"Stepford Wives" director Bryan Forbes' "The Wrong Box," adapted by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne, qualifies as a supremely silly Victorian comedy of errors about an unusual lottery. Michael Caine, Nanette Newman, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, John Mills, Ralph Richardson, and Peter Sellers, as well as a host of other familiar English character actors grace this amusing bit of nonsense. Rare is the film that can teach us new words, but "The Wrong Box" does. Specifically, we learn at the outset about the word tontine, and tontine means a lottery. A group of twenty relatives has contributed one-thousand pounds individually to a family lottery, but only the last surviving member of the family will inherit this fortune which has risen to the sum of a hundred-thousand pounds. After an opening scene when a cantankerous judge announces the tontine and its process, "The Wrong Box" presents a number of vignettes of people dying under humorous and not so humorous circumstances, until only two men remain. Masterman Finsbury (John Mills) and Joseph Finsbury (Ralph Richardson) are in their seventies. Masterman wants his clueless son Michael Finsbury (Michael Caine of "Play Dirty") to obtain the fortune so that he won't be crushed under an avalanche of bills. Michael is training to be a doctor. Masterman is a scheming, conniving imbecile, while his brother Joseph is a pedantic, equally oblivious man with has little concern for the tontine. That is not true of Joseph's two scheming sons Morris (Peter Cook) and John (Dudley Moore) who are just as treacherous as Masterman. At the same time, Michael has fallen hopelessly in love with his cousin Julia. Peter Sellers steals the show as a physician gone to seed. Wilfrid Lawson is a hoot as Masterman's braying butler Peacock. This featherweight fluff is entertaining from fade-in to fade-out.The plot goes in absurd circles as each struggles to outsmart the other. The major complication that occurs and is referenced in the title is head-on train wreck. Morris and John are taking Joseph to London when the train on which they are riding collides with another train, and Joseph is separated from his sons. At one point during the train ride, Joseph sneaks away from his sons to indulge in his nicotine habit and joins another man in a carriage. Morris and John track Joseph down to the new carriage, but they don't do anything initially until John spots Joseph scrambling along the aisle. As it turns out, Joseph forgot his deerstalker's cap and long coat and left in the compartment while he nicked out to smoke. Meantime, the other occupant, a fugitive from justice known as "Bournemouth Strangler" (Tutte Lemkow of "Red Sonja") appropriates Joseph's hat and coat. During the imaginatively stage train wreck, the Strangler dies, and Morris and John discover his body. Their cursory inspection fails to take in the fact that it is not their father but the fugitive. Nevertheless, the frantic brothers decide to bury their father in the forest to keep anybody from learning about his demise. Furthermore, they set out to find a doctor who can furnish them with a death certificate that they can post-date in the event that Masterman dies. Meantime, Joseph visits Masterman, and Masterman tries futilely to kill his brother. Morris and John ship the strangler's body in a box, but they send it to the wrong address. Hilarity ensures! Forbes' black comedy resembles Stevenson's book in several instances. First, it maintains that premise about the tontine and the feud between the two Finsbury brothers and the antics of their relatives in trying to win the money. The book contained a train wreck and so does the film, but Stevenson was not content with the initial characters and added several others. For example, Julia and Michael do not become romantically engaged. Michael is a lawyer instead of a doctor who is learning to cut up people. Mind you, the movie qualifies as far funnier than the novel and its structure is easier to follow. The performances are good, but Ralph Richardson steals the show every time that he shows up and launches into a lecture about some obscure thing or another before he wears out his welcome with whoever has the misfortune to prompt him onto one of his pretentious lectures. Actually, I think that Stevenson would have enjoyed this cinematic adaptation of his work. Fans of the composer John Barry will appreciate his serene orchestral score.

This movie has a very personal significance for me.I saw it on a double date in my senior year in high school. We all thought it screamingly funny, and so it is. (Though this was in Laguna Beach, California.) It is a crying shame that so few people have even heard about it.Not that it's perfect. Though Larry Gelbart (before his later "Tootsie" career) and then-partner Bert Shevelove had written the also hysterical "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," the movie version of which had also floored us, "The Wrong Box" kind of poops out at the end, despite a few good lines ("This is Julia Finsbury, shortly to become...Julia Finsbury"). And John Barry, whose work on the Bond films is non-pareil--despite the beautiful, but in retrospect inappropriate main theme--supplied music generally too genteel--especially for the Pink-Pantherish slapstick at the end.But in high school, my first drama monologues were those of Peter Cook (who back then I slightly resembled) from "Beyond the Fringe." (Which I can still do, word for word, to this day. I didn't realize what a prick he was until I saw the BBC TV movie, "Not Only But Also.") Nevertheless, and regardless of their personal relationship, Pete and Dud were brilliant comedians. And "The Wrong Box" shows them off to the best of their comedic abilities. (As does the original "Bedazzled," of a few years later.)PLUS, you've got Peter Sellers doing one of his most bizarre eccentrics, Ralph Richardson as probably the funniest bore ever to appear in a movie, Tony Hancock at his apoplectic best, and gorgeous photography (if you can ignore the TV antennae).In all, a genuine unsung British comedic masterpiece that deserves much wider recognition.

THE WRONG BOX begins with a sort of prologue. A group of wealthy men have entered their young sons in a tontine--a lottery, of sorts, where the one who dies last receives the entry fee paid by everyone--plus, years and years of interest on this principal. I read a set of novels by Thomas Costain about such a contest but always wondered who would bother with such an arrangement? After all, the surviving member would almost certainly be too old and infirm to enjoy it.The next portion of the film is the most humorous, as one by one you see the crazy ways that many in the tontine die. It's all done with a black sort of humor that I really enjoyed--and felt this was, by far, the best portion of the movie.Eventually, there are only two members of the tontine still alive--two brothers who can't stand each other. One brother (Ralph Richardson) is the single most boring man on the planet. How he survived this long without someone killing him is beyond me, as the guy just talks and talks and talks--boring the daylights out of anyone unfortunate enough to come near him. His two nephews (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) also can't stand him and begin scheming how they can get their hands on the money. There also is a niece and she's an oddball--part ultra-prude and part seething cauldron of passion. The other surviving brother (John Mills) seems to be in the worst health, but he, too, hates his brother and, if possible, he'd like to kill him--and he tries repeatedly. His grandson is played by Michael Caine--and he really, really likes his prudish (but hot) female cousin.While I noticed some of the the reviewers absolutely adored this film (one declared it among the 10 best films ever made), my praise is much more muted. While I like dark comedies, this one seemed very uneven. Apart from showing all the funny deaths at the beginning, I really liked Richardson's character. He was so awful he was pretty funny. Likewise, I really liked the big part played by Peter Sellers as the demented doctor. The less than stellar portions were Cook and Moore (yes, I know they are a bit of an institution in the UK due to their TV work together) and the unnecessary and distracting intertitle cards. Also, some times the humor just seemed a bit flat here and there. Plus, in the end, there really wasn't any real resolution! Overall, a good comedy but not a great one in my estimation.

somehow i missed the wrong box. in college i showed the on campus current films as well as classic films. but for years i have heard about wrong box or read about it. For the last few years, esp since i ran across IMDb, GREAT SITE, i looked for it in film houses & still could not find it. A few months ago i found a place that printed public domain films & bought a copy. ugh. Maybe its the years or too much anticipation but i was very disiappointed in the film. It had its funny moments but i felt the plot plodded along until the search for the box. Peter Sellers was wasted.Caine , Mills & Richardson, Cooke & Moore all did a good job of acting but there did not seem to be enough coherence in the plot to interest me. I will not say DON'T SEE IT because it may be someone else's cup of tea. I'd rather watch Peter Sellers in The Party. IF you would like to purchase my copy(seen once-DVD, reg. view I think), contact me at [email protected]