History Film / TheWrongBox

** Big game hunter Oliver Pike Harmsworth (Valentine Dyall) tells his guide that he will not shoot a rhinoceros until it is actually charging, unaware that it is already doing so.

The ensemble cast features a number of established and future stars, and most notably includes brief appearances by Tony Hancock as an incompetent police detective trying to unravel the twists and turns of the plot, and Creator/PeterSellers as a BackAlleyDoctor whom Morris and John visit to obtain a blank death certificate to forge Joseph's death date as being after Masterman's.

* AndStarring: Tony Hancock and Peter Sellers both get this treatment; at the end of the cast list in the opening credits, their credits are given as "Tony Hancock as the Detective / Peter Sellers as Doctor Pratt".

In 1818, the parents and guardians of twenty schoolboys each contribute £1,000 to a {{Tontine}}, a sum of money to be invested and grown into a massive fortune to be claimed by the last beneficiary left alive. By 1882, the competitors have mostly met {{Undignified Death}}s; the two last survivors are brothers Masterman Finsbury (John Mills) and Joseph Finsbury (Ralph Richardson). The bedridden Masterman is cared for by his bumbling medical student grandson Michael (Creator/MichaelCaine) and plans to summon Joseph, to whom he has not spoken for forty years even though their London houses are next door to each other, to his "deathbed" to murder him and claim the tontine, while Joseph's greedy nephews Morris and John (respectively Creator/PeterCook and Creator/DudleyMoore in their first joint film appearance) are determined to keep him alive for just long enough to survive Masterman so that ''they'' can inherit the tontine. Joseph is also guardian to Julia (Nanette Newman); she and Michael have been in love for years despite only ever having seen each other from afar.

''The Wrong Box'' is a 1966 black comedy film loosely based on a novel by Creator/RobertLouisStevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. It centers around the last two surviving members of a tontine and their greedy relatives.

After Joseph, who survived the train crash unharmed, arrives at Masterman's house, his brother tries and fails to murder him and throws him out instead. When Michael discovers the body in the box that was accidentally sent to his grandfather's address, he assumes Masterman has gone through with his plan to kill Joseph and hides the body in the family piano. He hires two "undertakers" to dispose of the body, but when they find Masterman unconscious at the foot of the stairs after a fall, they assume his is the body they are to collect; Morris, who has gone to London ahead of John, sees them leave and thinks Masterman has died. The misunderstandings multiply from there...

As Joseph, Morris, and John travel from Bournemouth to London by train to see Masterman, Joseph slips away from his nephews' overbearing stewardship and unwittingly encounters the Bournemouth Strangler, a serial killer. When the train crashes and the Strangler is killed while wearing Joseph's overcoat, Morris and John assume his body belongs to Joseph. They hide the body in a barrel so as to maintain the illusion that Joseph is still alive until after Masterman dies, and have it sent to their house in London. Meanwhile, Masterman is having a box containing a statue delivered to his house. However, the partially obscured addresses lead to the wrong boxes being delivered to the wrong houses (hence the story's title). After Joseph, who survived the train crash unharmed, arrives at Masterman's house, his brother tries and fails to murder him and throws him out instead. When Michael discovers the body in the box that was accidentally sent to his grandfather's address, he assumes Masterman has gone through with his plan to kill Joseph and hides the body in the family piano. He hires two "undertakers" to dispose of the body, but when they find Masterman unconscious at the foot of the stairs after a fall, they assume his is the body they are to collect; Morris sees them leave and thinks Masterman has died. The misunderstandings multiply from there...

The ensemble cast features a number of established and future stars, and most notably includes brief appearances by Tony Hancock as an incompetent police detective trying to unravel the twists and turns of the plot, and Creator/PeterSellers as a BackAlleyDoctor whom Morris and John visit to obtain a blank death certificate.

* BackAlleyDoctor: Doctor Pratt has fallen on hard times (after [[NoodleIncident that unfortunate incident]] with the Lord Mayor's wife), living in a drunken haze in a grubby little office full of cats. He sells a blank death certificate to Morris Finsbury as part of a scheme to collect an inheritance, insisting on washing his hands for even this humble task, and then absently drying them off on a cat.

* DeadMansChest: The plot revolves around Morris and John concealing [[spoiler: what they think is]] Joseph's corpse in the hope of collecting an inheritance, packing him up in a barrel and shipping him home...but it's wrongly delivered to Masterman's house where it is found by Michael, who fears Joseph has been killed by Masterman to collect said inheritance. He hides the body in a piano which is then collected by repossessors and into the attention of the police.

* HowDareYouDieOnMe: Morris and John Finsbury are taking their uncle Joseph on a train trip on the news that Masterman's imminent death will net them a fat inheritance - after the train crashes, Morris finds a dead body he thinks is Joseph's, and tearfully curses him for selfishly dying and leaving two helpless orphans destitute.

** Newly-knighted Sir Robert Park Collingwood (actor uncredited) is accidentally decapitated during the conferral of his knighthood by Queen Victoria.

* OldWindbag: Joseph Finsbury excels at telling people about useless factoids - just ask the unfortunate carriage driver who was stuck listening to him talk about the frequencies of certain words in The Bible for hours on end.

In 1818, the parents and guardians of twenty schoolboys each contribute £1,000 to a {{Tontine}}, a sum of money to be invested and grown into a massive fortune to be claimed by the last beneficiary left alive. By 1882, the competitors have mostly met {{Undignified Death}}s; the two last survivors are brothers Masterman Finsbury (John Mills) and Joseph Finsbury (Ralph Richardson). The bedridden Masterman is cared for by his bumbling medical student grandson Michael (Creator/MichaelCaine) and plans to summon Joseph, to whom he has not spoken for forty years even though their London houses are next door to each other, to his "deathbed" to murder him and claim the tontine, while Joseph's greedy nephews Morris (Creator/PeterCook) and John (Creator/DudleyMoore) are determined to keep him alive for just long enough to survive Masterman so that ''they'' can inherit the tontine. Joseph is also guardian to Julia (Nanette Newman); she and Michael have been in love for years despite only ever having seen each other from afar.

* BackAlleyDoctor: Peter Sellers plays a disreputable doctor who has fallen on hard times (after [[NoodleIncident that unfortunate incident]] with the Lord Mayor's wife), living in a drunken haze in a grubby little office full of cats. He sells a blank death certificate to Peter Cook as part of a scheme to collect an inheritance, insisting on washing his hands for even this humble task, and then absently drying them off on a cat.
* TheButlerDidIt: The film has a convoluted series of events centering around a dead body and cloudy circumstances of his identity and death. At film's end the entire cast is being questioned by a police detective - the butler of one household gallantly takes the fall for his master and claims to have killed him. The detective says - everyone now - "The butler did it?!"

* DeadMansChest: The plot revolves around two men concealing [[spoiler: what they think is]] their uncle's corpse in the hope of collecting an inheritance, packing him up in a barrel and shipping him home...but it's wrongly delivered to their cousin who, when finding it, fears the uncle has been killed by his grandfather to collect said inheritance. He hides the body in a piano which is then collected by repossessors and into the attention of the police.

* TheFunInFuneral: The film culminates in a chase with a horse-drawn hearse carrying a trunk of ill-gotten money and another hearse with a not-at-all dead family member, which get tangled up with an actual funeral, the party of which holds another family member thought to be dead. Everyone ends up with the wrong hearse and they all converge at the funeral site. HilarityEnsues.
* GotVolunteered: In the aftermath of a train wreck, a military man takes charge in the chaos - "All right, I want three volunteers - you, you, and you!"

* HesDeadJim: Bedridden old Masterman Finsbury receives word that he and his brother Joseph are the last two members of a tontine (a contract where a large sum of money is awarded to the last survivor) - he weakly tells grandson Michael "I believe the time...has come...at last." and placidly drifts into unconsciousness. Michael solemnly draws a sheet over the old man's head...and a beat later the old man swats it off and angrily chides Michael for his poor observation (and Michael ''is'' a medical student.) He meant it was time [[spoiler: to do in his brother Joseph and collect the money.]]
* HowDareYouDieOnMe: Morris and John Finsbury (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) are taking their uncle Joseph on a train trip on the news that a relative's imminent death will net them a fat inheritance - after the train crashes, Morris finds a dead body he thinks is Joseph's, and tearfully curses him for selfishly dying and leaving two helpless orphans destitute.

* StabTheSalad: The film begins with the establishment of a tontine - a contract where a sum of money gets inherited by the last surviving member - at a boys' school. A series of quick vignettes shows the members dying off over the decades until it settles on a bedridden, elderly man, one of the last two survivors. His grandson picks up a knife, walks up to him - and hands it to him to open a letter.

* TooDumbToLive: Several of the children who potentially stand to benefit from the tontine grow up to be too dumb to live, as shown in the DeathMontage following the opening credits. Just to name two, Brian Allen Harvey orders the soldiers under his command to fire the cannon they have just reloaded, ignoring their attempts to point out that he is standing directly in the line of fire, while Oliver Pike Harmsworth insists on waiting for a rhinoceros to charge before opening fire, and waits so long that he is swiftly gored when it finally does start charging.

* {{Tontine}}: The events of the film are set in motion by the opening scene in which a group of children are made part of a tontine.

* UndignifiedDeath: The DeathMontage that follows the opening credits consists of ten of these as we see that perhaps the reason the Finsbury brothers are the last surviving competitors for the {{Tontine}} is that they're the only ones with (barely) enough brains to survive to old age. To borrow the phrase that precedes them in the closing credits (in which they are first billed), in order of disappearance:
** Army sergeant Brian Allen Harvey (Jeremy Lloyd) orders his men to fire a cannon, oblivious to the fact that he is standing directly in the line of fire.

A 1966 black comedy film loosely based on a novel by Creator/RobertLouisStevenson. It centers around the last two surviving members of a tontine and their greedy relatives.

In 1818, schoolboys Masterman Finsbury (John Mills) and Joseph Finsbury (Ralph Richardson) were included among the twenty potential beneficiaries of a {{Tontine}}, a sum of money that has been invested and grown into a massive fortune to be claimed by the last beneficiary left alive. By 1882, the other members have largely met {{Undignified Death}}s so that the Finsbury brothers are the only ones left. The bedridden Masterman is cared for by his bumbling medical student grandson Michael (Creator/MichaelCaine) and plans to summon Joseph, to whom he has not spoken for years even though their London houses are next door to each other, to his "deathbed" to murder him and claim the tontine, while Joseph's greedy nephews Morris (Creator/PeterCook) and John (Creator/DudleyMoore) are determined to keep him alive for just long enough to survive Masterman so that ''they'' can inherit the tontine. Joseph is also guardian to Julia (Nanette Newman), whom Michael has loved for years despite having only ever seen her from afar.

As Joseph, Morris, and John travel to London by train to see Masterman, Joseph unwittingly encounters the Bournemouth Strangler, a serial killer, and when the train crashes and the Strangler is killed while wearing Joseph's overcoat, Morris and John assume his body belongs to Joseph. They hide the body in a barrel so as to maintain the illusion that Joseph is still alive until after Masterman dies, and have it sent to their house in London. Meanwhile, Masterman is having a box containing a statue delivered to his house. However, the partially obscured addresses lead to the wrong boxes being delivered to the wrong houses (hence the story's title). After Joseph, who survived the train crash unharmed, arrives at Masterman's house, his brother tries and fails to murder him and throws him out instead. When Michael discovers the body in the box that was accidentally sent to his grandfather's address, he assumes Masterman has gone through with his plan to kill Joseph. The misunderstandings multiply from there...