Magic Christian

This 1969 British comedy looks today like a bridge between then-contemporaneous but overlapping styles of comedy, from Terry Southern satire to Goon Show silliness to Monty Python surrealism. Peter Sellers stars as the world's wealthiest man, who sets out with a young ally (Ringo Starr) to demonstrate that people, most especially rich people, will do anything for money. The film is more a series of sketches than an actual story, and some of those get pretty nasty, particularly when a bunch of aristrocrats start feeding from a vat of blood and manure. But in general this is a pretty funny film, and it's great to see a lot of famous and soon-to-be-famous faces on the same screen. Written by Southern, Joseph McGrath (who also directed), Sellers, and Python's John Cleese and Graham Chapman. --Tom Keogh