Holiday on the Buses (1973)
Directed by Bryan Izzard

Film Review

The third and mercifully last of the three On the Buses films made in the early 1970s marked a decisive new low in British film comedy, with its scriptwriters Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolfe nonchalantly trotting out the same tired old gags and tedious comedy routines that they had already hammered to death in the television series.  The shift of location from a London bus depot to a holiday camp in North Wales (Pontin's Camp in Prestatyn to be precise) is an obvious attempt to inject new life into the already decomposing corpse of a deceased comedy series but instead of something new all we get is a clumsily cobbled together series of sketches into which almost any British sitcom could have been crow-barred. 

Presumably bored with the usual crowd of lechers, moaners and misfits, Chesney and Wolfe roped in Arthur Mullard and Queenie Watts, the stars of their other hit comedy of the moment, Romany Jones (later rebranded as Yus My Dear) - their presence at least helps to keep this final On the Buses excursion from being a totally dismal swansong.  Other popular television comic actors of the time are carelessly thrown into the mix, including Wilfrid Brambell, of Steptoe and Son fame, and Kate Williams, the likeable star of the racially themed sitcom Love Thy Neighbour.  Holiday on the Buses has a few memorably funny moments but for the most part watching it is a long hard slog through an embarrassing deluge of the kind of politically incorrect so-called humour that was rife in the 1970s and which, inexplicably, British audiences just couldn't get enough of.  For anyone wanting to have a sense of just how grim and cruddy life was in Britain in the 1970s here's a film that delivers just that - comedy that is anything but pain-free and is now only safe to be administered with an anaesthetic or a complete moral bypass.

Film Synopsis

Stan Butler and his best friend Jack are dismissed by their bus company when their carelessness causes a multiple collision in the bus depot.  The one consolation is that their longstanding arch-enemy, Inspector Blake, also loses his job.  Stan and Jack soon find a new job as tour bus crew for a holiday camp in North Wales.  Neither is cheered by the discovery that Blakey has also found a job at the same camp, as a security officer.  Ever one to exploit an opportunity when he sees one, Stan invites his family to the camp, but what should have been a relaxing budget break soon degenerates into a series of catastrophic mishaps...