School for Scoundrels

Hamer's last film before losing out to alcohol is, ironically, about taking short cuts to success. Based around the sneeringly facile concept of 'one-upmanship' (how to tread on people and make them thank you for it), the film follows the fortunes of upper class twit Carmichael as he struggles for supremacy with waiters, women and Terry-Thomas. The first half, in particular a sequence where used-car salesmen Dudley and Dunstan Dorchester 'the Winsome Welshmen' (Price and Jones) perpetrate a con even Richard Nixon would have been proud of, has its moments of cruel humour; but when, with the benefit of a course in 'lifemanship', Carmichael is reborn as a winner, things become tediously silly.