The Bed Sitting Room

Richard Lester – 1969 – England  

Could be seen as a sequel to Dr. Strangelove, or at least the British response to that film.  One of several aggressively satiric and slapstick films made Richard Lester in the 60s, following the lies of The Knack & How to Get It (1965), How I Won the War (1967), and others.  It is a biting, surreal comedy about the most horrendous situations in an England three years after a nuclear holocaust.  The family of pregnant Rita Tushingham emerges from the subway in search of a new home in the wastelands.  A man from the BBC comes around to pop his head behind rusted out televisions and read the last day’s news before the bombs fell.  A pair of government workers (Dudley Moore and Peter Cook) roam the countryside prompting citizens to keep moving in order to keep from being sitting targets for the enemy “again.”  Ralph Richardson is an eccentric inventor who becomes the first of several characters to undergo the most bizarre mutations; in his case he becomes a bed sitting room.