It Couldn't Happen Here

It Couldn't Happen Here is a 1988 musical film starring the British pop duo Pet Shop Boys and based on the music from their first two studio albums Please and Actually. It was originally conceived as an hour-long video based on Actually, but it evolved into a surreal full-scale feature film directed by Jack Bond and co-starring Barbara Windsor, Joss Ackland, Neil Dickson and Gareth Hunt. Plot In the early morning, dancers are warming up on an English beach (Clacton-on-Sea, Essex), and Neil Tennant appears on a bicycle. The song "It Couldn't Happen Here" is being played. He cycles up to a kiosk, where he buys some postcards from the shopkeeper (Gareth Hunt). The shopkeeper complains about the political faults of the modern world, but Neil ignores him and fills out his postcards. Meanwhile, Chris Lowe is at a bed and breakfast, the contents of his room into a seemingly bottomless trunk. He runs downstairs and sits waiting for the landlady (Barbara Windsor) to serve breakfast. In the breakfast room, Uncle Dredge (Gareth Hunt) is making bad jokes with a repetitive catch-phrase, bothering other guests, but is submissive to the landlady, who seems to disapprove of everyone except Chris, still sitting dispassionately. When the ridiculously over-size Full English fried breakfast arrives, Chris empties it over the landlady's head and runs out into the street. He runs along the promenade being chased by a group of bikers on motorcycles. Back at the beach, Neil continues to cycle along the beach. He passes a priest (Joss Ackland) who is reciting verses whilst leading a party of school children. Two of the boys are the Pet Shop Boys at a younger age and they run to the pier (Clacton Pier). In a building on the pier, the adult Neil is seeing an exotically dressed female fortune teller; as he leaves she uncovers her face to reveal that "she" is Chris Lowe (filmed in the West Cliff Theatre bar). The young Neil and Chris (Nicholas and Jonathan Haley) look in a Victorian era Mutoscope and see a short bedroom farce: a slapstick performance featuring a squire (Chris Lowe) and a butler (Neil Tennant) making advances to a French maid (Barbara Windsor) (filmed at the West Cliff Theatre). The priest catches up with the boys and shouts more verses at them. The boys escape into the amusement arcade, where they see a rock star (Neil Tennant) in a gold tasselled suit. Then they pass into a theatre, where they see a group of nuns perform a risqué dance routine to "It's a Sin".