CUCUMBER CASTLE (1970) THE BEE GEES, BLIND FAITH AND LULU

CUCUMBER CASTLE (1970) – Eight years before the Bee Gees embarrassed themselves on the big screen with a horrible movie forcing a storyline to the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band they embarrassed themselves on the small screen forcing a storyline to their own album Cucumber Castle.

Well sort of. Mostly they just appropriated the title of their song and album Cucumber Castle and fixated on the word “castle” to provide the premise of this 54-minute film made for British television.

Lulu, Spike Milligan, Vincent Price and many more show up in the supporting cast. Sammy Davis, Jr.’s scenes were cut. Or were removed under threats from Sammy’s pal Frank Sinatra. Not so lucky was Eleanor Bron. I can say no more. (See what I did there?) 

The musical misfire was directed by Hugh Gladwish … the director of THE GHOST GOES GEAR (1966), reviewed last week here at Balladeer’s Blog. Barry and Maurice Gibb are the credited writers, however, so the “comedy” sketches are only sometimes as bad as those in the 1966 theatrical movie. 

Cucumber Castle is so awful that not being in it was presumably brother Robin Gibb’s greatest professional triumph. He had recently left the Bee Gees in a huff to try a solo career, and little Andy Gibb was only twelve years old, so Barry and Maurice, who also produced, were left holding the whoopie cushion bag.

In a fairytale land resembling Elizabethan England, a king (comedian Frankie Howerd) is on his deathbed. Barry Gibb plays Prince Frederick and Maurice plays Prince Marmaduke, the king’s sons.

Not only does Howerd resemble Mel Brooks but his intentionally hammy performance as the dying monarch would fit right into a Brooks comedy. And Peter Blythe’s opening narration contained a couple of reasonably funny jokes, so I briefly dared to hope that this telefilm might be better than its reputation.

That was The First Mistake I Made, to force in the title of a Bee Gees song.

Barry and Maurice, in costume, paddle by singing a shortened version of Don’t Forget to Remember, one of the songs from Cucumber Castle. A few minutes later, an instrumental version of the title song plays as the opening credits are shown.

There’s no avoiding it, so let’s dive into the storyline. The king, attended by his nurse Sarah Charles Bottom (Pat Coombs), summons his two sons to his deathbed.

We get a “leeches” joke that made me smile, but then the king gets down to business. He is separating his domain into the Kingdom of Cucumber, ruled by Prince Frederick (Barry) and the Kingdom of Jelly, ruled by Prince Marmaduke (Maurice).

(Yes, jokes about Cucumber Jelly and Senna Pods are inflicted on the viewers.)

The brothers immediately abandon their father’s side to take over their respective realms. The film will periodically cut back to Howerd continuing his “I’m dying … DYING” histrionics, and those bits are funny.

Not so the rest of the material. Much of it is so bad it leaves a viewer wondering what is supposed to be humorous about it, or if it’s intended to amuse people from some bizarre parallel universe. Or maybe even people from France, since Jerry Lewis was considered a genius there.

We’re told that the brothers are both in love with their father’s nurse Sarah Charles Bottom, but she’s not ugly enough for that to be comical nor attractive enough for that to be a legitimate plot point. I know nothing about Pat Coombs, so maybe this was just her usual comedic schtick.

We’re also told that the evil Count Voxville (Vincent Price) is after Sarah, but the only character she does romantic scenes with is the Court Jester (Spike Milligan). Once again, Frankie Howerd gets a good bit as his dying king takes a break from bemoaning his imminent demise to say “Hey, is that Vincent Price? I should be playing that role!”

Price is mostly wasted in this and is a villain in name only as he gets lost amid the incoherent, inane and incomprehensible “comedy” set pieces. “Name only” could also describe what passes for Vincent’s parting joke later on – he mouths his name to the camera as his character walks by at one point, never to be seen again. It’s that kind of flick.

NOTE: Barry and Maurice are shown to be accomplished at horse riding in Cucumber Castle, and Barry looks so good in his costume that he should have starred in a swashbuckler movie or two. Maybe Richard Lester could have directed, with the Flashman novels author George MacDonald Fraser writing the scripts, like they did for The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers a few years later. 

At any rate, we jump to King Frederick hosting his brother at a feast. Barry delivers the line “My cucumber and I welcome you to Cucumber Castle”, a joke he gets to revisit toward the end of the film.

Presumably Barry’s legion of female fans really appreciated that double entendre, and lest you think the men are being left out a very 1970s stereotype of a gay guy expresses his lisping enthusiasm for Barry and his cucumber. 

A few painful jokes later and we join Barry and Maurice walking in a foggy forest singing The Lord and sounding like The Band if they were appearing on The Grand Ole Opry.

We move on to Count Voxville pitting King Frederick and King Marmaduke against each other over Sarah Charles Bottom. We’re now told that their father was so fond of her that she will inherit the Royal Gold Chamber Pot which contains the Royal Treasure. That’s the complete joke. It’s never mentioned again. 

Price, Barry and Maurice now limp through some cringe to meh comedy bits as the brothers duel over Sarah with blunderbusses and swords. The one and only Lulu shows up as the Cook of Cucumber Castle and sings Morning of My Life.

Back to schtick with a try-hard sketch about Marmaduke’s favorite sport – peasant shooting, with the peasants dressed up as birds. Not as pheasants, which would at least be a play on words, but just random bird costumes. Frederick is actually dressed like a pheasant but never gets shot at. It’s over my head, I guess.   

NOTE: The comedy in this telefilm always seems just on the verge of being humorous but never quite makes it. Instead, we get edged with low level Monty Python, Blackadder II and Carry On type of material but are always left waiting for punchlines that never arrive. 

As a dog lover, I really enjoyed the next segment, as Maurice sang the Bee Gees song with “Bowsy wow wowsy” in it while Barry frolicked with various pooches. Insert your own Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow joke here.

Eleanor Bron as Lady Margerie Pee (I’m not joking) now leads the Cucumber Quartet in what is supposed to be a concert but is repeatedly interrupted by relentlessly unfunny nonsense that will make you question your own sanity. 

Barry sings I was the Child while walking through the woods, following which we get more failed comedy from the Cucumber Quartet.

And now … Lulu sings Mrs. Robinson. Yes, Lulu sings Mrs. Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel. I can’t emphasize that enough – LU-f*cking-LU sings Mrs. Robinson.

Even though it’s not meant to be, this is the drop-dead funniest part of the entire production. Lulu sings this number like she’s part Five Neat Guys from SCTV and part Debbie Reynolds singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. It’s not quite as hilarious as Lulu’s much later cover of The Man Who Sold the World but it’s still pretty damn funny.

And so on and so forth. Broad, usually failed comedy bits followed by Bee Gees songs like Then You Left Me and My Thing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Aside from Lulu singing Mrs. Robinson I laughed the hardest at a skit with Barry and Maurice playing tennis against each other but not because of the actual material. No, I was laughing because with their facial hair the brothers looked like Dueling Bjorn Borgs.

Eventually we get Barry and Maurice wearing their bird costumes again and using binoculars to pretend they’re watching a performance by Blind Faith during their concert in Hyde Park. The band does Well All Right while we get apparently involuntary appearances by Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey, Marianne Faithful and Donovan in the Hyde Park audience. 

If you’re wondering how the storyline in Cucumber Castle ends, what the hell is wrong with you? Okay, the still-dying king at last rises from his deathbed, turned on by the lisping gay guy from earlier. He undoes the division of his kingdom, so Frederick and Marmaduke go back to just being princes.

In closing, Barry and Maurice do the complete version of Don’t Forget to Remember and the credits roll.

Overall, this made for tv movie isn’t as bad as The Ghost Goes Gear but it also doesn’t achieve the musical highs of that film outside of the Blind Faith segment. (Well, except for Bee Gees fans.)

And speaking of which, I wonder how Steve Winwood felt about getting caught on film in another Hugh Gladwish-directed turkey after having declared The Ghost Goes Gear “a career mistake.”

Cucumber Castle had a very limited release on video in the 1980s and is so rare that copies command a big price online. I like to think that Robin Gibb and Sammy Davis, Jr. would occasionally watch this godawful effort and laugh their asses off over the bullet they dodged. 

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