Featured Audience Ratings

• Eric B

  
  Not long after his star-making turn in "Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment," David Warner played another obsessed eccentric in "Work Is a Four Letter Word." This muddled satire presents an exaggerated, regimented version of London where people live in uniform… More
  Not long after his star-making turn in "Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment," David Warner played another obsessed eccentric in "Work Is a Four Letter Word." This muddled satire presents an exaggerated, regimented version of London where people live in uniform "domestic industries community estates" and all leave for work at the same moment. Meanwhile, the local media implants cheery ideas about "cooperation" and the like. Dropped into this clockwork world is Valentine Brose (Warner), a self-absorbed misfit who's only interested in cultivating psychedelic mushrooms. Is he a user? A dealer? Just an amateur botanist? This is never clear. His fiancee Betty (pop singer Cilla Black, in her only major acting role) wants him to settle for a factory job like everyone else, but Valentine only consents because the machinery steam will be the perfect climate for his beloved fungi. He takes a pointless post maintaining a restroom that no one uses but, mostly, he just exasperates his superiors (and the neighborhood reverend) by continually getting in the way. He also has to contend with a widowed personnel officer who has a crush on him. Some cute physical humor ensues with automated file drawers and a window-washing scaffold, eventually building to the inevitable scene where all the "straights" try his magic mushrooms and take a journey to the center of their minds. Actually adapted from a play (title: "Eh?"), "Work Is a Four Letter Word" has shaky direction and a rather neurotic musical score. The film is justifiably obscure, but will tickle those with a fondness for '60s UK comedies.