Skunkyrate
Gripping story with well-crafted characters
Gurlyndrobb
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
ActuallyGlimmer
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Paul Evans
Harold meets the beautiful Zita, a stripper. Albert is landed for his son, until he announces that the pair plan to marry. Albert does everything he can to sabotage the relationship, even joining the pair on their honeymoon.I am stunned by so many of the negative reviews on this movie, for me the two Steptoe movies are the most successful films inspired by TV sitcoms.They kept our two lead characters completely in character, they didn't send the show up in the way that Rising Damp and Are You being served both did. It's a great mix of tragedy and comedy, for me comedy always works better when it's tinged with a bit of sadness and realism, it's why I've always been such a fan of One Foot in the Grave. The spite between the pair that we love throughout the TV series is brilliantly realised here, Harold desperate to escape, Albert desperate to keep hold of his son for his own reasons.Corbett and Bramble add their usual brilliance to their parts, Carolyn Seymour is just fabulous, so believable in her role, I firmly believe in that scene where he sees her and instantly falls in love with her.It's a great movie. 9/10
Spikeopath
Steptoe and Son was massively popular in the UK, and sure enough in keeping with a trend that continued throughout the 1970s, it was a show that was guaranteed to have a movie spin off. In fact it got two! Such was its popularity.This first feature length film has the basic traits of the show, the tragi-comedy aspects of a son (Harry H. Corbett) forever destined to be held back by his lecherous and unclean father (Wilfrid Brambell) are fully born out. All set to the very basic working class backdrop of a Rag & Bone family business.Enter a stripper, excuse me, exotic dancer (Carolyn Seymour), who bizarrely marries Corbett and cues up a number of scenes where old man Steptoe single handedly manages to destroy the marriage on the honeymoon.It's not the coarseness of the screenplay that hurts the movie, or some of the dialogue that has the PC brigade spitting feathers, it's that in spite of sound performances and some well written sequences (Galton & Simpson), it's just too bleak for its own good!The gags quickly dry up entering the second half of the picture, which leaves us with only our good will to stay with characters that we have a mild interest in anyway. For hard core fans of the show, it's easy to go with the flow, but there's nothing here to remotely entice the outsider to venture further into the hygienically challenge world of Steptoe & Son. 6/10
koenig1999
This is a master piece of British t.v cinema. I have all the steptoe and son episode's on DVD. Their home and its contents have been a part of the shows make-up, (THEY ARE RAG AND BONE MEN) and there home trys to reflect that fact. Thats one of the reasons harold keeps trying to get away, he is only to aware of his messy surroundings. (dust? more like bleedin top soil) The film is just a re-working of an episode they did called 'STEPTOE AND SON AND SON' I have to concead that this is not as good as the series it still has all the humor you come to expect. BUt if you haven't seen the series then you may not get the all the humor, and if you like the film then you WILL love the series. purely British sit-com.
cosmo-bongo
Truly a disgusting, vile film, with only a small amount of real humour.The character of the father in particular is vulgar in the extreme (intentionally so, obviously), and portrayed in the most pathetic, seedy manner.My wife and I found this film horribly upsetting, with absolutely no redeeming features at all. Frankly, I wish I had never seen it.I consider this British effort to be a sick and gross embarrassment.Those who enjoyed this film have an ability I totally lack: that of rejoicing in a display of deep depravity and squalor.The producers should be ashamed of themselves.
