On the Buses (film)
| On the Buses | |
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1971 Film poster
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| Directed by | Harry Booth |
| Produced by |
Ronald Chesney Ronald Wolfe |
| Written by | Ronald Chesney Ronald Wolfe |
| Starring |
Reg Varney Doris Hare Anna Karen Bob Grant Stephen Lewis Michael Robbins |
| Music by | Max Harris |
| Cinematography | Mark McDonald |
| Edited by | Archie Ludski |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | MGM-EMI |
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Release date
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Running time
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88 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £90,000 |
| Box office | £2,500,000 |
On the Buses is a 1971 British comedy film directed by Harry Booth and starring Reg Varney and Doris Hare. The film is the first spin-off film from the TV sitcom On the Buses and was followed by two further films Mutiny on the Buses (1972) and Holiday on the Buses (1973). The films are set within a slightly different canon from the TV series; Stan and Jack work for a different bus company (Town & District instead of Luxton & District), and the three films form a loose story arc where Arthur and Olive become parents (despite their apparently sexless marriage).
The film was produced by Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolfe for Hammer Films, and enjoyed major success in Britain, outdoing Diamonds Are Forever to become the highest performing film of 1971, though that film was not released until December 1971.
Stan Butler (Reg Varney), a bus driver for the Town & District bus company, becomes worried that the overtime he is making, which his family is using to buy expensive items such as a washing machine, will soon end when the company rectifies its current lack of employees. His concerns become justified when the company decides to revoke a long-standing rule that prevent women from being employed as bus drivers, much to the chagrin of both Stan and his long time colleague and friend, Jack (Bob Grant). The loss of overtime that he was making, forces Stan to persuade his sister Olive (Anna Karen) to get employment at the company's canteen, yet despite a disastrous start, she and her husband, Arthur, soon discovers that she is pregnant, resulting in her losing her job, and forcing the Butler family to send back the items they can't afford to pay. At the same time, Stan gets into trouble with the company when, while attempting to recover something of Jack's from a woman he had been seeing, he manages to inadvertently demolish both a telephone kiosk and a bus shelter whilst trying to avoid being caught by the woman's jealous husband. Despite his efforts to lie about why he caused the damage, Blakey (Stephen Lewis), the company's Bus Inspector, takes delight that he has to undertake a driving test on a bus skid pan in order to keep his job, but soon regrets supervising the test when Stan decides to get his own back on Blakey's amusement by beginning the test with him still on the bus being used for it.
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