The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins

Infobox Film
name = The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins


image_size = DVD cover
caption =
director = Graham Stark
producer = Graham Stark
writer = (see segments)
narrator =
starring = (see segments)
music = Roy Budd
cinematography = Harvey Harrison
editing = Rod Nelson-Keys
Roy Piper
distributor = Tigon Film Distributors Ltd
released = 1971
runtime = 107 min.
country = U.K.
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:100950
imdb_id = 0067381

"The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins" is a 1971 comedy film directed and produced by Graham Stark. Its title is a conflation of "The Magnificent Seven" and the seven deadly sins. It comprises a sequence of seven sketches, each representing a sin and written by an array of British comedy-writing talent. The sketches are linked by animation sequences. The music score is by British jazz musician Roy Budd, cinematography by Harvey Harrison and editing by Rod Nelson-Keys and Roy Piper. It was produced by Tigon Pictures (1968-1973) and distributed in the U.K. by Tigon Film Distributors Ltd. (mainly 1964-1983).

The film is now largely neglected.

Avarice

The first segment is titled Avarice, written by John Esmonde & Bob Larbey, features Bruce Forsyth, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Bernard Bresslaw, Joan Sims, Roy Hudd, Julie Samuel, Cheryl Hall and Suzanne Heath. In this segment, a coin falls into a sewer, and a rich man makes his chauffeur go into the sewer to retrieve it. Soon other people become involved in the search, including a police woman (Sims), a fisherman and one of the workers in the sewer. In the end the rich man, seeing the sewage on the chauffeur, fires him but then falls straight into the open sewer and the chauffeur replaces the manhole cover and walks away with the coin.

Envy

The second segment, Envy, written by Dave Freeman, features Harry Secombe, Geoffrey Bayldon, June Whitfield and Carmel Cryan. Secombe and his wife are winners of the football pools and are looking to buy a huge house. The wife spots one and decides she must have it.

The owners (Bayldon and Whitfield) enjoy a quiet life there and do not wish to sell. So Secombe's character decides to employ a series of schemes to force the owners of the house to sell their home so that they can buy it; one of these schemes involves creating a mock edition of the local newspaper that purports to tell the story of a new motorway that will go straight through their garden.

Seeing this the owners sell to Secombe and wife. As they move in a mechanical digger is seen coming towards the house as it turns out the 'story' is actually true.

Gluttony

The third segment, Gluttony, written by Graham Chapman & Barry Cryer, features Leslie Phillips, Julie Ege, Patrick Newell, Rosemarie Reed, Sarah Golding, Bob Guccione and Tina McDowell. In this sketch Phillips is a compulsive eater who has food hidden around his apartment.

Lust

The fourth segment, Lust, written by Graham Stark & Marty Feldman, features Harry H. Corbett, Cheryl Kennedy, Bill Pertwee, Mary Baxter, Anouska Hempel, Kenneth Earle, Nicole Yerna, Sue Bond and Yvonne Paul. Corbett is determined to find a partner and chats up a woman in an adjoining telephone box by looking through the glass, dialling the number of her telephone and convincing her that he is someone from her past who just happens to be on a "crossed line" by an extraordinary coincidence, cleverly prompting her with some some personal details he has managed to spot. She seems quite excited about the prospect of meeting up with him, but before he gets the chance to arrange a meeting she tells him over the phone that there is a man looking at her with a face that looks like "a monkey" in the adjoining phone box (which is, of course, Corbett). The segment ends with a shot of a dangling handset.

Pride

The fifth segment, Pride, written by Alan Simpson & Ray Galton, features Ian Carmichael, Alfie Bass, Audrey Nicholson, Sheila Bernette, Robert Gillespie, Keith Smith and Ivor Dean. In it, two motorists (Carmichael and Bass) meet facing each other on a narrow country road, and neither is willing to pull aside to let the other pass. In the end, neither wins.

Sloth

The sixth segment, Sloth, written by Spike Milligan, features Spike Milligan, Melvyn Hayes, Ronnie Brody, Ronnie Barker, Peter Butterworth, Marty Feldman, Davy Kaye, David Lodge, Cardew Robinson and Madeline Smith. It is a series of silent film clips showing people not being active.

Wrath

The seventh and last segment, Wrath, written by Graham Chapman & Barry Cryer, features Stephen Lewis, Ronald Fraser and Arthur Howard. Two men in the park are annoyed by the park keeper (Lewis) telling them off for littering, so they try to kill him. Most of their schemes fail, but in the end they succeed, by planting a bomb in a washroom. However, this is only accomplished at the cost that they themselves die too. They think that they are in heaven, and plan to litter it too, but they find themselves in hell, and the man they tried to kill is the devil.

Cast

The cast contains many well known English actors. Coincidently, it features three James Bond actresses, Anouska Hemphill and Julie Ege who appeared in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and Madeline Smith who would later appear in "Live and Let Die". All three had minor roles in those films.

External links

*imdb title|id=0067381|title= The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins
*amg title|id=1:100950|title= The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins