Plot
Set during World War I, Lurk is transported from his role as a lowly servant in the household of Lord and Lady Twithampton (William Mervyn & Linda Gray) to the Western Front. Lurk is inspired to bravery, and upon receiving the German master plan for the entire war, which has through an unlikely series of events been tattooed onto his posterior, is pursued across France by German intelligence. After breaking into the British military headquarters to deliver the plans into the hands of General Burke (Robert Coote), he is confronted by the sensuous German spy Mata Hari (Zsa Zsa Gabor). After foiling Mata Hari's scheme to relieve him of the plan, a hilarious scene develops in which he is pursued by the nefarious Von Gutz (Lance Percival) and his henchmen Donner and Blitzen (Gertan Klauber and Stanley Labor). Accompanied by the Can-Can, performed by the Famous Buttercup Girls, Lurk is pursued around the Allied headquarters. Finally, disguised as a tree, he is able to present the plans to General Burke, to the famous line:
General Burke: "Lurk, bend down."
Lurk: "I thought you'd never ask!"
Having successfully delivered the plans into the hands of British intelligence, Lurk receives a medal of honour and a promotion. He is therefore able to win the love of his beloved Fanny (Madeline Smith) and defeat the machinations of the wicked Sgt. Major Groping (Bill Fraser). It has also a cameo by Bob Hoskins' film debut.
Read more about this topic: Up The Front
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
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—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)