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A Jolly Bad Fellow
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Wikipedia article
'A Jolly Bad Fellow' (US: 'They all Died Laughing') is a 1964 British black comedy film directed by Don Chaffey. It stars Leo McKern and Janet Munro.[https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6ada7b10 "A Jolly Bad Fellow (1964)"], British Film Institute. Retrieved 30 April 2021
Cast
* Leo McKern as Prof Bowles-Ottery
* Janet Munro as Delia Brooks
* Maxine Audley as Clarina Bowles-Ottery
* Duncan Macrae as Dr Brass
* Dennis Price as Prof Hughes
* Miles Malleson as Dr Woolley
* Leonard Rossiter as Dr Fisher
* Alan Wheatley as Epicene
* Patricia Jessel as Mrs Pugh-Smith
* Dinsdale Landen as Fred
* George Benson as Inspector Butts.
Plot
Kerris Bowles-Ottery is professor of science at the University of Ockham. To advance his career he poisons inconvenient colleagues with an untraceable substance he has discovered that induces hysteria and manic behaviour followed by death. His research assistant, Delia, blackmails him into a promise of marriage, but he remains attached to his wife, and poisons Delia. When the police arrive at his home to question him he flees in his car but fatally crashes it as a result of smoking a poisoned cigarette that his wife has unknowingly brought from his laboratory.
Reception
In a 2017 study of Bryanston Films, Duncan Petrie writes that the film did not make "any impact either commercially or critically" When the film was released in the US (under the title 'They All Died Laughing'), 'The New York Times' called it "nonconformist but not especially side-splitting" although having "a deftly casual air about it as well as the polish of professionalism".[https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/16/archives/comedy-at-the-coronet.html "Comedy at the Coronet"], 'The New York Times', 16 March 1964
References
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