Loot Details

Joe Orton's mordant play is about a bundle of stolen money hidden in a coffin that gets buried in the churchyard. The body is hidden somewhere else. It's a ruthless satire on authoritarianism as well as a send-up of the Agatha Christie-style whodunnit which had kept the British theatre ticking over for decades. The play had gone from disaster to prize-winning success but the film version flopped badly. Reworked by TV writers Galton and Simpson, it's wholly faithful to Orton's surreal sense of humour and the extreme tackiness of the characters, especially Richard Attenborough who clearly delights in playing the creepiest, kinkiest detective you'll ever see. A movie of embalming fluid, garden gnomes and wallpaper that's violent enough to upstage a nuclear war.

A sad example of the process of literary castration. By the time Galton and Simpson's script (which adds 'comic' scenes... read more on Time Out