2. The Bed-Sitting Room (dir. Richard Lester, 1969)
Nobody makes cult films like the British, and
The Bed-Sitting Room is one of the strangest films of the 1960s (which is saying a lot, considering my next choice on this list). Starting out in life as a one-act play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, who collaborated in the later stages of
The Goon Show,
The Bed-Sitting Room depicts a post-apocalyptic Britain in which the Queens tea-lady Mrs. Ethel Shroake is on the throne, the Circle Line is being powered by a man on a bicycle, people randomly turn into inanimate objects, and Peter Cook is God (well, sort of). The film is directed by Richard Lester, who worked with The Beatles on
Help! and
A Hard Days Night before gaining mainstream recognition through
The Three and
Four Musketeers and his work on
Superman II and
III. Coming at a time when he was still considered an experimental filmmaker, its filled with weird experiments with colour and sound, some of which remain endearingly weird. The plot is in the absurdist tradition of Samuel Beckett, in which nothing appears to be going on and yet so much is happening. Its completely uneven and insane, but theres so much different stuff going on that youre bound to find something youll enjoy.
Three Men on a Blog review - The Movie Hour podcast: #1