Film review: The Wrong Box (1966)

This is an odd film.  I was led to it by researching Wilfrid Lawson, the actor who played the Doolittle Sr. in Pygmalion, and it was reported that he was a scene stealer in this film.  Not having heard of it, I was immediately impressed with its cast list (Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, John Mills, (pauses for breath) Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers AND Tony Hancock!)  Well, let's just say it doesn't quite live up to that (or the myriad other British character actors, like Leonard Rossiter, who have blink-and-you'll-miss-them roles), although it has its charms.  It was directed by Bryan Forbes, and so also features his wife Nanette Newman in the major female role.  Basically, the premise (apparently from a book co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson (!)) is that the only two survivors of a tontine are the Finsbury brothers played by Ralph Richardson (as an incredibly boring fact-collector) and John Mills (permanently peevish, and bed-and-debt-ridden), who live next-but-one to each other in London.  Mills is grandfather to the Michael Caine character (curiously milksop-ish, given his snake-eyes that make him look like he's perpetually contemplating murdering someone) who is a medical student, and boss to Lawson's butler, Peacock.  Richardson is "uncle" to brothers Cooke and Moore (the former, a scheming egg-collector called Maurice, is clearly the brains, while the latter is just a skirt-chaser) who are desperate to get the money, and unrelated orphan Julia, played by Newman.  Notable episodes in the film include a head-on crash between two steam trains (that results in the death of the Bournemouth Strangler, who is (don't ask) dressed in Richardson's coat, so that Cook and Moore think their uncle has died and they've lost the tontine, so they ship the corpse home.  At the same time, somebody is returning a statue to the Mills/Caine household (they stay afloat by selling off their house's contents) and the crates are delivered to the wrong houses.  Caine opens The Wrong Box and is also convinced that his uncle has been killed.  It all gets very complicated.  Peter Sellers is a dotty (corrupt, abortion-performing) doctor, who lives with hundreds of cats, and Hancock shows up practically at the end of the film as a police detective.  I wouldn't recommend anyone seeking it out, although I did laugh at a couple of lines, including when Caine is asked if he's part of the ruling class and says no but that he's studying to be a doctor because his grandfather said that if he can't join the ruling class, the next best thing is to deplete its numbers.  You can read the script here, if you like.