Word: scottishly
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...about everything. "If you have a bad habit," he said, "the best way to get out of it is to take your fill of it." Complicated matters, such as the monarchical history of Scotland, he summed up with fine brevity ("There are too many Jameses and all murdered. The Scottish are a dreadful people...
Alexander Mackendrick's High and Dry is very possibly the funniest Baling comedy to date, a picture as salty and Scottish as a whelk in the Firth of Forth. A sort of sister picture to his Tight Little Island, this one might be called a tragedy of plumbing...
...Calvin B. Marshall (Paul Douglas), an American who is the London vice president of a big airline, buys an island off the Scottish coast, and renovates the castle as an anniversary surprise for his wife-they haven't been getting along, and he thinks that, well, maybe what they both need is a castle. The difficulty is, shipping is scarce in the Hebrides, and nobody can be found to cart the last ?4,000 worth of plumbing to the island in time for the great day. Nobody, that is, but Captain MacTaggert (Alex Mackenzie) of the puffer Maggie...
...puffer is a boat that has to be seen to be adequately disbelieved. A tiny Scottish freighter that carries a small crew (the Maggie has four) and barely enough freight to make ends meet, it looks like nothing so much as a seagoing haggis, and not a very clean one at that. When Douglas realizes that his precious plumbing has actually been shipped in such a boat, he rushes to the rescue with a full panoply of American Efficiency: chartered planes, long-distance calls, press conferences, do-it-yourself. He is met by Scots Canniness: the wandering eye, the mislaid...
...Scots crew gets the last laugh. Actor Douglas does astonishingly well to hold his own in such fast comic company. Alex Mackenzie, an actor who taught school in Clydebank until he was 61, is a grizzled old Scots beauty, and he can "throw a tub to a whale" (the Scottish phrase, aptly enough, for sharp practice) like few men since Sir Harry Lauder. Hubert Gregg makes a sopping good Milquetoast as Douglas' male secretary, who is haplessly stationed aboard the Maggie to see that the boss's orders are carried out. And the bonny little fiend...