A Jolly Bad Fellow
Directed by	Don Chaffey
Screenplay by	Robert Hamer Donald Taylor
Based on	Don Among the Dead Men 1952 novel by C. E. Vulliamy
Produced by	Donald Taylor
Starring	Leo McKern
Cinematography	Gerald Gibbs
Edited by	Peter Tanner
Music by	John Barry
Production company	Pax Films
Distributed by	British Lion Films
Release date	1964 (1964)
Running time	94 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

A Jolly Bad Fellow (US: They all Died Laughing) is a 1964 British black comedy film directed by Don Chaffey. It stars Leo McKern and Janet Munro.^[1]

In the film, a university professor advances his career through habitually poisoning his colleagues at the university. When blackmailed by a female research assistant, he poisons her as well. But this time, he is unable to avoid police suspicion. While trying to escape, he is accidentally poisoned by his wife.

Plot

Kerris Bowles-Ottery is professor of science at the University of Ockham. To advance his career, he poisons inconvenient colleagues with an untraceable substance he has discovered that induces hysteria and manic behaviour followed by death. His research assistant, Delia, blackmails him into a promise of marriage, but he remains attached to his wife, and poisons Delia. When the police arrive at his home to question him, he flees in his car but fatally crashes it as a result of smoking a poisoned cigarette that his wife has unknowingly brought from his laboratory.^[1]

Cast

• Leo McKern as Prof Bowles-Ottery
• Janet Munro as Delia Brooks
• Maxine Audley as Clarina Bowles-Ottery
• Duncan Macrae as Dr Brass
• Dennis Price as Prof Hughes
• Miles Malleson as Dr Woolley
• Mervyn Johns as Willie Pugh-Smith
• Mark Dignam as The Master
• Leonard Rossiter as Dr Fisher
• Alan Wheatley as Epicene
• Patricia Jessel as Mrs Pugh-Smith
• Dinsdale Landen as Fred
• George Benson as Inspector Butts.^[1]
• Ralph Michael as Superintendent Rastleigh
• Jerome Willis as Detective Inspector Armstrong
• John Sharp as Hodges
• Wally Patch as Tom the Publican
• Judith Furse as Lady Davidson

Reception

In a 2017 study of Bryanston Films, Duncan Petrie writes that the film did not make "any impact either commercially or critically"^[2] When the film was released in the US (under the title They All Died Laughing), The New York Times called it "nonconformist but not especially sidesplitting" although having "a deftly casual air about it as well as the polish of professionalism".^[3]