Remembering ‘Eat the Rich’, a comedy music movie like no other
British comedy has always had an element of satire to it, and at no time was this more evident than in the second half of the 20th Century, with acts such as Monty Python at the peak of their game. There were several other iconic groups in British comedy at the time, including the crew responsible for The Comic Strip Presents….
The Comic Strip is a group of comedians who found popularity in the 1980s when alternative comedy was taking the reigns from the beginning-to-tire format of stand-up. Their core members were Ade Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson.
Alternative comedy had been a conscious effort to break free from the shackles of the mainstream, which in the 1970s had become racist and sexist. It also attempted to remove itself from the reliance on the standard formation of the joke: the set-up and the punch-line. Rather, it would incorporate elements of mundanity and the surreal.
Perhaps one of the best examples of The Comic Strip’s output was their 1987 film Eat the Rich, directed by Peter Richardson. Several big names from British culture joined the cast, even if only for cameos. Amongst them were Robbie Coltrane, Paul McCartney, Shane McGowan, Jools Holland and even Lemmy.
The film tells of a young waiter named Alex (played by Lanah Pellay) who works in a high-class restaurant in London called Bastards. He is subjected to the scorn of the British upper class on a daily basis but is eventually given the sack after being rude to one of the customers.
Unemployed, one day, Alex witnesses a terrorist attack on an embassy building in London and soon steals from a benefits building and goes on the run. Meanwhile, we are introduced to the British Home Secretary, a malicious and vulgar lout who usually fights his way out of trouble. His plotline consists of his rivalry with Commander Fortune, a communist in a foreign state.
Eventually, Alex makes his return to Bastards, politically riled up and tears the place to shreds with his new anarchist mates, including the restaurant’s clientele – who he feeds to other patrons of the establishment and changes the name of the place to Eat the Rich.
Eat the Rich is not a subtle film by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a classic watch and features a brilliant soundtrack including, of course, none other than ‘Eat the Rich’ as made famous by Motörhead. What separates Eat the Rich from other British comedies and makes it unlike any other comedy film at the time is its unique approach to abandoning the traditions of British comedy that had laid the groundwork for its arrival. It departs from the slapstick routines that had dominated the mid-part of the 20th Century.
Through its obnoxiousness and scathing attack on British moral values, Eat the Rich set forth the manifesto for alternative comedy that would come to the fore throughout the remainder of the second millennium.
Tradition, after all, isn’t everything. In fact, it is tradition itself that ought to be placed under close scrutiny. Comedy in the mid-20th Century had been saturated by racist and sexist views, and the next wave of British comics found that it was time for a new motive to take precedence. Fortunately, Eat the Rich arrived just in time for British society to begin to take into account its own obsequious values and its ingratiating attitude.
Check out the film’s trailer below.
