One Way Pendulum (1965) watch online HD

This is an absolutely bizarre crazy film. You watch puzzled (for me) till the conversation about having arms shortened to fit sleeves and the light bulb brightens:) Saw it in an art theater in the States about 2 years after it was released and was blown away. I have been telling people about it for years and am ecstatic about it being acknowledged as even existing (it was invisible on the Web for a very long time - you had to go to Beyond the Fringe and work backwards) If I could find it it any playable format I would get it in an instant - track the strangeness picked up in later 60's films - Beatles included. If it ever surfaces and you are into 'quirky-ness' be sure to sit back and enjoy.

I first saw this weird film in the early 70's and was aghast at its strangeness. A father (Eric Sykes) who is obsessed with the Old Bailey and is building a replica in his front room, a son who nicks 'speak your weight' machines and adjusts their innards so they sing together like a choir ('fifteen stone, ten pounds!') and an attractive young daughter who thinks she looks like a monkey. Add in a live-in Aunt who thinks she's waiting for a train and Mrs Gantry (the wonderful Peggy Mount) who 'pops in' to eat leftover food (a service for which she makes a charge) and we have what could be a very disturbing film if it wasn't so funny. And although we laugh at the 'funny' bits, we shake our heads and mutter 'what?'. This film's screenplay must be the product of a disturbed mind, but it is so well done by the cast and director that it works brilliantly. We have a VHS recording of this, made from a 1980's TV showing - I really must dig it out!

I last saw this movie in 1970. I was discussing the funniest movies of all time and this one came to my head. Very bizarre movie, but incredibly funny. Absurd situations and dialog. If you liked Monty Python, this is your movie. I remember one particularly funny line. When asked by a friend why their son always dresses in black, the mother responded that they decided before he was born to dress him in white if he turned out to be black or to dress him in black if he turned out white. Her friend then asks if her husband has any Negro blood. She responds that she's not sure, but he does keep a lot of strange things in jars in the attic. Very non-PC, but it's all in good fun.

The original play by N F Simpson (who also wrote "A Resounding Tinkle" is even weirder! Mr Groomkirby is working his way through a series of historic buildings ("When we had Stonehenge and people called us Druids!), Sylvia actually wants to look like an ape so that she can touch her toes without bending down etc. The plot is a conflation of literalisms ("into the jaws of Death" is no mere metaphor here) and bizarrrerie by modified context, e.g. the son and father have hobbies such as model building, collecting and choir training whilst the teenage(?)daughter worries of over her looks.John Cleese saw this film in the cinema in Weston Supermare and it seems to have stayed with him ever since. If you haven't seen it you have missed a true classic of surrealist comedy!

it's wonderful when it was last on TV about 600 years ago, the TV times said "if you think the world is round then don't bother watching this" that sums it up, it's absurd and very funny for example - jonathan miller is his son, he steals speak your weight machines and retunes them to different notes so he can get them to play a symphony julia foster is his daughter who thinks her arms are too long after watching the monkeys too much at the zoo. peggy mount is the neighbour who they pay to come and eat up all the left over food. eric sykes is building a copy of the old bailey in the living room - after that it gets mad. Come on TV companies - it's about time we saw it again.

I watched this film with practically no prior knowledge of it and for the first fifteen minutes or so I thought it was shaping up into a typical farce or situation comedy of the era with one or two elements which seemed a little too far-fetched. However, the dialogue and the situations become even more bizarre and then, at about 40 minutes in, the film turns completely on its head with a wholly surreal twist.

This film is wonderfully bonkers, incredibly inventive with a small but excellent cast and a plethora of richly absurd lines of dialogue. The characters almost without exception see the peculiarities in their peers whilst being completely oblivious to their own eccentricities and in that sense is a wonderful observation of our own individual failings. It won't appeal to everyone, but if you like the humour of Monty Python, Spike Milligan or, especially, The Strange World of Gurney Slade, you should love this overlooked, and largely forgotten gem.

I see it flopped on its original release, maybe it was too ahead of its time, or more likely people watched it with expectations that this film would deliver a comprehensible plot with traditional gags. It doesn't. Like the main character, Mr Groomkirby, it exists in a world of its own - and we are privileged to be afforded a glimpse into it.

How weird is this movie? The soundtrack is provided by singing weight scales (you know, those public scales into which you place a coin and they "say-your-weight"). This film follows one day's activities of the Groomkirby family. Each member of the family is odder than the other, as each has a foible or two that redefines the meaning of the English eccentrism. The son, Kirby, for example, trains public weight-machines to sing in harmony, and his life functions appear to cease whenever a cash register rings, only to resume when it rings again. For all his time on camera, I don't believe he ever speaks a word. Do not learn too much ahead of time about what goes on in this film, so as to maximize your wonderment at the outré twists and turns.

The highlight of the film is the lengthy trial scene, held in Mr. Groomkirby's living room. You see, he has converted his living room into the Old Bailey, complete with a judge, attorneys, and a bailiff,and he is holding a murder trial for his son... The dialogue throughout the trial is astounding for its hilarious surrealness as well as its ability to sustain, unfalteringly, this manner for a full third of the film. The prosecutor and judge, for example, spend much time trying to dissect and understand the loose ends that Mr. Groomkirby says he found himself at; were the loose ends dangling? And the prosecutor also tries to convict Mr. Groomkirby of being a secret expert at geography; after all, he could not know he was in one city without deliberately avoiding other cities such as Rejkyaveck, which Mr. Groomkirby claims not to be familiar with...

Much has been written about this film's absurdist influence on John Cleese and the other Monty Python members. I will submit that the Pythons, influenced as they may or may not have been by this film, understood one thing that made them funnier: to make a character who is truly bizarre as funny as possible, you need to give him a "normal" person to play off of. In "One Way Pendulum", everyone is weird (with the exception of the daughter's suitor, who's role is secondary).

Classic British wit and sophisticated writing abound in this movie, and I highly recommend it. The trial scene in itself belongs in the British Film Comedy Hall of Fame.

"One Way Pendulum" is the type of film that won't be enjoyable to everyone. Some may think that's an understatement. Perhaps the better pronoun would be "many," as in many won't find it enjoyable. That's because this crazy film is… well, just that – crazy. It bounces all over the place with eccentric characters and situations. No one in the Groomkirby household is "normal" or sane.

Arthur Groomkirby (Eric Sykes) lives in a fantasy world in which he longs for being a great barrister or something like that. It's hard to tell, really. His son, Kirby (Jonathan Miller) is over the edge. He collects weight machines that were common in the mid-20th century. They "spoke" to people who weighed themselves. Kirby has wired them in some way that he makes a chorus out of them. It's beyond understanding, believe me.

Mrs. Groomkirby (Alison Leggatt) is eccentric just in being part of the clan. Sylvia (Julie Foster) might be close to normal, but she's part of this household. And anyone who's in it for long, can't be normal. George Cole plays family friend, Fred, also a defense counsel in Arthur's imaginary trial. Other characters in this trial are overboard wacko. Douglas Wilmer as the judge is so stupidly funny, and Graham Crowden as the prosecuting counsel is a broken record hung up on the time of 3:15, the 23rd of August. At one point, the judge says he won't foster in his court such "psychological poppycock." But, he notes that not one of the 43 murder victims has come forward to testify for the accused. The prosecuting counsel (Graham Crowden) grills Groomkirby about all the places he has never been. Groomkirby can't say, because he doesn't know where some of them are, i.e., Reykjavík, (Iceland).

There are other characters – Aunt Mildred, Detective Barnes, Mrs. Gantry, and more, who contribute to the irrationality of this script. Indeed, it seems more like a handful of separate skits pieced together. There is some dark stuff in the film, and some stuff that's not PC, but it's so overall wacko that it just seems part of the insanity.

People who enjoy far out comedy (or, perhaps flights of fancy themselves?) should enjoy this film. It will be confusing, even to most of we strange ones; but it's also very funny. Those not of this ilk had best not watch this film – you'll just turn it off or walk away soon after it starts anyway. Then, there's always the danger of a person who tends toward violence throwing a shoe at his TV or computer screen. No sense in destroying an expensive piece of equipment for such insanity.

Here are some of the more sophisticated lines – that make no sense at all, and are so funny because of it.

The Judge (Douglas Wilmer), "In deciding upon the sentence I shall impose in this case, I have been influenced by one consideration. It is this – that in sentencing a man to death for one crime, we may well be putting him beyond the reach of the law in respect of those crimes which he has not yet had an opportunity to commit. The law however is not to be cheated in this way. I shall therefore discharge you."

The Judge, "When did you cease your masochism?" Arthur Groomkirby, "It was taking up too much of my time."

Judge, "I see. The facts are beginning to emerge. You took up masochism when you began to realize that unless you did so, the end you were at might come away and you with it; and you remained loyal to your masochism just so long as it suited you. The moment it was no longer useful to you, you abandoned it without the slightest compunction. I can find no possible strain of excuse for behavior of this kind."

An enjoyable parade of loony nonsense, although little has been done to fill out the original stage play – a problem that is augmented by the static and totally uninventive direction of Peter Yates which relies heavily on TV-style close-ups. But even Yates could not smother this piece's glorious highlight, namely the delightful send- up of the typical movie version of an Old Bailey murder trial in which Graham Crowden is so wonderfully outrageous as your typical bullying prosecutor and George Cole is so delightfully put-upon as the harassed defense counsel, whilst Douglas Wilmer comes right across just perfectly as your always obtuse judge. In fact, the whole cast rises so splendidly to the script's lunatic demands that it's invidious to single out just a few of the players, but I absolutely must also mention Eric Sykes whose performance is so gloriously deft and congratulate Miss Foster who brings such marvelous talent to her role. I should mention that a lot of the humor is fostered because the players all seem to accept the lunatic events as perfectly normal. They say outrageous things with perfectly straight faces and don't indulge in the double takes and broad over-acting that most Hollywood players would employ.

I have longed to see this film and pestered Turner to show it for years, and finally they put it on in October 2011 as part of a Peter Yates series. It has a wonderful cast of British actors, including Graham Crowden (who appeared in the original play), George Cole, Mona Washbourne and Glyn Houston.

Jonathan Miller is cast against type as an almost nonverbal character who is training talking weighing machines to sing as a chorus. I was amazed to hear one of the songs they sang was Michael Brown's LIZZIE BORDEN from NEW FACES OF 1952! If you haven't read the play, you may have trouble following this when a living room turns into a court room; it must have been easier to grasp this watching it on stage where the room was assembled before the audience by the eccentric father.

Thank you, Turner, for finally letting the public see this!

I recently watched this movie again having only seen it once on TV in the early 1980s. I always remembered it as being one of the strangest films I'd ever seen and having finally watch it again, my opinion is just the same.

Eric Sykes stars as Mr Groomkirby who is essentially a dreamer who recreates the Old Bailey in his front room. The lead up to the court room is bizarre enough, however, the strangeness get even worse as the film progresses.

Jonathon Miller, Mr G's son, Kirby, is up in the loft trying to teach speak your weight machines to sing, he is apparently on trial for a related offence and various characters including Mr & Mrs Groomkirby give evidence.

Things take a strange turn when Mr G. is questioned about his whereabouts on a particular day and his answers revolved around Chester le Street (it really exists)and he eventually decides that perhaps he wasn't there after all following leading questions from the barrister.

All in all, one of the most bizarre movies you'll ever see and it's clear to see the path from this to Monty Python and practically everything that came after.

If it ever gets an official release, it's worth buying just to watch the totally absurdest nature of the comedy.

A must for comedy fans!