F*** Me, It's Freddie!

FMIF as Philip Proudfoot in 'Otley' (1968).

We've actually done this film before, but it is well worth revisiting, especially with facial expressions this good. Freddie plays what is called in olden days parlance 'a flaming homosexual', i.e. he isn't scared of what you think of his sexuality. He's also quite a dandy, and at the centre of the intrigue, like a camp mod spider. It's a broad performance, but it works - after all, as you can see from the second screen shot, Freddie has his tongue firmly in its cheek.

Otley

'Otley' is about fifteen minutes too long, but it's a fun film about the rather shabby world of espionage that features a stellar cast of British character actors, led by the great Tom Courtenay as Gerald Arthur Otley, a shiftless moocher and compulsive pincher of ornaments who, by sheer idiocy, finds himself at the centre of a web of slightly incomprehensible intrigue.

A nice mix of comedy and drama, 'Otley' is very sixties (never a problem in my book - or on my blog, anyway), but gives us a glimpse of the 'real' London behind the swing: the markets and bedsits, cafes, pubs and tube stations, people in polo necks and socks that need darning. The grooviest person in it is Freddie Jones, who is so sharply dressed it makes Beau Brummel look like Worzel Gummidge.     

Tom Courtenay is excellent, as always. His light Yorkshire accent, bony face and slightly camp delivery are miles away from the usual leading man, and he's not afraid to appear cowardly and pathetic, which is probably why he never made it big in action films. He's also very funny and, at times, the self-obsessed, duplicitous Otley is reminiscent of a (slightly) more grown up Billy Liar, which makes you wonder sometimes if all the running around and gun play is simply part of some elaborate, extended fantasy. 

The rest of the cast is a veritable who’s who of contemporary character actors, including James Villiers, Alan Badel, Leonard Rossiter, James Cossins, Ronald Lacey, Frank Middlemass, Geoffrey Bayldon and, of course, our beloved Freddie Jones. The last two on the list are still with us (aged 91 and 87, respectively) and, I hope, will remain so for a good few years to come. Romy Schneider makes an attractive female lead, but then she always did, particularly when sporting thigh length white pvc go go boots as she does here.  

Light hearted and full of twists, it’s the sort of film that should be on TV right now but, for whatever reason, never is.  Bloody nowadays TV.

Oh, Norman!

Have you ever wondered what Norman Wisdom's arse looks like? Want to see him frugging and fugging along to a group called The Electric Banana (The Pretty Things) in a swinging nightclub called The Screaming Apple? Check. Want to see him dressed as Austin Powers? Check. Want to see him cop up with a promiscuous dolly bird half his age? Check. And you want to see all of this take place against a backdrop of swinging Southport? KER-CHING! 'What's Good For The Goose' has it all, and so much more besides.

Little Norman plays Timothy Bartlett, a London assistant bank manager who has a home in the suburbs, a wife, three kids and a tank full of tropical fish. He seems to like the fish best, perhaps because they're the most exotic thing in his life. When his boss dies suddenly, Timothy is expected to attend the annual conference at the Grand Hotel in Southport (it must be a fairly minor bank, there's only about ten of them there). Before he even gets there he has been accosted by two teenage hitch-hikers who spend the drive down messing about with his bowler hat, eating his sandwiches, licking his fingers and getting him done for speeding. He takes a shine to Nikki (Sally Geeson, in her film debut), especially when she shoves her bare leg inbetween his and pumps his accelerator.

When they get to Southport, they go their separate ways but Timothy finds himself thinking about Nikki throughout the day. In the evening, bored by the load of bankers he's supposed to be socialising with, he goes out to find her, eventually walking voluntarily into a psychedelic seaside world of free love, loud music, double whiskies and dancing like a monkey on a psychotropic banana diet. Little Norman looks so small and sweet and old as he jigs and jumps about, but then his most endearing qualities were always his total enthusiasm and the physical abandon he brought to every task. Nikki can't help but be impressed by Timothy's sudden dedication to the cause of 'in' and the fact that he has a hotel room rather than a sleeping bag under the pier, so she decides to go back with him and, after quite a lot of unfunny messing about, including a flash of the Wisdom pubes, they finally have sex. Probably: we don't see any of that, it's not quite that sort of film.

The following day, Norman claims to be ill so he can spend the day with Nikki. They do pretty much everything Southport has to offer, from amusement rides to having it off on the sands to skinny dipping (cue arse). The whole sequence seems to prove what I had surmised it would be like to have an affair with a much younger woman: exciting, but extremely tiring. Give me a woman who appreciates the value of a sit down and a nice cup of tea any day. Timothy thinks it's love, of course, and goes out and buys a load of mod gear and rents a flat for him and Nikki to live in, only for him to quickly realise that the free and easy attitude to sex that led her to sleep with him also means that she will sleep with others. Crushed, he calls his wife and asks her to join him.

When Mrs. Bartlett arrives he basically takes her through a whirlwind induction to what's happening, baby, kitting her out in hot pants and groovy sunglasses and doing all the things he did with Nikki (although the pants stay on during the swimming this time, which is a relief). His wife is, of course, pretty surprised at his behaviour but strangely unsuspicious. Timothy's a lot more fun this way, and Mrs. B scrubs up pretty well, so they're both happy. As they head home, it's clear that life will go on in much the same way for them, but with far more sex and a hipper wardrobe. Result!

'What's Good For the Goose' is a fairly harmless film, although a moderately more explicit version was released on (ulp) 'The Continent'. Much of its appeal, of course, depends on whether you like Norman Wisdom or not. Personally, I think he's great, although I prefer him with his kit on. Already playing against type as a banker, Norman goes fairly off piste here, although he does it in his usual guileless, gormless, 'gumpy' way. It takes him literally five minutes to decide to cheat on his wife, for instance, but he never comes across as immoral or self-serving - it's just Little Norman getting his end away and, as long as most of it is left to the imagination, who could object to that?*

* The British public objected to it. Norman didn't appear in another feature film for 21 years.

What's Good For The Goose



Building A Human

We've (alright, I've) already had some fun with World Of Wax, but here's some next level shit from Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper.

It kind of, sort of pisses on my pommes frites in terms of the other posts I had planned but, you know what, it tastes like vinegar. On the pissy chips, I mean. I love it.

You Die Laughing

The only collaboration between British horror giants Hammer and US exploitation genius William Castle, ‘The Old Dark House’ is not quite as good as the sum of its parts, but provides an eccentric and occasionally amusing stab at a macabre black comedy with a great cast and some cheap but genuine laughs.

When American car salesman Tom Penderel is asked by his intense and enigmatic housemate Caspar to deliver a sports car to his ancestral seat in Dartmoor, Femm House, he inadvertantly wanders into a very strange situation indeed. Femm House is almost exactly as an American would expect it to be – old, dark, leaky, cold, and populated with a load of bonkers elderly upper class maniacs, the sort who build arks in their back garden. Unfortunately for Tom, he arrives on the night when family members start dying – murdered at the rate of one an hour by an unknown assailant who is clearly looking to thin out the opposition to inheriting the enormous fortune bequeathed by a piratical ancestor.

Often collapsing into farce, ‘The Old Dark House’ suffers from the same problem as 99% of horror comedies in that it is neither funny enough, nor horrific enough. That said, it’s pleasantly knock-about, and the cast have a lot of fun with their bizarre roles.

Robert Morley, Mervyn Johns, Joyce Grenfell and Danny Green play the older Femms, with Janette Scott, Fenella Fielding and Peter Bull (in a dual role) as the younger generation. Special consideration should be given to Fenella Fielding, who is stupidly sexy as the sinister Morgiana. Fielding could have had a long horror career if she’d taken her tongue out of cheek, but she is too twinkly and knowing to convince as a real threat – although she looks like she could have your trousers off in seconds. I like her.

Castle and Hammer didn’t join forces again, unfortunately, so ‘The Old Dark House’ remains a quaint, camp curio – not massively successful, but an interesting change of pace.

The Old Dark House

Carry On Creepy

I have an aversion to farce. I don’t like people running around and hiding in cupboards; I don’t like mugging and pulling faces; I don’t like plots that hang on things that make no sense and could be immediately resolved if everyone just stopped running around, hiding in cupboards, mugging and pulling faces and just calmed the fuck down for a nano-second. That said, I like ‘What A Carve Up!’ and that’s pretty much what happens all the way through it.

The idea is extremely straightforward, really, a disparate band of British character actors gather at a creepy old mansion for the reading of a will and, while there, they start getting knocked off one by one. It’s fairly predictable, and the stars are Carry On stalwarts Sid James and Kenneth Connor, which makes for a distinctly down to earth affair, although they are ably supported by horror genii Donald Pleasence and Michael Gough and by the rather tasty Shirley Eaton.

Kenneth Connor fascinates me. His hair is ridiculously curly but also very delicate: it’s like a gossamer afro, an aurora of frizz. He's such an unlikely lead, comedy or not, and he could only really have been a film star in England, maybe Italy. I always liked it in ‘Carry On’ films when he’d sing: the big, warm, expressive voice coming out of his little, frigid, awkward body.

Sid James is a crumpled legend, and it’s interesting that here he plays Connor’s friend and ‘legal advisor’ as a close companion to the Sidney Balmoral James character who spent his life advising (and ripping off) Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock (Hancock had just sacked James as he was concerned that they had become a double act). His character is called 'Sid', of course: it's difficult to think of him as anything else, really, although I did once see him in a film playing an Italian, but can't remember any other details.    

Okay-ish, not bad, easy to watch (just as well given the amount of times it’s been shown on telly), I sort of like it, certainly don’t dislike it. I wouldn’t write a book about it, though, no matter how post modern I was feeling.   

What A Carve Up!

Come Back, Mrs. Noah

How can one describe 'Come Back, Mrs. Noah', a 1977 sitcom written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft ('Dad's Army', 'Hi De Hi', 'Allo fucking 'Allo) about an annoying old biddy (Molly Sugden) who accidentally ends up in orbit when her fat arse presses the launch button on an experimental rocket?

How about 'it's shit'? 

A much, much worse than it sounds cross between 'Space 1999' and 'It Ain't 'alf Hot, Mum', it's set in a 2050 where Britain is once again the dominant world power (yeah, right) and starts off by not being funny in the slightest before quickly becoming so pathetic that even the writers tire of the show and, realising there isn't going to be a second series, end it by simply flinging the rocket containing the ageing cast even further out into the universe, a sort of cosmic 'fuck you' to a load of shitty, shit smeared space junk. Good riddance.    

Valerie Leon, Nose Holder

Valerie Leon is the link between several venerable British entertainment institutions, including Hammer films, the Carry On series, the James Bond franchise and dear old Morecambe and Wise.

Here she is in part of their 1977 Xmas special, a Cyrano De Bergerac skit also featuring Penelope Keith and Francis Matthews. Val has little to do apart from to show a bit of cleavage and hold Eric's false nose, but she seems to be enjoying herself.

The Trouble With Tributes




Morecambe and Wise are firmly established as the nation’s favourite double act, remembered lovingly every year in tribute programmes and repeats of their most famous shows. They are also commemorated with individual statues in their home towns, although they are of wildly variable quality.

Eric was a keen bird watcher, hence the binoculars

Wayhey!

Eric, who died in 1984, was born in Morecambe, and his statue is brilliantly placed at the top of a set of steps leading up to the sea front, allowing for some fantastic sunsets and sunrises to backlight his iconic silhouette. Unveiled in 1999 by The Queen, it was sculpted by Graham Ibbeson, and is an effective and affectionate tribute to a much loved figure, as well as an accurate portrait, but then Ibbeson has form: his other works include statues of Eric-lookalike Phillip Larkin and Cary Grant, as well as one of Les Dawson in Lytham-St. Annes.

Ernie died in 1999, a few months before Eric’s statue was put in place. Eleven years later, in March 2010, his own statue was unveiled in his home town of Morley in West Yorkshire. It’s terrible. Little Ern looks rough and unfinished, and is unsympathetically situated in a busy street, shoved in a flower bed like an upturned ice cream cone. It's difficult to recognise the subject, especially as it puts him in the less familiar (but not inaccurate) pose of a song and dance man, albeit one whose legs are glued together with concrete. At seven feet tall, however, it's considerably larger than the real thing, which Ernie may very well have appreciated. Whereas Eric’s statue attracts tourists, Ernie’s statue simply upsets passers-by. One Morley resident said: "It doesn't look like him. It looks as if he’s falling over. It’s frightening people".

'It's frightening people' 

Is that a crease on the right hand side, or a tear track?

I’d like to see a statue celebrating these friends and colleagues at their very best and most recognisable, i.e. together, perhaps with Eric smacking Ernie about the chops. I'll go as far to suggest that it should take up permanent residence on the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. The tourists won’t necessarily get it, but it isn’t for them, it’s for us, and is every bit as relevant as, say, Major General Sir Henry Havelock.

F*** Me, It's Freddie!

FMIF as Peter in 'Cheers!', an episode of 'The Galton & Simpson Playhouse' from 1977.

In the absence of significant others, middle aged bachelors and house mates Peter and Charles share a fairly unspectacular but steady life with each other - until Peter announces he's geting married on Saturday. Clever, amusing rather than funny, it's hard to see how this would have ever have got a series but, as a one off, and with Freddie and Charles Gray, it's a very worthy way to spend half an hour.