THE COOL MIKADO
UK, 1982, 81 minutes, Colour.
Frankie Howerd, Stubby Kaye, Mike Winters, Tommy Cooper, Dennis Price, Jacqueline Jones, Kevin Scott, Jill Mai Meredith, Lionel Blair, Dermot Walsh.
Directed by Michael Winner.
The Cool Mikado must be one of the most oddball of British films. It was made when the copyright for Gilbert and Sullivan’s works lapsed, fifty years after W.S. Gilbert’s death. This film is a presage of what was to come in the adaptations of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to more contemporary styles.
However, the musical styles here are a mixture of the authentic songs (generally sung by choruses), more jazzed versions (by John Barry, the celebrated composer at the beginning of his career) and a twist version of ‘Tit Willow’, sung and danced by actor, comic, choreographer, Lionel Blair.
This would be enough to give Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados a stroke.
The story then is updated to the 1950s. It is set in Japan with occupying American forces. However, some of the characters who are meant to be Japanese are Americans or English. The film starts on a plane with Stubby Kaye as a loud American talking incessantly. The man next to him, played by Kevin Scott, tells the story of his experience in Japan and so it is a flashback to the basic Mikado story.
Frankie Howerd is Ko Ko, Stubby Kaye is the judge, the father of the hero. Tommy Cooper, getting a chance to do some of his comic routines, is Poo Baa the private detective. Dennis Price is Ronald Fortescue, the consul who is to fix up everything at the end. Jill Mai Meredith is Yum Yum and Jacqueline Jones is Katie, instead of Katya. Lionel Blair at a club is Nanki Poo.
While all the characters are there and the basic plot is followed, it is not particularly well acted except for Stubby Kaye as a professional both in comic acting and singing. Frankie Howerd does his usual thing.
Most of the songs are reproduced in varying forms – and with varying qualities of voice and style.
One of the main interests is that this was made at the beginning of Michael Winner’s career. He was twenty-six when he made the film (and others in the making also show that it is a young person’s enterprise). However, Michael Winner was to go on to make a number of interesting films during the 1960s in England including such films as I’ll Never Forget Whatsisname, Hannibal Brooks, The Games. During the 1970s he went to the United States where he was much more successful with Lawman, The Night Comes, Chato’s Land, The Mechanic, Death Wish, a strong partnership with Charles Bronson as well as Scorpio with Paul Scofield and Burt Lancaster. He was less successful in the 1970s and the 1980s making a couple of Death Wish sequels as well as The Wicked Lady. He did not make many films during the 1990s – but continually appears, quite eccentrically and comically, on television panels as well as doing a lot of television advertising in the United Kingdom.
A cinema curio.
