Popular reviews

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  Review by Chris Browning ★★★

  although it's fascinating to see all four goons together on screen, "down among the z men" is such a compromise in terms of what we expect from the show *because* it's from the earliest years of the show. none of the characters translate well to screen, except for neddie seagoon/ harry jones because secombe always played the avuncular straight man at the best of times. bentine's pureheart almost survives, but again that's because bentine never really fully assimilated with the other three and often felt like one silly bit too many. bloodnok is unrecognisable and eccles is almost comprehensible and those are NEVER good signs

  instead, we basically get a bit of nostalgia from all four men to their formative…

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  Review by Jumpingfrog ★★

  An unsuccessful attempt at a Goon film. Produced too early in the run before they hit their stride, but featuring Bentine, whose radio appearances have almost all been lost. The script which isn't by Milligan, is silly rather than surreal and is barely amusing. Secombe carries what plot there is. Sellers unlike the rest underplays his part Colonel (rather than Major) Bloodnok and even this early proves himself a capable actor, he just isn't given anything funny to do. Bentine (perhaps as we're unfamiliar of his radio part) is just weird. Milligan comes off best as Eccles and is occasionally funny.

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  Review by Seanie 🇬🇧 ½

  Professor Pureheart (Michael Bentine) has a brainwave in the local grocery store and works out the formula he’s been devising, only to lose it. Starring Harry Sercombe, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. The third Goon film. The plot is so weak (if you can call it a plot) that most of the film is spent watching Sercombe and Milligan mucking around as army recruits and attending an army talent show. There are a couple of good jokes but most are few and far between. I feel that The Goons feel the film is funnier than it actually is and no amount of silly voices will save it  Very dated comedy.

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★

  It was impossible to transfer The Goons from the radio to the big screen and this certainly goes to prove that, coming off like a very, very weak Marx Brothers film rather than anything comparable to the outlandish genius of the radio shows.

  Still, this serves as a valuable document and a chance to see Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine together on film as the latter left the ensemble shortly afterwards, and I still have fond memories of seeing this as a child on Saturday mornings back in the 80s or whenever rain stopped play during the Test match!

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  Review by daria ★★★

  i mean, i watched it just for 27 y.o. peter sellers, but yeah, i’ll watch the last show of The Goons too

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  Review by CinemaSerf ★★

  I was never a great fan of any of the "Goons" so approached this with quite a bit of trepidation. Sadly, it is all rather silly and presented in such a stilted fashion as to appear to have been rehearsed to within an inch of it's life - totally devoid of anything that looked convincingly genuine or spontaneous. There is a storyline involving a rather flaky professor who leaves a top secret formula in a grocer's shop. When he attempts to return it, he is mistaken for one of the "Z" (British army reservists) men, dragooned into the army and soon exposed to criminals who are also after this scientific boon. Curiously enough, there are one or two quite redeeming…

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  Review by ArizonaJim ★½

  The Goons were part of my childhood, not as a reality, rather as a reputation. Their 1950s radio shows were the big influence on the Monty Python bunch...and on John Lennon's humour. The Goons' humour was anarchic and 'surrealistic' and wasn't so much a breath of fresh air in the stuffy 1950s BBC, as a gale of fresh air...at least, so was their reputation: I never heard that much, a lot of their shows were lost and if they were repeated I didn't hear them. (Although my older brother had a book of their scripts.) By my childhood Peter Sellers was a Hollywood star, Spike Milligan (the main creative force behind the Goons) was a wayward comic talent on TV…

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  Review by Charles Montague ★★½

  A Goons film should definitely be getting more than **1/2, it’s lucky to get that to be honest. No wonder I got rid of my VHS years back.

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  Review by loureviews ★½

  I L<3ve Musicals!

  Of historical interest since this is the only time on film that all four original Goons are together (Bentine moved on soon after this to solo work). Sadly, this is not a good or funny film, and really it doesn't show any of the team at their best.