Britannia Hospital Reviews

Lindsay Anderson, director of the relentlessly satirical O LUCKY MAN! and IF..., offers another blackly comic view of British society here. Britannia Hospital toadies to its rich patients at the expense of others and awaits an impending visit from the Queen Mum. At the same time, labor complaints, a crazed physician using pilfered funds to perform Frankenstein-like experiments, protest groups, and a generally absurd array of characters and situations work on their separate agendas. Anderson's allegory--in which Britannia Hospital equals Britannia proper--is both more strident and less coherent than his aforementioned films (which also starred Malcolm McDowell) but deserved a better fate than it got at the box office.