What with the end of known humankind now firmly ensconced in every single theatre in North America (2012: The Movie!), I thought it might be interesting to visit a film about the end of humankind that is purposely funny as opposed to one that... well, who knows what it is.

Director Richard Lester is best known for the Beatles films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! as well as the critically and financially successful Musketeer and Superman series of the 1970s. But his best film was a 1969 satire that had a huge influence on modern comedy, and remains uncompromisingly revolutionary in tone and concept. It set his career back five years and remains largely unknown to this day.

In 1968, Lester was coming off a five-year run of hits, whereupon Hollywood gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, and that’s exactly what he did. The Bed Sitting Room, based on a 1962 one act play by the brilliant British satirist Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, is a comedy about the aftermath of the apocalypse and how even coping with nuclear winter is business as usual for the British as they attend to their day’s business. With a who’s who of performers (Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Marty Feldman, Arthur Lowe, Ralph Richardson, Rita Tushingham) gleefully embracing the absurd, the film is a laugh-out-loud, gag-filled glimpse into the future as we will know it and is about as politically incorrect a film as one could possibly make.

Lester shot the film at a refuse dump in West Drayton, which brilliantly stands in for a decimated London. There’s no linear plot; just a series of sketches and observations, with characters floating in and out at whim, with surreal ideas sitting cheek-by-jowl with the stiff-upper-lip British ordinary. At the same time, a complex intertwining of character relationships gradually emerges from the film, adding an unexpected layer of gravity to the story. Viewing the film 40 years after the fact, you can see clearly see the roots of the anti-establishment counterculture model of comedy (Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, Kids in the Hall) being laid. (The title, for instance, refers to a character named Lord Fortnum (Ralph Richardson) who, much to his horror, discovers he is morphing into a bed-sitting room.)

Lester’s direction is dry and understated, cinematographer David Watkins does a tremendous job of realizing a nuclear aftermath on a budget, and Ken Thorne provides a low-key score that grounds all the madness into a kind of reality. It’s a great film that no one with any interest in modern humour should miss.

The last word, though, should go to Spike Milligan, who described the film’s theme thusly: “I think man has no option but to continue his stupidity.”