Fawlty Towers, Vol. 1 - Hotel Inspectors/Germans/A Touch Of Class

Fawlty Towers, Vol. 1 - Hotel Inspectors/Germans/A Touch Of Class

Fawlty Towers, Vol. 1 - Hotel Inspectors/Germans/A Touch Of Class
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VHS Tape Cover Information

Actor: Fawlty Towers
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog; Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Release Date: 1991-09-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Studio: 20th Century Fox

VHS Movie Reviews of Fawlty Towers, Vol. 1 - Hotel Inspectors/Germans/A Touch Of Class

Movie Review: How did they ever win the war?
Summary: 5 Stars

John Cleese once remarked that he did as much with "Fawlty Towers" in 12 episodes than Lucille Ball did in several years of "I Love Lucy". When I first heard that, I thought Cleese was being as crass as Basil Fawlty. But you know something? He came darn close.

This volume of "Fawlty Towers" contains three of the best episodes, and it is the one tape out of the four-tape collection that I play the most. "Hotel Inspectors" shows Basil at his most fawning, his most insincere. Ditto for "A Touch Of Class". But the real show-stealer is "Germans", perhaps the single most funny half-hour in sitcom history. Most people speak about the famous scene where Basil goose-steps around his German patrons, after he's repeatedly admonished the help not to mention the war. But everything in this episode is pure comic genius: Basil's griping with Sybil and the orderlies at the hospital; the exasperating attempts at hanging up the moose's head; and the Major's senile non-sequitors are hilarious. As the Germans ponder how the British ever won the war, the obvious answer is: If every English soldier was John Cleese, the Third Reich would have laughed to death.

Summary of Fawlty Towers, Vol. 1 - Hotel Inspectors/Germans/A Touch Of Class

John Cleese has always maintained that Fawlty Towers was inspired by a real-life hotel he stayed in during his Monty Python years that was run by a proprietor who treated guests as an inconvenience to running a business. No one in the world, however, can possibly match the sheer insolence and incompetence of Basil Fawlty, perhaps the most brazenly rude character in the history of customer disservice. When Sybil overhears that "The Hotel Inspectors" are in the area, Basil makes an about-face in his brusque treatment of a demanding guest, falling all over himself to cater to the guest's every whim while he boorishly insults every other customer. When he discovers his mistake he makes up for lost insolence in a campaign of comic terror. In "The Germans," perhaps the best-loved episode of the series, John Cleese hits all-time heights of impertinent provocation when his wife, Sybil, is in the hospital for an ingrown toenail (much to Basil's glee). Simple instructions not to mention "the war" to the German guests sends Basil into a flustered frenzy of conversations that all wind back to WWII, culminating in his storklike goose step as he offers his impersonation of Adolf Hitler. "A Touch of Class," the series pilot, finds Basil bemoaning the riff-raff he's forced to deal with when he signs in a Lord Melbury. Immediately melting into an embarrassingly obsequious toady, Basil is blinded by nobility and becomes the perfect patsy for the old con man. --Sean Axmaker

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