Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Leofwine_draca THE PURE HELL OF ST. TRINIAN'S is the third of the initial four films, coming hot on the wake of the very good BLUE MURDER AT ST. TRINIAN'S. This one's not as hot, as it feels like the series was winding down by now, the gags are limited and it's more like an endless parade of cameoing guest stars, including the likes of Sid James, Thorley Walters and the ubiquitous Michael Ripper.Still, for fans of both genre and era this will provide an adequate example of days-gone-by British cinema, with a slightly racier edge than normal (raising uncomfortable questions about the sexualisation of schoolgirls in the process, especially in the wake of Jimmy Savile-obsessed media coverage). It's great fun seeing all the favourite stars back once more, Joyce Grenfell is typically excellent and George Cole has a highlight with his rendition of "Knees Up Mother Brown".The plot does seem to be unfocused and all over the place after an admittedly dramatic opening, and indeed the St. Trinian's schoolgirls don't seem to feature much in the antics involving various characters finding themselves washed up on a desert island. Worth a look for nostalgia enthusiasts, then, but I preferred the next one, THE GREAT ST. TRINIAN'S TRAIN ROBBERY; also the first in colour, which seemed to revitalise everything somehow..

icaredor Third, and third best, film in the St. Trinian's series. The decline in quality is gentle and, although it looks a bit tired, this one still offers a lot of entertainment largely due to some wonderful comedic performances.The movie begins with the Fourth Form (Junior) girls burning down St. Trinian's and the entire school finding itself on trial for arson. The joy of the Barchester police and at Ministry of Education turns to gloom when Professor Canford (Cecil Parker) offers to provide a new school and promises to reform the girls. Canford turns out to be the dupe in a plot to abduct the Sixth Form (Senior) girls and marry them off to the sons of an Arab sheik. Off to Arabia in pursuit go the League of Incompetents: Flash Harry, Sergeant Ruby Gates, Professor Canford; bureaucrats from the Ministry of Education; and a Bath Unit (of highly trained ablutionists, no less) of the British Army. Luckily for all of them, the Fourth Form girls are on the trail too.This film has two major shortcomings. The girls are sadly misused. There are none of the distinct girl characters that helped drive the plot along in Belles. Here, the girls are simply a horde of hair and hockey sticks. Consequently, the story rests on the adult characters with mixed results. Flash Harry gets entirely too much screen time and becomes irritating, and the romancing of Ruby Gates gets rehashed from Blue Murder. On the other hand, the alcoholic ablutionists are amusing and the Ministry bureaucrats are splendid. Indeed, Thorley Walters gives the standout performance as Butters the education official driven to neurosis by years of dealing with St. T's. When he suddenly breaks into a pastoral dance it is as hilarious as it is unexpected, as incongruous as it is apt.The second shortcoming is that the film builds to a big, slapstick finale and then inexplicably skips out on it. When the hairy hockey horde comes careening across the desert in the requisitioned military vehicles – complete with band playing the St. Trinian's fight song – one expects, nay, one feels entitled, to see them rampage through the sheik's palace, returning much of it to deserty dust and banishing the sheik and his sons to maunder the merciless dunes. Sadly, no. The first vehicle crashes through the palace gate and we fade to the epilogue left only to imagine the mayhem that may have ensued. Sigh! Despite its faults, Pure Hell contains plenty of good stuff and remains a must see for St. T fans. The acting is wonderful with major talent in roles both major (e.g., Joyce Grenfell and Cecil Parker) and minor (e.g., Dennis Price and John Le Mesurier). And needless to say (but I will, anyway), it far outshines Train Robbery and the egregious Wild Cats.

The_Secretive_Bus There's just something utterly magical about the first three St. Trinian's films. Almost every character in them is played by an actor recognisable from over fifty other British films of the time, and they frequently have the best cast lists of comic talent ever seen in a British comedy. Quite often a film with a cast this distinguished can turn out to be a grave disappointment (such a fate befell efforts like "The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins", in which most of the effort on the part of the film-makers seemed to have been in actually recruiting the actors, rather than giving them anything worthwhile to perform). However, "Pure Hell", like "Belles" and "Blue Murder" before it, has a script and a story good enough to support the weight of these amassed comedy greats, most of whom you'll probably never have heard of. They're usually actors who appeared in loads of films of the period, and you'd never have thought of making a film at the time without them, but who never became stars in their own right - chaps like Raymond Huntley and Nicholas Phipps (most memorable in "Doctor in Love" as the frankly spiffing Dr. Cardew). Those actors who, if you're a vintage comedy connoisseur like me, you'll see and then go "Ahhh, yes!"As well as an admirable leading performance from Cecil Parker (taking over from Terry-Thomas in the last film as the guesting star), we have marvellous return appearances from the likes of Joyce Grenfell as Sergeant Ruby Gates, Lloyd Lamble as the superintendent who got engaged to her 16 years ago and still hasn't tied the knot (they almost achieve it, twice, in this film), Eric Barker as the civil servant Culpepper-Brown, Michael Ripper as the philosophical lift attendant, and, of course, George Cole as the best spiv in the business, Flash Harry. Quite why I think he's so class I don't know - I mean, he quite obviously *is* top notch, but I can't put my finger on why. He's just... hurrah! It's Flash! With his cockney lingo and jaunty theme music (yes, it's here again, punctuating most of his scenes and it never gets tiresome)!We also have the likes of Thorley Walters (hurrah!), Dennis Price (double hurrah!) and John le Mesurier (HURRAH!) as various members of the civil service, and Raymond Huntley, Cyril Chamberlain, Nicholas Phipps and Sid James making random appearances (actually, the double act of Eric Barker and Thorley Walters is one of the continued highlights of this film), and even some scenes with perhaps the best comedy actress there ever was, Irene Handl (probably best known for having played Peter Sellers wife in "I'm All Right Jack). Irene always seems to play these "posh commoner" roles, with wonderful lines like "So what bit of culture are you going to have a bash at then?", effortlessly stealing most of the laughs in whatever scene she appears in.That's another reason to love the film - genuine wit. Whilst a lot of comedies of the period tended to rely on farce and gurning and people falling over, such scenes are kept to a minimum here (and, furthermore, even when they do happen they're actually amusing), with witty lines and comments being brought to the fore instead. There's far too many to choose from, but my favourite probably has to be in a scene where Cecil Parker, George Cole and Joyce Grenfell are stuck in a boat in the middle of the ocean, sipping tea like the stiff-upper-lipped British citizens that they are. "Stranded in the middle of the ocean," Parker laments mournfully, "With only enough food and water to last us for... six months; two sugars please." Lines like this are delivered in a dry throwaway manner and just tickled me all the way through.The plot in this is far more complicated than those of the other films in the series, with most of the action being focused on the civil servants and adult characters, as opposed to the schoolgirls themselves. But the rambling story, which at one point seems to have ten plot lines running and intertwining at once, takes on a wonderfully surreal quality which further adds to the majesty of it all. In one scene, Parker, Cole, Grenfell, Barker and Walters are stuck out in a desert market place sipping tea at a cafe, and Phipps and Chamberlain, British soldiers in disguise, sit down at the table next to them. Chamberlain leans back to Walters to try and give his identity.CHAMBERLAIN: "Psst. I'm a-"WALTERS: "No, sorry, I don't want any postcards thank you."...PHIPPS: "Well, what did he say?"CHAMBERLAIN: "He said he didn't want any post cards."PHIPPS: "Oh... You haven't got any have you?"Oh, and as for the schoolgirls, though they don't appear that often (and when they do it's usually the fourth formers, played by child actors), there are a few "sixth formers" dotted about - the glamorous twenty-something year old actresses dressed in uniforms and the shortest skirts you're ever likely to see. The initial courtroom scene contains a slow pan up the most gorgeous of the lot, with her... legs, and everything, and my word, by jove, indeed. Ha ha.It's a quaint British comedy and I'm feeling a trifle warm just thinking about. I should have taken the tablets.The film does at times seem to be running out of steam, but there's usually another random plot twist to pull it back into shape. Though I probably still prefer "Blue Murder" for the sheer Terry-Thomas factor, "Pure Hell" is only slightly less marvellous, and stands up as a true comedy classic in its own right. Especially for dull 50s/60s comedy fans like me.9/10

david-697 The Pure Hell Of St Trinian's, the third movie in the series, never approaches the comic heights of the first two. Part of this is down to the absence of Alistair Sim, but also it is due to a script that switches the emphasis largely away from the school and places it more on the men from the Ministry Of Education. For long stretches you can hardly spot a schoolgirl, while the movie lacks a strong comic climax.You can also see a lack of inspiration at work here, as the Grenfell-Parker `romance' is more or less a replay of (the better handled) relationship with Terry-Thomas in the previous movie, while the whole 'desert island' business seems designed to fill up the movie's running-time.If it's not as fun as `Belles' or `Blue Murder', `Pure Hell' does have its good points. Cecil Parker's down-at-heel headmaster is a major asset to the movie, while it's nice to see the likes of Sid James, Denis Price and Liz Frazer make an appearance.The comic high-points come early in the movie, with Raymond Huntley stealing the movie as a Judge distracted by the charms of a leggy Sixth-Former, while later the 'striptease' Hamlet provides the film's most memorable moment. Irene Handle is also on top form as a more than slightly batty teacher.It's not the best of the series by a long way, but forty or so years on it is still worth watching.