Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 123
British Film Comedy
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single sympathetic trait. It’s no t all in good fun for Richie and Eddie, who owe no
allegiance to anyone, not even to each other.
The major set piece of the film (and one which is craftily exploited in the
trailer for G uest H ouse Paradiso) is an unbelievably brutal fight in the hotel’s
kitchen, whilst Richie and Eddie are ostensibly engaged in preparing food for their
unfortunate guests. Although domestic mayhem is a staple of the Bottom series, as
well as The Young Ones, here, with a generous budget and the ability to stage some
truly spectacular stunts, Edmondson and Mayall stage an all-out war that rivals
anything in The Three Stooges, Chaplin, or Lloyd. In addition, Edmondson per
forms a series of truly astounding maneuvers on a motorcycle near the beginning
of the film, reminiscent of Buster Keaton’s memorable stunts, in which he falls
asleep at the wheel of a moving motorbike, only to crash into the front of the hotel,
and, through an intricate series of pratfalls, wind up behind the hotel’s front desk
as if nothing had happened, ready to receive visitors. As Edmondson told critic
Claire Wills in the November 1999 issue of Flicks, shortly before G u est House
P ara diso 's release:
The constantly squabbl ing partners in crime have what
Edmondson believes is the best battle they’ve ever done, em
ploying a variety of painful kitchen utensils, with Richie forcing
a meat hook up Eddie’s nose and slamming his head in the fridge
door. “We still have great fun inventing fight scenes,’’ Edmondson
laughs. “It gets more and more difficult to think of novel ways
of hitting each other, and implements to use. The hooks up the
nose was a stroke of genius...it looks incredibly painful.’’ So
realistic in fact - as is a scene in which a character is raised to
the ceiling by his nipple ring - that audiences will wince at ev
ery crack and tweak.
These antics are all very well, but as Mayall had a near fatal
accident a year or so ago, when he fell off and was run over by
the quad bike he was riding, weren’t they concerned about the
extreme physicality of their performances?
“I was very worried,” Edmondson admits. “I talked to his
consultant about it, but he said you’d have to give him a really
traumatizing hit to make any further damage.” However, they
did modify their act slightly. “A lot of the violence happens to
me rather than him for that reason. I don’t think he hits his head
once.”
Instead, Edmondson gets to play fall guy and outdoes the
stuntmen in a sequence, which has him falling asleep and mov