Good movie but grossly overrated

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I guess the best way to describe The Ruling Class is Jonathan Swift by way of Monty Python. It was one of 8 trips to the Best Actor Oscar that Peter O'Toole took without first prize.Two phrases come to mind when viewing this film. One is from Philip Barry when he wrote in The Philadelphia Story about those privileged classes enjoying their privileges. The other one is how it depends how rich one is to be deemed eccentric as opposed to crazy.The stern and righteous Earl Of Gurney Harry Andrews who is a most conservative gentleman in his public image dies one night. But what a way to go. Apparently the man had the decency to keep his vices in private. He enjoyed erotic asphyxiation wearing a tutu. But accidents will happen and the estate now devolves upon his son Peter O'Toole who is more public with his eccentricities. He thinks of himself as Jesus Christ and has a cross built there where he spends hours a day just standing against and looking and dressing like a blond Jesus.That's got everybody concerned, we can't have this guy in the House of Lords the rest of the family will never be able to show their faces in public again. What to do and believe me this family tries a number of formulas.O'Toole looked like he was having one great old time in this part. I'm not sure I've ever seen any player looking like they were having so much fun in a role. A few others stand out. Coral Browne plays one of the family whose promiscuity becomes more and more open as well. Alastair Sim who seems to have taken a leaf from Alex Guinness's dotty vicar in Kind Hearts And Coronets. And there's Arthur Lowe who's family butler and when he gets a few in him starts spouting all kinds of Bolshevism against these idiots he deals with and who give him a living.It was always hard luck for O'Toole at Oscar time. In 1972 he was up against Marlon Brando for The Godfather. I doubt O'Toole would have dissed the Academy and his peers by refusing the Oscar.Think of Edward Everett Horton hawking the virtues of Happydale in Arsenic And Old Lace, think of Cecil Kellaway ready to administer the hypo to Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. Then think of Peter O'Toole in the House Of Lords.Frightening and funny.

Gross, frequently tasteless satire, much as if Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" were transplanted to England's House of Lords and then played at the wrong speed. After the Earl of Gurney accidentally kills himself during one of his fetish games, the 14th Earl--son Jack--is groomed to accept the crown. Once mad Jack--who believes himself to be Christ--undergoes a mental transformation on the night of his son's birth and self-metamorphoses into Jack the Ripper, the plot (thin to begin with) becomes a dartboard for the one-liners (some of which are very funny and are a compensation). Peter Barnes adapted his play for the screen, the kind of material upper-crust audiences like to label 'savage'; he was reciprocated with a game cast and a fine director in Peter Medak, yet these nutty fantasies are merely clotheslines for Barnes to hang his maddening soliloquies on. Peter O'Toole (with cartoony strawberry-blond hair) has some terrific moments early on, particularly in the musical send-ups, but later begins to bellow and rarely stops. The film is too full of targets, and too nasty overall, for its extreme length...it doesn't even look good. ** from ****

Despite this film's age (38 years and counting) when I saw it last night this was the first time I had ever seen it. I immediately added it to my list of the greatest movies of all time. Its mixtures of genres while highly unusual are not unrepresented elsewhere: Dr. Strangelove, Monty Python, Rocky Horror, etc., would seem to fill in its category with other examples of the combination of social satire, psychological horror, off-the-wall musical numbers, etc.But what really makes this film so special is of course Peter O'Toole himself. This has to be his greatest role as an actor and would have been the same for any other actor who might have succeeded in bringing it off so brilliantly as O'Toole did. Could anyone else have done it? Peter Sellers? Richard Burton? Laurence Olivier? Perhaps the latter had O'Toole's versatility to be able to go from one bizarre attitude to another without incongruity or the slightest skip of a beat. But I don't think Olivier was ever offered such a marvelous actor's showoff role as this.But among the fifty or so critiques of this incomparable, stunning, and never-to-be-forgotten film which I read on your site, none referred to the very possible antecedent to Peter Barnes' play and movie, the celebrated Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello's play Henry IV, which also posited an insane monarch imagining himself to be a character out of history and the attempts of the monarch's relatives to cope with the situation.

It's too long and sometimes rather obvious, but this black comedy musical is an utterly unique experience; mad, eccentric and often hilarious as it sticks the knife deep into its target – the mad, eccentric English aristocracy. Peter O'Toole is totally magnetic throughout as the lunatic 14th Earl Of Gurney who thinks he is Jesus Christ, and Arthur Lowe delivers wonderfully dry comic moments as the loyal but offensive communist butler.The mood varies between wit, slapstick and savagery (the latter a taste of Peter Barnes' original stage play), with plenty of memorable lines, and the odd crazy song-and-dance routine thrown in for good measure; but in the second half it becomes darker and the message clearer. The comic veneer only serves to emphasise the depth of Barnes' feelings towards the British establishment.I have two editions, but the Momentum DVD (though more easily available and cheap in the UK), is of poor quality, panned & scanned to 4:3, has low sound quality and, worst of all, only runs to 124 minutes despite the cover claiming it is full-length and full-frame.So I took the advice of earlier reviewers and sought out the Criterion edition. Get this one if you can - it's of superior quality, full screen and runs the full 154 minutes - it's worth the extra cost. Enjoy!