League of Gentlemen" - and a practiced hand at black comedy.
Smith and Baynham come from daft grown-up British TV comedies like "The League of Gentlemen," "The Armando Iannucci Shows," and "I'm Alan Partridge," while their producing partners are from Aardman Animations -- i.e., the Wallace and Gromit people.
This sparkling bauble comes courtesy the folks at Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run), and writer/director Sarah Smith (Brit sketch comedy The League of Gentlemen) who have sprinkled the film with sly adult humour that will flurry over the heads of the younger audience members (including fun sight gags like a well-placed canister of “chimney lube”), ensuring that each repeat viewing is sure to unearth new comedic gems to appreciate.