Twins John and Roy Boulting were the Coen Brothers of postwar British movies. They wrote, produced and directed their films, swapping credits so that sometimes Roy was listed as director and John as producer, and vice versa. Sometimes they worked with other writers, sometimes not.
In 1956, they burlesqued the British Army in Private’s Progress. That film starred Ian Carmichael (later Lord Peter Wimsey on TV) as Stanley Windrush, minor nobility and major boob, who learns what he needs to know to survive in uniform: the scams, tricks for time-wasting, disrespect for authority, etc. Three years later, Stanley returned in I’m All Right Jack, to learn the same lessons in postwar British industry.
He gets a job as an efficiency expert working for his uncle whose company has landed a contract to build missiles for a Middle Eastern principality. Problem is, Uncle Bertie (Dennis Price) wants to lose the contract, which he underbid, so it will go to his nefarious pal Sidney De Vere Cox (Richard Attenborough), whose company will make a fortune to be split between the schemers.
Bertie knows Stanley well, and he’s honest, good-hearted, incredibly inept and certain to piss off the workers so thoroughly they’ll go out on strike. Since the union leader is played by Peter Sellers with a brilliant Hitler mustache, and the human resources officer is Terry-Thomas at his smarmiest, it’s a done deal.
The Boultings didn’t like Sellers much — Roy once said, “As a man, he was probably his own worst enemy, although there was plenty of competition” — but he was such a terrific comic character actor before he became a movie star, they had to use him. You don’t need to know anything about working conditions in Britain in the 1950s to appreciate Terry-Thomas explaining, “We’ve got chaps here who could break out in a muck sweat merely by standing still.”
Gotta go. It’s break time. —Doug Bentin
Stepping up to right wrongs and challenge the Templars is Scorpio, a disillusioned former member who looks like a hunky Peter Riegert. He’s joined by a vacant female love interest, a rock-slinging, tow-headed ugly kid and, best of all, crossbow-wielding Fred Williamson and his girly headband, rightfully playing a guy named Nadir.
When I popped the 
Eventually, the demons appeared at the Halloween party and the characters grew less overtly hateful, and while I never actually found myself enjoying the film, it also never tortured me as much as the original. It is interesting to note that in the remake’s recreation of the infamous lipstick-in-the-tit scene, Diora Baird’s fake fake boobs look much more fake than Linnea Quigley’s original fake fake boobs, which suggests the art of fake-boob prosthesis is the one special effect that hasn’t advanced much in the intervening years.
Then and only then do the spirits of the royalty leap from their paintings and converse with them. One of the ghosts is — and, oh, I do so hope the title of the film didn’t spoil this for you! — without a head. In order to bust an ancient curse wide open, he sure could use that noggin. The payoff scene finds the headless body running around like a loon as his melon hovers overhead.