Mutiny on the Buses (1972)
Directed by Harry Booth

Film Review

The second of Hammer's three On the Buses films is the one that feels closest to the original television series that spawned them.  Indeed the film's rambling episodic format makes it look like a compendium of the series, with writers Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolfe recycling many of their gags, having presumably run out of new ideas.  The repeated servings of innuendo and toilet humour soon become tiresome (one particularly malodorous gag is replayed ad nauseum) and were it not for the sight gags the film would be pretty well unbearable.  The main characters manage to be even less lovable than they were one the small screen, which is some achievement given that most of them are about as cute as Pol Pot.  Just how this unprepossessing ensemble was able to keep a television series running for seven series is hard to fathom but Mutiny on the Buses shows how shallow and undiscriminating we were back in the 70s.  Oh, what fun we had in that decade of intoxicating political incorrectness, laughing at ugly women with eating disorders, constipated toddlers with flatulence and monkeys with bright red bottoms.  To think that this primordial sludge was once our home - it beggars belief.

Film Synopsis

London bus driver Stan Butler could not have chosen a worse time to get engaged.  Now that Stan's brother-in-law Arthur has lost his job Stan is the family's only breadwinner.  Desperate to put down a deposit on a new flat with his new girlfriend, Stan gives Arthur lessons so that he can become a bus driver.  The arrival of a new depot manager threatens Stan's carefree routine but Stan soon puts paid to his plans to introduce a new radio control system.  When  it is announced that the bus company is commencing a special tour around Windsor Safari Park Stan fancies he is the ideal man for the job. Unfortunately, a disastrous fire drill soon extinguishes his hopes of securing a bigger pay packet and his dream apartment...