The Ladykillers (1955)

Pretending to be musicians, a gang of thieves rent a room from a little old lady (Katie Johnson) and plan their heist. Things don’t go as planned.

Quite unintentionally, this is the third black comedy I’ve hit recently. Leader Obi Wan (Alec Guinness) hatches a complicated plan and puts all of the pieces in place, including their charming landlady. The producers balked at casting the 76 year old Johnson and hired a younger actress, who died prior to filming. And so it goes.

A young and somewhat hard to recognize Peter Sellers appears in what he called his first ‘real’ film. He idolized Alec Guinness, who was insecure about his role. Originally intended for Alastair Sim, Guinness did a better than fair impersonation of him. Herbert Lom played another thug and would go on to co-star with Sellers in the Pink Panther series.

I suppose this falls into the ‘caper gone wrong’ subgenre and the plan was quite ingenious. I had watched the remake and it stands as the only Coen Brothers movie that disappointed me. As for the original, it was amusing, clever, and interesting to the finish. AMRU 4.