Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7274 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-02-02
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 84 minutes

Customer Reviews

An underrated, little known gem.
I have not seen this film for at least 30 years and was delighted to find it was on the Alec Guinness icon collection, which I received as a Christmas present. Alec Guinness plays Captain Ambrose, who comes from a long line of seafarers. However he suffers from acute seasickness and uses his retirement money to buy a delapidated Victorian pier. The corrupt town council have other ideas and want to knock the pier down for their own financial gain. He is not to be deterred and find an unexpected ally in a former council member who has just found out her beach huts will also be demolished. They plan together to put her beach huts on the pier and turn the pier into a cruise "ship" for seasick holidaymakers. The battle of wits between Captain Ambrose and the crooked council are delightful and typically British. I will not say more about the plot, in 30 years it has not lost any of its charm and nostalgia.

Barnacle Bill
Barnacle Bill [DVD] [1957] by Percy Herbert, Alec Guinness, Irene Browne
British films at their best, filmed in my mums hometown of Hunstanton, Norfolk.

all at sea
a charming late ealing comedy (although by now owned by mgm studios)with alec guinness giving his performance of captain ambrose a nobly comic dash. ably supported by a host of talented british character actors of the calibre of maurice denham and lionel jeffries, and with a biink and you'll her part for jackie collins. the story is typical ealing fayre as the good captain, a chronic sufferer of seasickness buys a dilapidated pier on the south coast in order to have a command at sea. potential disaster looms until an idea for a novel wat to enjoy a sea cruise puts him at loggerheads with the scheaming mayor of the local council, who has his own ideas for the future of the pier. marvellous.