Whoops Apocalypse was originally a six-part 1982 television sitcom by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, made by London Weekend Television for ITV. Marshall and Renwick later reworked the concept as a 1986 movie with almost completely different characters and plot, although one or two of the original actors returned in different roles.
The series has a big cult audience, and copies of videos are heavily sought after. The British budget label Channel 5 Video released a compilation cassette of all six episodes edited together into one 137-minute chunk in 1987.
John Otway also recorded a song called "Whoops Apocalypse", which was used as the theme song for the film. He occasionally performs it live.
Series
The series details the weeks leading up to the Apocalypse. It features a chaotic and increasingly unstable global political situation in which nuclear alerts are accidentally triggered by malfunctioning Space Invaders machines and the naive U.S. President Johnny Cyclops (an obvious Ronald Reagan parody) is advised by an insane right-wing fundamentalist security advisor, called The Deacon, who claims to have a direct hotline to God. (The Deacon was so named because of the previous role of the actor who played him (John Barron) as a Cathedral Dean in the sitcom All Gas and Gaiters; the writers claimed not to know at the time that Alexander Haig, a security advisor to Reagan, was known as The Vicar in the White House.)
In the Eastern Hemisphere, things are similarly unstable. Soviet Premier Dubienkin is in fact a series of clones, which keep dying and being replaced. Meanwhile the deposed Shah of Iran, Shah Massiq Rassim, led by his advisor Abdab who is always blindfolded to avoid looking upon the Shah's magnificence, is shunted around the world in search of a refuge (spending most of the series in a cross channel ferry's toilet).
The main danger is the Deacon's development of a new super-powerful American nuclear weapon. This is originally called the Johnny Cyclops Bomb; later, when the President vetoes the name, it is renamed the Quark Bomb. The Deacon arranges for Lacrobat (John Cleese), a disguised international arms smuggler nicknamed The Devil (a parody of Carlos the Jackal), to steal a Quark Bomb and take it to Iran, to help the Shah in his counterrevolution. The Soviets get word of this (via Rassim's parrot) and decide to invade, gaining control over the world's oil supply.
The Soviets have a new ally in British Prime Minister Kevin Pork (Peter Jones) of the Social Democratic Alliance Party (SODEMALL). Pork has gone insane and believes himself to be Superman. The British foreign secretary is blackmailed by the Soviets to join the Warsaw Pact. This situation so unnerves the foreign secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that they don Green Lantern and Hawkman costumes, and are locked up in a padded cell at 10 Downing St.
The Soviets are also holding two elderly American tourists named Jonathan and Martha Hopper captive, convinced they are secretly CIA spies, and they are constantly tortured by Commissar Alex Solzhenitsyn ("no relation"). This turns out to be true, but the Hoppers are crushed by a helicopter in a bungled CIA rescue operation. This does not help Cyclops's popularity rating, which is just below that of Charles Manson). The Deacon stages an assassination attempt in order to help Cyclops' flagging popularity, but it is damaged further when the ambulance carrying Cyclops to the hospital accidentally runs over his main opponent. By the end of the series we're told he's less popular then the Boston Strangler. (These developments are followed by a dramatic newsreader named Jay Garrick, and his topless female counterpart across the Atlantic.)
Eventually the Quark Bomb is accidentally detonated in Israel when Lacrobat's attempt to prevent it being incinerated goes horribly wrong, destroying the country and killing most of the US army, who were stationed there. Meanwhile the Shah, who has temporarily been given sanctuary aboard a space shuttle, manages to crash it into the Moscow Kremlin. Believing it to be a bomb, the Russians launch their weapons at America. In the final scene Soviet missiles are on their way to obliterate the United States and President Cyclops has to decide whether to retaliate. The title sequence already showed the aftermath of the decision, Earth reduced to a nuclear wasteland. In a final twist, we discover that the woman we see in the title sequence selling buttons reading "WEAR YOUR MUSHROOM WITH PRIDE" is in fact the First Lady, who was hidden in a fallout shelter and is one of the few survivors of the war.
DC Comics references
The writers appear to be fans of DC Comics. As stated above, the delusional British PM and his ministers don DC superhero garb; his caped white whippet 'Krypto' is hurled to its doom from a 10 Downing Street window for its "fly around the block"; semi-generic Superman adventures and specific characters (e.g. Doctor Destiny) are frequently mentioned (The best known example is probably, "Can't make Prime Minister's questions, Brainiac has escaped from the Phantom Zone") ; an Iranian mullah is mentioned to have "dressed as Aquaman"; Ed Bishop's character 'Jay Garrick' has the same name as the Golden Age Flash; and the elderly American farming couple held by the Soviets are named "Jonathan and Martha" which are the names of Superman's Earth parents in current DC continuity.
Cast
Also appearing are: Matt Zimmerman, Bob Sherman, Lou Hirsch, Jack Klaff, Ed Devereaux and Rik Mayall.
Movie
Whoops Apocalypse DVD cover, 1986
The 1986 ITC Entertainment film version, directed by Tom Bussmann, uses an almost completely different plot from the series, but also ends with an accidentally-triggered nuclear holocaust (hence the title). The beginning of the film parodies the Falklands War when a small British colony is invaded by its neighbour, the fictional country of Maguadora, whose dictator, General Mosquera is played by Herbert Lom. The new President of the United States, Barbara Adams, tried to sort out the mess (both countries are hard on communism) but the peace talks are sabotaged by Lacrobat (Michael Richards), the world's leading terrorist. The British, under the leadership of PM Sir Mortimer Chris, send in a task force to seize the islands back. For revenge Mosquera hires Lacrobat to kidnap the British Princess Wendy, in order to hold her to ransom to get the British out. Sir Mortimer then threatens that unless she is returned in 48 hours, he will release a nuclear strike. So now President Barbara Adams not only has to deal with Mosquera and Lacrobat, she must also deal with Sir Mortimer, and also with the fact that Mosqueara decides to align himself with Russia, and this whole thing could start World War III.
Loretta Swit is Barbara Adams, the first female president. She was only sworn in office when the previous president, an ex circus clown (a parody of Ronald Reagan's entertainment career), died after asking a journalist to hit him in the stomach with a crowbar as a test of physical strength (a take on the death of Harry Houdini). For a comical satire, Swit plays the role straight. Adams, while trying to maintain the peace is shown to be incompetent, especially when trying to handle questions from the press. Interestingly, we discover her husband runs a weapons company which hired Lacrobat to start the war in the first place.
The film also features Peter Cook playing Sir Mortimer, an insane conservative British Prime Minister (an insane PM being one of the few similarities between the film and the series) who claims that unemployment is caused by evil invisible pixies. Later, he hands out Union Flag umbrellas to Conservative voters to protect them from nuclear bombs, and plans to reduce unemployment by pushing employed people off of cliffs, creating new jobs. Despite the fact he is clearly insane, the public adore him and follow him blindly. The rest of his party attempt to assassinate him, but he only loses his hand, getting a hook instead. He then takes up a new policy of crucifying disloyal party members in Wembley Stadium.
Princess Wendy is a parody of Princess Diana, who was at the height of her popularity at the time. When kidnapped by Lacrobat, Wendy is placed in increasingly odd disguises, including bondage gear and a King Kong outfit. Featuring Rik Mayall playing the commanding officer of an inept SAS squad, most of whom are massacred in a shoot out in a wax museum when attempting to rescue Wendy. Rik Mayall had a small role in the original as Biff, a guitar player. Michael Richards plays Lacrobat, the only character from the original series to appear. Lacrobat is partly responsible for the war between the two countries beginning, and is seemingly the only intelligent character in the film. He dies when a tiger - that the SAS have for no reason - rips his throat out. Alexei Sayle, who also appeared in the original series has a different role in the movie as a Communist soldier who is hiding their nuclear arms on a holiday campground.
Other characters include two tabloid journalists who discover the Communist weapons, but are killed; a rear admiral who is openly homosexual, two security guards who accompany President Adams everywhere (even when she's going swimming) and a former president (a parody of Richard Nixon) who is now in prison and authored the book Commie Bastards I Have Known.
Although Wendy is rescued, Sir Mortimer ignores Adams pleas to call off the nuclear strike. She then calls the rear admiral (who Lacrobat hypnotised to imagine he was in a burning building when fingers are snapped). He ponders calling off the strike, but when a sailor snaps his fingers, he calls "Fire!", the strike is launched and the film ends.
The film reuses some jokes from the series, like Lacrobat's absurd disguises (at one time going by the name Dr. Thesius Lyndon Penis), a dying Soviet leader, a crucifixion sight gag, the president being unable to decipher other people's technobabble, an insane Prime Minister and an overly macho CIA agent with ludicrously complicated plans. There is an SAS sequence in the series as well, and another gay military character. The following mock news story was used in both as well, "A woman who secured a lock of Frank Sinatra's hair twenty years ago today sold it back to him for an undisclosed sum ."
The film also marked the screen debut of Simon Dormandy, who at the time was primarily a stage actor.
See also
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