Word: gaillardia
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Things start popping at the F.O. when a dispatch arrives from Her Majesty's representative in Gaillardia, bearing the stunning news that three members of a visiting Russian Cossack dance team have been observed kicking out of step, and consequently must be spies. But where is Gaillardia? No one has ever heard of the place. The problem is bucked to Carlton-Browne of Miscellaneous Territories, a timeserver whose troutlike face mirrors his intelligence. C-B (played expertly by gap-toothed Terry-Thomas) discovers the file on Gaillardia among the rats in the archives: it is an island which, being...
Carlton-Browne counters the Cossacks with a troupe of left-footed secret service men disguised as Morris dancers. When this proves disastrous (the island's king, about to die of boredom, is assassinated), C-B flies out to compound the calamity, ably assisted by Gaillardia's Prime Minister Amphibulos (Peter Sellers), who embodies everything fine and honest in Balkan politics. Eventually, the U.N. (accompanied by a faint but distinct celestial choir) decides to partition Gaillardia, an act undertaken with marvelous literalness by painting a chalk line down its middle, ruthlessly separating sow from piglet, peasant from privy...
...matter. The fun is watching Actor Terry-Thomas come into his own, as Co-Star Sellers did in The Mouse That Roared. No comedian can rise to a challenge with greater stupor, or be more benumbingly British. Near the film's end, a Britisher bound for Gaillardia inquires whether the island offers anything to shoot. Answers Terry-Thomas, pukka as Lord Clive: ''Only the natives...
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