The funeral business gets a giant raspberry in this wickedly wacky, resplendently ridiculous farce based on Evelyn Waugh's macabre comic masterpiece and directed with inspired verve by Tony Richardson (Tom Jones). But the American way of death isn't the film's only target: sex, greed, religion and mother love are also in the crosshairs of its satirical shots. Robert Morse plays a bemused would-be poet who gets entangled with an unctuous cemetery entrepreneur (Jonathan Winters), a mom-obsessed mortician (Rod Steiger) and other bizarre characters played by such adept farceurs as John Gielgud, Robert Morley, Tab Hunter, Milton Berle, James Coburn and Liberace.

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Richardson's film was advertised as the movie with something to offend everyone, and although these days it looks pretty tame you can see how it would have had the censors up in arms 35 years ago. Morse is the Brit abroad who encounters all the worst aspects of the funeral business while attending to his uncle's burial in California - he falls for a cosmetologist, but has to compete with a grotesque embalmer (Steiger). With a disparate cast including Sir John Gielgud, Tab Hunter and Liberace, Richardson's film is an outrageously funny parody of southern California life, with Steiger at his most memorable.

Excerpt from Channel 4 located HERE