If You Go Down in the Woods Today (1981)
This post is going to be one of my occasional attempts at rehabilitation on a programme which is, in my opinion, neglected or far less popular than it should be. This time, this delightful TV film which has pretty lukewarm reviews at best, isn't best portrayed by IMDB and was aimed wrongly by its own creator and star, National Treasure Eric Sykes.
To start with the IMDB summary, I'm afraid it gives the wrong impression, because it says:
'A scoutmaster and eight scouts go camping in Tangle Woods. When he and a cub get lost, their mishaps draw attention from military, intelligence, and criminals, causing chaos.' This is to misunderstand what is happening completely and a better plot summary would be:
'When eight scouts with their scoutmaster (who isn't their regular scoutmaster because he has fallen ill) go camping in Tangle Woods, they find the woods mysteriously full of strange characters. In this eccentric world, nobody is who they seem to be and several agencies have an interest in what is happening in the woods. What will happen to the scouts and can they manage to light a camp fire?'
There is also a problem in that the show, being written and directed by Eric Sykes, who also starts as the scoutmaster, is reasonably expected by most viewers to be a comedy. This is reinforced when the scouts draw up by train and the scoutmaster opens the door of the freight compartment they are in to reveal the first four letters of the station name, which happens to be Twittering. Unfortunately I think Sykes has aimed it wrong and I think the atrocious reviews online are right that as a comedy it absolutely fails.
However I should note that IMDB puts it in dual categories of humour and parody, and I think as a parody film it functions much better. In addition to the mystery genre I think a recent possible influence could be the updated Famous Five series of 1978, because If You Go Down in the Woods Today is set very much in the world of the Famous Five: the English countryside, which is heaving with suspicious men doing criminal things. At further remove I think it is very much in the parody vein of the later series of The Avengers, and I think viewers could do a lot worse to get in the right midset to watch this than watch a Series 6 episode of The Avengers, All Done by Mirrors or Wish You Were Here, for example. I obviously can't say whether this film was a conscious influence on The Comic Strip but I would suggest their Five Go Mad in Dorset (1982) is in a similar parody vein to this film and also picks up on the Famous Five connection, of course.
The opening scene at the station reinforces the Famous Five/folk horror ethos of the film when the scoutmaster tells they stationmaster they are going camping in Tangle Woods, and the stationmaster in a reallly creepy way warns him against the dangers of the woods, telling him that something strange is going on there and the heaps of coffins in the station have all been taken out of the woods.
After the scoutmaster and cubs leave the station, the stationmaster reveals to us that he is not what he seems by ringing two Roman Catholic priests in a car to tell them to head off the cubs. They drive off and tell the cub pack that they could camp in other places than in Tangle Woods. Of course scoutmaster and cubs ignore this advice and carry on to Tangle Woods.
On the way they pass a picnicking couple, who use a radio in their car to tell the police that they are on their way. The suspicious characters really are mounting up.
At every step the scoutmaster and cubs encounter strange characters who are not what they appear to be. I can only say that in my opinion, if you watch this film as a humorous parody of the Famous Five-type adventure genre, it's an absolute delight.
However it is subsequently revealed to us (but not to the scoutmaster or cubs) that the reaason the woods are absolutely crawling with Hilda Handcuffs is three celebrities of the criminal underworld are there after two million pounds which has been hidden somewhere there. As the film goes on, MI5, the army, and even the navy get involved in the operation in the woods. I think another possible genre that this film can be compared to is spoofs of spying or army films. Examples which spring to mind are, of course, Carry on Spying (1964), Morecambe and Wise's The Intelligence Men (1965) and their 1985 film Night Train to Murder is very much in the vein I'm thinking of.
I would therefore suggest watching this film without any thought that it is a comedy and trying to appreciate it for its atmosphere and spoofing.
It certainly has a full house of Big Names: Tony Selby, George Sewell, Anna Dawson, Nosher Powell, Joe Lynch, Roy Kinnear, and Fulton McKay, whose agents obviously thought that it wouldn't be a complete flop so I'm really not sure what has gone wrong.
I'm not going to reveal what happens at the end and let you find out for yourself if you want to take the plunge.
I accept the repeated criticism in various reviews that if you're exapecting a comedy you won't get it with this one, but haven't mentioned the other criticism that I also agree with, which is that it's too long for the plot and so rather loses it towards the end. Probably this should have been an hour at the absolute longest and not a full length TV film.
A delightful film which I recommend for its atmosphere, if you go into it expecting the right thing. Probably best to watch a series 6 Avengers immediately before to get into the mood, though.
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