Dave Allen in Search of the Great English Eccentric (1974)

1974-10-0850m

A 1974 documentary in which comedian Dave Allen meets a variety of eccentrics including Alexander Stuart Wortley who lives in a box on wheels, a cowboy vicar and the artist/filmmaker Bruce Lacey showing his set-up where he pretends to fly a Lancaster bomber in his garage.

Related Movies

1229933-thumbnail

The World According to Allee Willis (2024)

Take one look at award-winning songwriter / artist Allee Willis and you see someone unafraid to be themselves. Dressed in a cacophony of prints and colors, her signature asymmetrical haircut and famed parties at her real-life Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Allee didn’t waste any opportunity to tell you what she was about. But privately, Allee struggled with not fitting established gender and sexual norms. She buried herself in her work, until true love manifested her ultimate masterpiece - self-acceptance.

462963-thumbnail

Brexitannia (2017)

A sociological portrait of the United Kingdom after the historic Brexit vote of 2016. A funny, sometimes terrifying and non-judgemental look at the new populist politics sweeping western democracies.

1037762-thumbnail

Queen and the Crown (2022)

The Queen And The Crown a tribute: A feature length tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the UK’s longest reigning monarch, from her birth in London on April 21st 1926 to the nationwide outpouring of gratitude and thanks to Her Majesty in June 2022 marking the Platinum Jubilee, and then the sorrow just weeks later and her historic and epic funeral. Following the course of her life as the shock of the abdication in 1936 catapulted her father unexpectedly onto the throne, suddenly making the young princess heir to the crown, we see the way she pledged to give herself entirely to serving the nation.

1218270-thumbnail

Someone's Daughter, Someone's Son (2024)

Now a successful filmmaker, Lorna Tucker was once a teenage runaway sleeping rough on the streets of London. For this frank, forceful and inspiring documentary, she returns to her former haunts and speaks to current and former homeless people about why, twenty-five years later, record numbers of people are still reduced to living on Britain's streets.

855099-thumbnail

A Life on the Farm (2023)

A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.

17346-thumbnail

Grey Gardens (1976)

Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, two aging, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, are the sole inhabitants of a Long Island estate. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. Much of the conversation is centered on their pasts, as mother and daughter now rarely leave home.

1452933-thumbnail

Carlos Sainz: The Operator (2024)

39452-thumbnail

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.

1263801-thumbnail

The Canal Map of Britain (2024)

A look at Britain's beloved canal network via a fact-filled cruise along the first superhighways of the Industrial Revolution. In the age before mechanisation, a frenzy of canal-building saw a new army of workers carve out the British landscape, digging out hundreds of miles of waterways using picks, shovels and muscle.

42970-thumbnail

The Battle of the Somme (1916)

A documentary and propaganda film which shows the British Army's preparations for, and the early stages of, the battle of the Somme.

291067-thumbnail

Motel (1989)

Documentary looking at the culture of three motels and their owners who remain untouched by homogenization and corporatism, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Florence, Arizona; and the semi-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, California. Everyone has an unusual story to tell.

30142-thumbnail

Vernon, Florida (1981)

Early Errol Morris documentary intersplices random chatter he captured on film of the genuinely eccentric residents of Vernon, Florida. A few examples? The preacher giving a sermon on the definition of the word "Therefore," and the obsessive turkey hunter who speaks reverentially of the "gobblers" he likes to track down and kill.

31557-thumbnail

The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story (2003)

The full bizarre, tragic but celebratory story of Syd Barrett, the co-founder of Pink Floyd.

1082377-thumbnail

James Baldwin Abroad (2023)

Showcasing three short films by American writer James Baldwin, wherein he muses about race, sexuality and civil rights, among other topics, in Istanbul, Paris and Great Britain.

56224-thumbnail

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)

A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel's eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.

307225-thumbnail

Inquiry: The Great British Housing Disaster (1984)

David Jones investigates how 1960s council housing came to be built so poorly that thousands later needed to be demolished.

512840-thumbnail

The Eagle and the Lion: Hitler vs Churchill (2017)

Winston Churchill, one of the most revered men of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler, one of the most hated leaders in contemporary history. Between 1940 and 1945, these two enormously contradictory personalities faced each other in both politics and war. A clash of giants whose story begins in the trenches of the World War I and ends with the debacle of the World War II.

1299745-thumbnail

The Stasi: Secrets, Lies and British Spies (2023)

With access to recently-opened court files, Julie Etchingham reveals some of the Stasi's UK operations and asks why its other secrets are yet to be revealed.

503761-thumbnail

Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story (2019)

The hilarious and bizarre story of Frank Sidebottom, the cult British comedian in a papier mâché head, and the secretive life of Chris Sievey, the artist trapped inside.

34229-thumbnail

The Main Stream (2002)

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. takes viewers on a journey down the Mississippi River, showcasing everything from areas with spectacularly beautiful scenery to ugly and dangerously polluted stretches bordered by industrial development.