Instant Favorite.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the Ealing comedies that doesn't get written about very often and not one of the best. However, it does offer an insight into the film industry's fear of television in the early 1950s, with some fairly barbed satire at the expense of the "box in the corner" and its uncritical audience. Th plot seems to be a hybrid of the stage play on which the film was based - television wreaks various degrees of havoc on three households - and a surreal narrative link showing that the Devil (aka Mr Lucifer) is behind television's growth. Apparently he likes to invent something new to make each generation miserable. Television in the 1950s and - if a sequel threatens - mobile phones for the 2000s. Incidental pleasures include an appallingly tatty Christmas pantomime, with desperate performers facing a meagre and hostile audience, and a square dance involving television dancers, friends and neighbours gathered round the television, and a bunch of street urchins and ragamuffins, some of whom look uncannily like Margaret O'Brien in the Halloween sequence of "Meet Me in St Louis". It also convincingly depicts the grime and dilapidation of post-war London, with characters forced to live in cramped basements and seedy bedsits.

Interesting curio from Ealing Studios. Based on a play by Arnold Ridley ( better known as 'Private Godfrey' from 'Dad's Army' ), 'Meet Mr.Lucifer' is a whimsical fantasy warning of the potential dangers of television. In 1953, few people in Britain had sets, but its popularity was on the rise, and film makers such as Michael Balcon were worried enough to make a movie of this kind. Stanley Holloway is 'Sam Hollingsworth', a drunken actor reduced to playing 'The Devil' in a tatty pantomime version of 'Robinson Crusoe', and even that is doing poor trade as audiences are staying at home and watching the goggle box.After a few drinks during the interval, Sam goes back on stage, only to be knocked unconscious as he tries to use the trapdoor. He imagines he is in Hell itself, where the Devil - also played by Holloway - claims that the wheel and the telephone were both inventions of his to make everyone's lives miserable, and the television is his latest idea. But it is not doing the job quick enough, so Sam is recruited as Satan's helper.We then follow the lives of a group of people as a television set changes their lives for the worse. First up is 'Mr.Pedelty' ( Joseph Tomelty ) who gets a set as a retirement gift. He becomes obsessed by the thing, watching anything and everything. When there is a dancing programme on, he invites people in off the street and gives them free drinks ( all obtained on credit from his local pub ). As the debts mount, he decides he has had enough and so bequeathes it to a young couple ( Jack Watling and Peggy Cummins ). He is studying to become a chemist, and her television viewing habits spoil his concentration. To save their relationship, they pass the set on to Hector McPhee ( Gordon Jackson ), who becomes infatuated by a beautiful singer ( Kay Kendall ) known only as 'The Lonely Hearts Girl'...It is not the programmes that come under attack, but the medium itself. Its power as a force for good is barely mentioned, making this a bit one-sided. My biggest complaint is that there is too little of Stanley Holloway. The film is only really engaging when he is around. Also, the satire - if that's the right word - could have been stronger. I suppose television had not been around long enough for a major assault on the medium to be justifiable. Fun cameos from Ian Carmichael and Joan Sims, plus celebrities of the time such as Gilbert Harding and MacDonald Hobley. Eric Rogers - of 'Carry On' fame - did the music, and some of it was reused in 'Carry On Spying' ( 1964 ). Just before the end credits roll, the film takes a pot-shot at 3-D movies!

This anti-television vehicle commences its tirade most promisingly. The characters are introduced in capital style, while the proposition that TV is an instrument of the devil will fall on many a sympathetic clerical ear. Unfortunately, the producer has obviously blown most of his budget on the earlier scenes, and then spent his reserves on the concluding sequence in which a myriad number of workers in an enormous office are employed sending out lonely heart letters.The rest of the action, alas, wallows in tedious additional dialogue and small-budget clichés which are now and again relieved by the welcome entrance of Stanley Holloway.All the same, the film does present some worthwhile ideas. True, the conclusion seems like an arbitrary appendage to the main plot, but the real problem is that none of the three stories actually do justice to their fascinating characters.All the players are excellent. Stanley Holloway, Joseph Tomelty and Peggy Cummins never deliver less than top-notch performances, but the real surprises are a charismatic Jack Watling and normally dull Gordon Jackson (of all people) doing full justice to a character role.At times, Pelissier's direction seems admirably imaginative, especially in the panto sequences.

Another in a long line of great black and white British films of the 1950's. When Mr Pedelty (Joseph Tomelty) leaves his firm, he is given a TV set as a retirement present. At first he enjoys all the attention from his neighbours,but soon the attraction wears off, and he sells it on to the young married couple (Jack Watling and Peggy Cummins) living in the flat above him. They soon encounter the same problems,and again the set is passed on to several different charatures all with the same results. A very enjoyable story with a strong cast including Kay Kendall, Barbara Murray, and as the pantomime devil Stanley Holloway.