Where’s That Fire?
(1940)
(SPOILERS) Will Hay’s last film with Graham Moffatt (the tubby young impertinent
one) and Moore Marriott (the squeaky old put-upon one) in a relationship that
had spanned five years and seven films (albeit not always featuring all three
of them). After this, Hay would embark on a series of World War II propaganda
comedies, partnered by Claude Hulbert. Where’s
That Fire? is a so-so goodbye to the line-up, lacking the sheer
inventiveness of the previous year’s Ask
a Policeman, and heavily reliant on slapstick rather than Hay’s preferred
wit. Perfect foils that Moffatt and Marriott were, Hay might have been right to
break up the band.
Where’s That Fire?
was out of circulation for a long time owing to a rights issue; the BBC unearthed
it in 1975, but until recently it wasn’t available on DVD. It’s public domain, and viewable on YouTube. I hadn’t seen it since the ‘80s,
and remembered it as something of an interchangeable equal to Ask a Policeman. While Fire escapes the ignominy of never
having been remade by Cannon and Ball, it does very much run with the pedestrian
premise of “We made the boys rozzers, why not make them firemen now” without
having thrashed out a good storyline first.
Hay is Captain Benjamin Viking, accompanied as ever by
Jeremiah Harbottle (Marriott) and Albert Brown (Graham Moffatt), manning the
antiquated Bishop’s Wallop (great name) Fire Station. Par for the course, they’re
an incompetent/ light-fingered trio, and Viking is preoccupied with his
inventions in the basement, developing “a
scientific formula for putting out fires”. They completely fail to show up
to a huge oil factory blaze because (firstly) they didn’t hear the bell (“How long has that sock been there?”; the
item of footwear has muffled the bell “Since
you had insomnia” last week) and then because they get lost en route. They
failed to put out blazes in 17 properties over the previous six months (they
claim 16, which still seems like an awful lot for a little village; perhaps
writers Marriot Edgar, J.O.C. Cotton and Val Guest – director of the Cannon and
Ball The Boys in Blue debacle – should
have gone with an evil arsonist plot).
Given one more chance, they visit a London fire station
(where they proceed to pinch a load of equipment) before returning with the
motivation to upgrade their own. This introduces the most prolonged and
successful sequence of the picture, one that takes it up to the half hour mark
(still without the plot “proper” introduced). Attempting to install a fireman’s
pole (“All we’ve got to do is elevate the
pole in the perpendicular”), the trio get into a terrible bother,
interrupting traffic, managing to wedge it across the width of the street
outside, and finally attempting to lift it through the first floor window and
skylight of house where Albert’s dad lies stricken with a broken foot (“Get that parcel out of the way” instructs
Viking as he kicks the invalid’s plastered foot). The tiny room ends up
jam-packed with people, including the local doctor and Charles Hawtrey’s
know-it-all swot Woodley, who informs Viking he could sort it out very quickly,
if only he applied Euclidean geometry to the problem. The confined chaos
reminded me a little of the increasingly cosy cabin scene in the Marx Bothers’ Monkey Business.
Hawtrey had earlier appeared with Hay in Boys Will Be Boys and Good Morning, Boys and would later grace
The Ghost of St Michael’s and The Goose Steps Out, and seems far more invested
in his overgrown schoolboy act than his better known Carry On… persona of 20 years later. He’s an effective source of
superior antagonism for Hay, something he doesn’t get from his other
associates, and Hay inevitably resorts to threats of violence (“”Well, we did intend to put it up in our fire
station, but if you don’t push off, we might change our minds”).
Marriott always walks off with scenes in these pictures,
much in the way Harpo steals the limelight from Groucho. My favourite Harbottle
moment here is prior to this, when he finishes cutting a hole in the floor for
Albert. Naturally, Harbottle is kneeling within the circle of the hole and
plunges through the floor on top of an unsuspecting Viking. While Moore is
usually insolent, Marriott is perpetually downtrodden, here coming out worst
when the promise of £30 finds Hay defeating him from taking his share (“You always pick on me. Anyone would think
I’m a boy”; Marriott was known for playing above his age, and he was only
three years older than Hay).
Viking: Is it a big fire?
Harbottle: No, I’ve only just lit it.
It’s Harbottle who resorts to arson (“If I can’t get paid one way, I’ll take it another”) ill advisedly
setting a fire at the petrol statin, which can’t end well (Viking, like David
Bowie, ends up trying to put out the fire with gasoline).
So the plot the firemen eventually become embroiled in is a rather perfunctory afterthought. A crew of thieves rent their fire engine (for
that £30) because it’s a near double for the one used at the Tower of London;
they’re planning to steal the Crown Jewels. All that’s left is for Viking,
Harbottle and Albert to go looking for their missing engine and muck about in
an enormous array of foam (courtesy of Viking’s lucky/unlucky experiments with
homebrew). Harbottle in particular gets smitey with a sceptre. Their overcoming
the villains is quite by accident (“This
is our fire. We were here first” announces Viking as he engulfs them in
foam), and the thieves have cause to issue a suitably Scooby Doo grievance (“We
would have got away with them too, if it hadn’t been for this muck”).
Hay’s great crabby, and mercenary, fun of course (charged
five shillings for the oats given to their horse, he tells the desk sergeant “You should have given him sawdust. He
doesn’t know the difference”) and the three even come out on top this last time,
with interest shown in using the fire fighting formula employed during their
foam party finale.
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