Back Room Boy
| Back-Room Boy | |
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DVD cover, with Withers in the centre and Askey at the far right
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| Directed by | Herbert Mason |
| Produced by | Edward Black |
| Written by |
Marriott Edgar Val Guest John Orton |
| Starring |
Arthur Askey Moore Marriott Graham Moffatt |
| Music by | Hans May |
| Cinematography | Jack E. Cox |
| Edited by | R.E. Dearing |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | General Film Distributors |
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Release date
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Running time
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82 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English German |
Back-Room Boy is a 1942 British comedy film directed by Herbert Mason, produced by Edward Black for Gainsborough Pictures and starring Arthur Askey, Googie Withers, Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott. A man from the Met Office is sent to a lighthouse on a remote Scottish island to monitor the weather. He hopes to escape from women, but soon finds the island overrun by them.
Meteorologist Arthur Pilbeam's fiancée Betty breaks their engagement because he has to speed back to the BBC every hour, on the hour, due to his internationally vital job of creating the BBC pips. He is so upset, he changes the pacing of the pips to play "Shave and a Haircut". He tries to resign, but he cannot do that during wartime, so since he also wants to avoid all women, he is assigned the solitary job of sending weather reports from a remote Scottish lighthouse. Before taking a boat from the mainland, his is warned by the locals that he will go mad from the isolation and the curse of a mermaid within a month, as his predecessors have.
Pilbeam has his peace quickly shattered when he encounters Jane, a young girl (who stowed away on the boat that brought him to the island), and then Bobbie, a model and the sole survivor of a torpedoed ship. His radio disappears, and Bobbie sees one man tied up, but he disappears when she brings Pilbeam. Then she is attacked, but her assailant is also nowhere to be seen when Pilbeam returns. Finally, another boatload of women (plus a couple of crewmen) arrive from Bobbie's ship. Things become crowded in the lighthouse, until people start to mysteriously disappear during the night, leaving an anxious Pilbeam to discover what has been happening to everyone and why. Finally, only Pilbeam is left.
It turns out that Nazi agents have been secretly sweeping the waters of mines and have taken everyone else prisoner, leaving Pilbeam free just so he can send away a rescue party without arousing suspicion. But between Pilbeam, Jane's uncle (from the neighboring island) and the women, they manage to turn the tables on their captors. They tie the Germans up and set out on the German boat. On the way back to the mainland, however, they come across am enemy warship in the fog. The Germans mistake them for their own spies and order them to guide them through the minefield. Pilbeam turns around and leads them directly into it instead. The ship strikes a mine and sinks.
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Wikipedia