The Devil's Pleasure Garden

Pretentious Pictures Presents:

Mortal coil

A comedy of corpses --

-- And A funeral parlor frolic

The novel (have a click)èthe play (go ahead)èthe script

Short-listed for the London Observer's PG Wodehouse Comic Novel Prize: "From the moment I started to read this book I was crying with laughter." "I nearly died laughing." "A first-rate contemporary farce, one of the hardest—if not THE hardest genre to pull off." "If you like dark humour and have a taste for knowing what you really shouldn't want to know you will love it. Brilliant characters and Great writing, be prepared to laugh your socks off."

Delmore Danruther

Clown, slacker, womanizer, wild man on the dance floor, takes nothing seriously, especially his job as a funeral director.

Proposed: Dan Levy

He takes the calls, picks up the bodies, sometimes from accident scenes, sells the coffins, organizes the ceremonies, and presides at some himself.

Has to do all the jobs that go with the turf—help with the embalming, wash the cars, clean the toilets.

Amid all this chilling death he's a Bugs Bunny of a guy— dresses the bodies up for parties, false eyebrows as he reads a service, ball-and-paddle in the back room.

But if he gets a call from someone whose family member has just died, he can suddenly be tender. And despite his boss's nagging he won't sell grief-vulnerable people caskets they can't afford.

Had a job hosing down buses at the terminal, was picked up in a bar by Hannah Merklinger, whose husband owns the funeral home. She got him the job, part of which is keeping her happy.

Falls so in love with Merrilie that he’s buried alive and almost dies for her.

When he gives his all and then finds her in bed with someone else, it breaks his heart and his spirit.

MERRILIE Gornton

Proposed: Annie Murphie

Beautiful, refined, heiress to a huge fortune, moves in a horses-and-sports-cars world out of Delmore's reach, has a blond-god boyfriend. Combines innocence and curiosity in a way that keeps us guessing. Is she caring or calculating?

Is horrified when Delmore lets her see the back room, but discovers in herself a fascination that amounts—fortunately for him—to a fetish.

anson gornton

"Anse." Merrilie's grandfather. CEO of multinational empire Gornton Pharmaceuticals and one of the richest men in the world. On his death bed.

Creaky-voiced but loud and authoritative all the same. Surrounded by family members awaiting their share of the pie.

Mistakenly pronounced dead, then wakes, takes Delmore in his cheap black suit for Death himself and confides in him. We’re never sure if he’s crazy or making sense. Extraordinarily well-hung.

Wraps his will in cigarette foil and swallows it before dying, causing a scramble for the body, which Delmore abducts.

The boss

Funeral-home proprietor J. Luther Merklinger is a cadaverous, insipid, humorless tightwad.

Proposed: Eugene Levy

Sucks up to the Gorntons.

Has it in for Delmore, who never makes any big sales. Suspects him of fun-having in the back room.

Has no idea his wife is sleeping with Delmore.

Nadine

The cosmetician. Professional, and proud of it. Could put you back together if you swallowed a depth charge.

Can restore and/or disguise a corpse till it's unrecognizable, which comes in handy when Delmore kidnaps Anse.

Proposed: Emily Hampshire

Brainy, noble, vulgar. Navy hair, gum.

Loves Delmore, and will do anything for him, but she'd never let him see that. Real tough.

Freon gornton

Fiftyish sassy well-shaped silicon, stiletto heels, rubber-duck voice. Rinse-red hair piled up and lanced by a silver cigarette holder, peacock-blue eye shadow, surgically-designed pout, lip gloss you could comb your hair in.

Tries too hard from the hips, but it works.

Anse adores her, and in her arms he rides out smiling.

She digs Delmore, and tries to win his aid in the search for the will.

HANNAH Merklinger

Forty-five, the boss’s wife and Delmore's lover, is sour and disappointed—in her husband, in the life they have, in skirt-chaser Delmore.

But she can't give Delmore up, which makes her even sourer. Strong-willed, smarter than her husband, cheers up when she thinks she's won Delmore back, then rants hysterically at him as he's smuggled out past the bad guys in a casket. Gets pills-and-boozy to play the organ at services.

Dog

Gaunt sleazy skuzz-ball, dead eyes, always needs a shave, funeral-home factotum, helps Delmore with the heavy lifting. Perverse tastes, mustn't be left alone with the bodies or he does bad things to them.

If gratification is sufficiently immediate can be something of a criminal genius. Accompanies Delmore on “removals”. Delmore protects him from the boss.

Jump

Pudgy nervous embalmer. Called "Jump" because when you speak to him he jumps. In the wrong job—good at what he does, but fears the corpses. Mustn't be left alone with them either, or he panics.

Wimpy, phobic, neurotic-compulsive home-body, pathologically shy of women. Dark-frame glasses he continually pushes up the bridge of his nose. Sensitive and intelligent—i.e. the opposite of Dog.

Dog is never so happy as when he's torturing Jump.

CHETWODE Gornton

Anse's son and heir apparent; fat, greedy, ruthless, stuck up, pre-coronary.

Enlists the local godfather to retrieve the body.

Heart attack when his dead father grabs his hand.

JOE FRANCE

Sinister Sicilian giant and hit man. Built like one refrigerator on top of another. "I like to make things dead." Short temper.

Delmore fools him, and he comes after Delmore, who hides with Merrilie in the casket display room. When Joe hears them getting it on in there, he shoots up every casket in the place.

Anse's NURSE

Sour battle-axe in a white uniform, also after the money.

Embarrassed by having assisted at a false declaration of death, she is mocked by Anse, and claims to be carrying his child.

Reluctant to pronounce him dead again, and hampers the abduction.

THEME SONG

(for cheerful female voices, to the tune of "Shuffle off to Buffalo")

When you're in the mortuary

You may find it cold and scary—

No, no, don't recoil.

Off you're gonna shuffle,

Shuffle off this mortal coil!

Comes the undertaker later

And he'll drain your radiator

And he'll change your oil.

Off you're gonna shuffle,

Shuffle off this mortal coil!

First he'll put you on the table,

Then he'll pump out your insides.

He'll make your condition stable

With formal-de-hyde!

You'll be magotty and wormy—

It's enough to make you squirmy—

When you're in the soil.

Off you're gonna shuffle,

Shuffle off this mortal coil!

Just because you feel immortal

Doesn't mean you'll never die.

You'll get hard and rigor mortal—

No use to won-der why!

When you're pushing up the daisies

You'll be lying back and lazy--

No more moil and toil.

Off you're gonna shuffle,

Shuffle off this mortal coil!

Shuffle off, shuffle off, shuffle off, shuffle off,

Shuffle off this mor-tal coil!

Pretentious Pictures presents

a funeral parlor frolic.

Will You Please Fuck Off?—the movie

The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.—Salvador Dalí

Toby travels with a woman who pays. He's got it made, except that her nine-year-old daughter is smarter than he is. Based on the novella:

Lazy, good-for-nothing, pleasure-loving Toby, in flight from his creditors in America, has tried it as an English-teacher in Paris ("know-your-words sort of thing") and as a tour guide in Italy and Greece ("I've always regarded Europe as more or less of a restaurant.")—

Proposed cast: Stelio Savante (Toby)

—and has now relaxed into the good life, traveling with rich bubblehead Marcie,

to Bali, Hydra, Puerto Vallerta, wherever he can avoid cold weather and alarm clocks. Marcie is the widow of a scientific genius, now dead in some wacko experiment, and her nine-year-old daughter by him, Andrea, thinks in megabytes.

And there's the rub: "Marcie is no smarter than anybody else; the child is smarter than anybody else"—including Toby, who she treats as her yo-yo. She'd have got rid of him long ago but her mommy loves him, so she keeps him around to, what, play with.

Proposed cast: Ben Shockley (Haze)

Marcie’s father-in-law, billionaire Hazelton Turnbull “Hard Turd” Harding IV, loathes Toby, and loathes giving Marcie her allowance to feed him. But he loves his little granddaughter, and there lies the control.

Now Haze has summoned Marcie and Andrea to London, so they can pose as a family while he pretends to buy and old house, but in fact wants to marry Marcie to Lord Michael, and pass the title on to Andrea.

Proposed cast: Scott Hinds (Lord Michael)

They distract Toby with Dr Lu, a hooker posing as a psychiatrist,

who lures him into compromising situations; one of which involves dropping his dry goods in front of the Queen.

Proposed cast: Mary Reynolds (HRH)

And as if he didn't have enough trouble, the house is haunted by a gay ghost who's in love with Toby.

Proposed cast: Mat Baynton (Oliphant)

Will You Please Fuck Off? is part of the Toby series:

Pretentious Pictures presents a London comedy.

Boccaccio's "The Husband"

“While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens, ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman.” —Giovanni Boccaccio

In fourteenth-century Florence, you could be killed for committing adultery. Nevertheless, the beautiful and elegant Lady Isabella, wife of a rich and powerful knight who bored her, took a lover, a young man not of her class, named Leonetto.

Another knight, Signore Lambertuccio, also powerful, also boring, also wanted her. Who didn’t? But she found herself unable to respond. He sent her message after message, with no result. Finally, he resorted to threatening her: unless she complied he would ruin her reputation, which would be a dangerous state of affairs. She knew what a ruthless man he was, so she resigned herself to yielding to him.

In the Florentine way, she spent the summers at her country estate, and when her husband rode off on business she sent for Leonetto, who quickly and eagerly arrived.

But Signore Lambertuccio happened to hear of her husband’s absence, and immediately mounted up and rode to the estate, where he knocked at the gate. Her maidservant looked out at him and hurried to the door of Isabella’s bedroom where she was engaged with Leonetto.

“Madonna,” she called, “Signore Lambertuccio has arrived—alone.”

Isabella sat up. “Uh-huh.” She hustled Leonetto behind the bed curtains and told him to stay quiet until Lambertuccio had gone, and Leonetto, who like everyone feared the signore, trembled and obeyed.

“Go down and open the gate,” she told the maidservant, who did so, and the signore rode in, dismounted, tied his horse and went inside, while Isabella dressed and got to the head of the stairs to meet him. “What a surprise! What brings you here?”

“Well, I heard your husband was away, so I thought I’d—come over.” He skipped up the stairs, took her by the waist, and they went into her bedroom and locked the door. And Leonetto, not daring to breathe, watched as Lambertuccio enjoyed himself on her person.

The maidservant, meanwhile, looked out and saw the husband coming back. She knocked at the bedroom door. “Madonna, the master is here. He’s in the courtyard.”

Isabella sat up. “Uh-huh. You left your horse downstairs?” Lambertuccio nodded. “Oh, well. I’ve enjoyed my life. I must say, you’re not my favorite way to say good-bye to it.” She smiled dimly at him. “No. Wait.”

She jumped out of bed and paced, thinking. “All right, here’s what I want you to do. Get your sword in your hand. No, that one. Run downstairs, wave it around and say, ‘I’ll get that bastard! Wherever he is, I’ll get him!’ If he tries to stop you just say it again. Keep saying it. Don’t say anything else. Get on your horse and ride away. Go on, go on, go on, do it, do it, do it!”

The signore, still flushed with pleasure, and annoyed at the interruption, did look angry enough as he charged down past the husband. “Signore Lambertuccio! What are you doing here?”

“I’ll get that bastard! Wherever he is, I’ll get him!” And he jumped on his horse and rode away. The husband watched him go, and went into the house where, at the top of the stairs was his wife, much in distress.

“What’s going on? Who is he so angry at?”

He climbed up to her and she led him into the bedroom, trying to calm her racing heart, and not altogether acting. “Some stranger,” she said, “a young man, came running into the house and up the stairs, terrified! Then Lambertuccio rushed in with his sword in the air! ‘Where is he!’ The young man found my room open and ran in! ‘Please,’ he said. ‘don’t let me be killed!’

“‘What’s wrong?’ I said, but Lambertuccio tore upstairs shouting and I went to the door. ‘Where are you, you bastard!’ He tried to come in, but I said, ‘Signore Lambertuccio, really! This is my bedroom!’ I must say he behaved like a gentleman. He searched the other rooms and ran out.”

“You did well,” said her husband, “to keep someone from being murdered here. But it was not gentlemanly to pursue a man who came to my house for protection! Where is he?”

“I don’t know!”

“Come out, young man,” called the knight. “You’re safe.” Leonetto, still trembling, and not altogether acting, peeked out from behind the curtains. “What trouble do you have with Signore Lambertuccio?”

“Really, it’s beyond me! He must take me for someone else. He saw me in the street, drew his sword and said, ‘You bastard, you must die!’ I didn’t wait to ask why, I ran as fast as I could. This lady saved my life!”

“All right, I’ll lend you a horse and take you back to Florence.” And so they had supper and rode back together. And as soon as he got there Leonetto went to see Signore Lambertuccio, and told him as much as he needed to know, and the husband never found out.

The Book

The Video

For Your Comments

Robert MacLean is a bad poet and an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a screamingly funny novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a reviewer of films, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, lives Greece, Irish citizen. Committed to making movies that don't matter. No brains, but an intellectual snob.