Please read Understanding catalogue records for help interpreting this information and Using footage for more information about accessing this film.

Title: MOWER MADNESS

Reference number: 0812

Date: 1939

Director: filmed by C.E. Marshall and F.M. Marshall

Sound: silent

Original format: 16mm

Colour: bw

Fiction: fiction

Running time: 13.39 mins

Description: A lawn mower goes out of control!

Won best fiction at 6th Scottish Amateur Film Festival, and was the first British film to win an award, at the international UNICA festival in 1947. Specially commended by the Board of Amateur Cine World.

Exterior scenes shot at F.M. Marshall's home. Frank Marshall began making amateur films in 1932, always using 16mm and plays the part of the lawnmower salesman in the film.

Shotlist: Credits (.14) int. shots of a man in an armchair reading an advertising leaflet for "the little more motor mower" (.27) ext. shot of the same man now cutting the grass with his manually operated mower (.37) further shots of the man reading the leaflet again. He smokes a cigarette and then settles down for forty winks (1.00) a salesman at the door invites the man to try out the motor mower he has brought along for demonstration purposes, and after a successful try-out, the man buys the mower (2.45) once the salesman has gone, however, the man experiences some difficulty in operating the lawn mower. After a few false starts, the mower takes on a life of its own and runs amok in the garden and finally in the house itself, entering by a first floor bedrom window (9.40) the man in the armchair is awakened by his cigarette burning his fingers and realises that the "mower madness" was nothing but a dream (10.13)