The Magic Christian

Peter Sellers - Sir Guy Grand KG, KC, CBE
Ringo Starr - Youngman Grand, Esq.
Isabel Jeans - Dame Agnes Grand
Caroline Blakiston - Hon. Esther Grand
Wilfrid Hyde-White - Capt. Reginald K. Klaus
Richard Attenborough - Oxford coach
Leonard Frey - Laurence Faggot
Laurence Harvey - Hamlet
Christopher Lee - Ship's vampire
Spike Milligan - Traffic warden #27
Roman Polanski - Solitary drinker
Raquel Welch - Priestess of the Whip
Victor Maddern - Hot dog vendor
Terence Alexander - Mad Major
Peter Bayliss - Pompous Toff
Patrick Cargill - Auctioneer at Sotheby's
John Cleese - Mr. Dougdale
Clive Dunn - Sommelier
Patrick Holt - Duke in Sotheby's
Hattie Jacques - Ginger Horton
Jeremy Lloyd - Lord Hampton
David Lodge - Ship's guide
Dennis Price - Winthrop
Graham Stark - Waiter at Chez Edouard
Michael Aspel - TV commentator
Michael Barratt - TV commentator
Harry Carpenter - TV commentator
Roland Culver - Sir Herbert
Peter Graves - Lord at ship's bar
John Le Mesurier - Sir John
Michael Trubshawe - Sir Lionel
Alan Whicker - TV commentator
Sean Barry-Weske - John Lennon lookalike
Yul Brynner - Transvestite cabaret singer
Graham Chapman - Oxford crew
John Lennon - Himself

An uneven and self-indulgent satire very much a product of the Swinging Sixties from the 1959 novel by Terry Southern, which basically involves a series of vignettes centred on the cynical theme of greed and what price man puts on his dignity. The statement is made early in the film and must of what follows is repetitious and monotonous. Sellers gives a bright and stylish performance as the blimpish Sir Guy Grand, richest man in the world, but Ringo Starr's effort to project himself as a non-Beatle actor is a distinct non-event. Peter Sellers, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Terry Southern co-wrote the free-form episodic screenplay.

A homeless London street bum, Youngman Grand (Ringo Starr), is adopted by the world's richest man, eccentric Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers). Sir Grand and his adoptive son proceed to test the bounds of money and what people will do at its behest with a series of practical jokes and surrealist hoaxes. At the theatre, Laurence Harvey combines his Hamlet recital with a striptease. When given a parking ticket by a traffic warden (Spike Milligan), he pays the warden £500 to eat the ticket. At Sotheby's auction house, Guy buys a Rembrandt from the auction director and proceeds to destroy it buy cutting the nose out. He also buys off the Oxford boat race team and its manager (Richard Attenborough) into sabotaging Cambridge.

The beautiful people of London set sail down the Thames on the luxury liner The Magic Christian bound for New York, under the captaincy of drunken Reginald K. Klaus (Wilfred Hyde White) and powered by the Priestess of the Whip (Raquel Welch), but the ship proves unseaworthy when the ship's vampire (Christopher Lee) makes his way to the bridge. Ultimatly, on the banks of the River Thames they build a cesspool of blood, urine and excrement, the thrown money in offering it free to anyone prepared to fish it out.