Tight Little Island

Last month, TCM ran a night of movies appropriate for the 100th anniversary of the start of Prohibition in the US. You could argue that one of the movies might not quite have fit in, however, that being Whisky Galore!.

The movie is based on a real incident that happened in Scotland in World War II, and that Scottish setting is why one could argue it doesn't have to do with Prohibition (and certainly not American Prohibition). Todday (the location having been renamed) is an isolated island of the Outer Hebrides, off the northwest coast of Scotland. The inhabitants eke out a living from the land and the sea, with their contact with the world being a ferry that goes from the island to the mainland.

The locals love their whisky, as apparently all good Scots do, but that island being a distant outpost, they have a problem: they've run out of whisky! This turns the normally happy little island quite morose. They've also got a problem with the war being on, since being on the edge of the country, they could be a possible location should the Nazis ever try a surprise invasion. So the Home Guard is on the island, led by Capt. Waggett (Basil Radford), engaging in training exercises in case anything should ever happen.

Meanwhile, the local post office/telephone exchange is run by the Macroons, a father and two adult daughters, Peggy (Joan Greenwood) and Catriona (Gabrielle Blunt). Each of them has a man in love with her: Peggy pursued by Waggett's second-in-command Sgt. Odd (Bruce Seton), while Catriona is pursued by local schoolteacher George Campbell (Gordon Jackson), still under the thumb of his mother who seems to be the one person on the island who doesn't drink. These two romances provide the subplots to the story.

But the main story comes when a cargo ship, the Cabinet Minister, runs aground. The fishermen's rowboats are able to save the crew, and it is revealed to the rescuers that the ship was carrying a cargo of... thousands cases of whisky! All our locals' problems are solved, as they can salvage this whisky that's just going to go to the bottom of the sea anyway, and they won't be out of whisky!

Of course, it's not going to be that easy. There's the risk of boarding the ship to get that whisky, and the fact that it's not legal, because as this is whisky designated for export, no internal excise taxes have been paid on it. Taking this whisky without the government getting the taxes it's addicted to is wrong, wrong wrong. But the first problem is that the ship runs aground late on Saturday, and by the time a "salvage" crew can go out, Sunday has begun. This being a distant part of Scotland and the 1940s, the Sabbath is still adhered to faithfully, so the men don't feel they can go out.

Waggett sends Sgt. Odd to stand watch, but some of the other locals in the Home Guard waylay him and get as much whisky as they can before the ship founders and goes under. Waggett, on seeing what's happened to Odd, realizes there's contraband liquor on the island now. Being officious -- and English -- he demands to see the Inland Revenue to let them know what's happening. It's a race between them and the islanders to keep Inland Revenue from finding the alcohol.

Whisky Galore! is a delightful little comedy from an era when Britain -- and especially Ealing Studios -- was churning out this sort of little picture and doing a much better job with the understated charm than Hollywood was. The main story and the subplots fit together well, but probably the bigger plus is the location shooting, showing a culture that was rapidly disappearing with the advance of technology.

The movie is available on DVD, with a few caveats. There's a Reel Vault MOD DVD that the TCM website has listed at various times as being available or on backorder. Also, the movie was remade a few years back, and that 2016 version is definitely in print. But there's also a release set for March that's part of a two-film set with The Maggie, although that release looks to be rather pricier.