Up Pompeii (film)

Up Pompeii is a 1971 British sex comedy film directed by Bob Kellett and starring Frankie Howerd and Michael Hordern. The film was shot at Elstree Film Studios, Borehamwood, England and is based on characters that first appeared in the British television sitcom Up Pompeii! (1969–1975).

Up Pompeii
Theatrical poster
Directed byBob Kellett
Produced byNed Sherrin
Written bySid Colin
StarringFrankie Howerd
Michael Hordern
Music byCarl Davis
CinematographyIan Wilson
Edited byAl Gell
Production
company
Anglo-EMI
London Associated Films
Distributed byMGM-EMI
Release date
1971
Running time
90 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£200,000[1]

Plot

Lurcio (Frankie Howerd) becomes the inadvertent possessor of a scroll bearing all the names of the proposed assassins of Nero (Patrick Cargill). The conspirators need to recover the scroll fast, but it has fallen into the hands of Lurcio's master, Ludicrus Sextus (Michael Hordern), who mistakenly reads the contents of the scroll to the Senate. Farcical attempts are made to retrieve the scroll before Pompeii is eventually consumed by the erupting Vesuvius.

Cast

Production

The Robert Stigwood Organisation had money in the film.[2]

A version was made for American audiences with six minutes of additional footage including a prologue and epilogue and Lurcio setting the scene.[1]

Reception

Box office

The film was the 10th most popular movie at the British box office in 1971.[3][4] By June 1972 it had earned EMI a profit of £20,000.[5]

gollark: Surely your ultimate cosmic powers should at least extend to spelling power correctly. I mean, I can do that, and I'm not a god at least 83% of the time.
gollark: Greetings, "le bunker de corona" members. I am gollark, otherwise known as osmarks, a human. As someone who is totally a human, I exist, and do human things such as (not limited to): consuming food; consuming water; sleeping; not sleeping; sitting in chairs; motion; social interaction; thought.I enjoy things such as authorship of highly accursed code in a wide range of programming languages, computational gaming, reading scifi/fantasy, and sometimes (when I am not horribly distracted) reading about various maths topics.If you are reading this, it is already too late.Feel free to DM me iff Riemann hypothesis!I have harvested some insightful quotes:“You know what they say, speak softly but carry a tungsten slug accelerated to a measurable fraction of C.” “I mean, we could use it to destroy the Universe, but we'd have to add a lot of antimatter. Which pretty much goes for all other matter.”“The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."“The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.”“Eventually all the people who hate this kind of thing are going to be dead, and the ones who use it are going to be in control.” - a linguist“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.” “Ignorance of insecurity does not get you security.” “I don't always believe in things, but when I do, I believe in them alphabetically.” “If you're trying to stop me, I outnumber you 1 to 6.”
gollark: Does it? I thought you only needed to look after and before a bit up to a digit which would require carrying. Or something like that.
gollark: No, but you can use accursed streaming base conversion algorithms™ probably.
gollark: I had a paper on generating digits of things like that using a generalized base conversion algorithm on infinite lazy streams, 'twas very weird.

References
  1. Moody, Paul (19 October 2018). EMI Films and the Limits of British Cinema. Springer. p. 104.
  2. City comment: Thanks to the pound Swan, Hunter; Stigwood, Robert. The Guardian 2 Aug 1972: 16.
  3. Peter Waymark. "Richard Burton top draw in British cinemas." Times [London, England] 30 Dec. 1971: 2. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 11 July 2012.
  4. Harper, Sue (2011). British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure: The Boundaries of Pleasure. Edinburgh University Press. p. 269.
  5. Moody, Paul (19 October 2018). EMI Films and the Limits of British Cinema. Springer. p. 83.


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