The Ladykillers

The Ladykillers is a 1955 British black comedy film made by Ealing Studios. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, it stars Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green, Jack Warner and Katie Johnson. American William Rose wrote the screenplay, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay and won the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay. He claimed to have dreamt the entire film and merely had to remember the details when he awoke. Mrs. Louisa Wilberforce is an eccentric old widow who lives alone with her parrots in a gradually... subsiding "lopsided" house in King's Cross, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel. With nothing to occupy her time and an active imagination, she is a frequent visitor to the local police station, where she reports fanciful suspicions regarding various people she has come into contact with. Because of the wild-goose chases she has led them on in the past, the officers in the station humour her but give her absolutely no credence. She is approached by a comically sinister criminal, 'Professor' Marcus , who wants to rent rooms in her house.
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