Discussions on another forum led me to think the “Confessions…” movies warrant a far more serious exegesis as to the decline and fall of British popular entertainment. These unfunny sex comedies with insufficient sex or comedy, but a plethora of 70s signifiers of mediocrity and light entertainment stars on the way down as witless shit is on the way up (excuse me) are spectacularly the insight into music festivals shown by “Carry On Camping” or Freddie Starr (whatever happened to him, then?) doing his Mick Jagger impression. I recall trying to watch an “On the Buses” movie for 70s retro amusement. i lasted 10 minutes, and I have a strong stomach for this sort of thing. So what of this genre of entertainment still (or ever) “holds it’s own” (hurr). I anticipate a torrent of innuendos and puerile smutty lines along with the semiotics (steady on) here. I reckon being embarrassed by this stuff helped ease through (hah!) our version of PC in the post-punk years. Benny Hill was rarely funny: it was Bob Todd and Rita Webb (or maybe the short bald bloke being hit on the head) that were.
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moseleymoles says
My kids are amused that while we force fee them on a diet of Hitchock, Kubrick, Tarantino etc none of their friends will watch a movie made before 2000 as the editing makes them too boring. And apparently it is now normal to read the wikipedia plot summary – inc ending – and then decide to watch the movie.
Movies on the whole stand up better than TV, though Star Trek is still ridiculously watchable for the character chemistry and (occasional) smart plot. As I grew up without a TV all the above passed me by completely.
dai says
Tarantino?
Moose the Mooche says
Gets away with it dunnee?
moseleymoles says
I realise the quality threshold has gone down a bit there, but mention it as we watched Pulp Fiction on Sunday which they spent the entire time going ‘that’s where that meme comes from’
Moose the Mooche says
I’m not alone in having a similar experience the first time I watched Casablanca.
Vulpes Vulpes says
I feel I should point out that, though I may not have actually consulted Wikipedia in advance, when I go to see a Shakespeare production, the plot is not entirely unknown to me in advance. Somehow this hardly ever detracts from the experience.
Perhaps this is the same phenomenon that your kids are happy to exploit when going to see a flick – taking their pleasure from the quality of the unfolding of the plot, rather than from the plot itself. After all, they are probably much less likely to repeat the watching experience than I am to, for example, go and see yet another ‘Julius Caesar’ or ‘Hamlet’ production.
And as far as TV is concerned, it has to be said that there is still glee to be found every time Mainwaring utters the line “Don’t tell him, Pike”, even after 20 viewings.
Moose the Mooche says
What’s odd about those films is not that they’re not funny – many things purporting to be funny very much aren’t – but that the copious nudity isn’t even vaguely interesting. Something about the tawdry context means that despite countless presentable women disrobing, the chap remains sedentary.
Compare the Hammer and Amicus films, many of which are equally shoddy and incoherent – the odd bit of frontage heaves into view and it’s a big WAHEY! from me, thank you very much.
(I’ve pasted this in from a book of essays by Pauline Kael.)
H.P. Saucecraft says
Good points well made, Moosey. Barbara Windsor losing her kit in Carry On Camping was a Bamforth postcard, but there is nothing more erotic in the history of cinema (or anything, really) than Madeline Smith and Ingrid Pitt pretending to be lesbians in The Vampire Lovers.
Moose the Mooche says
They were pretending???
Grrrrrr….
H.P. Saucecraft says
Pretend lesbians are the best. Surely you know that from your top-shelf studies.
Moose the Mooche says
Lusty Nuns Monthly lied to me!
Beezer says
Madeleine Smith was the guest recently of Caroline Munro, who hosts ‘The Cellar Club’ on Friday nights on Talking Pictures TV.
It’s not a programme as such, more a series of links between the late night showings of Hammer Horrors. Ms Smith was permitted to talk at entertaining length of her early career in a few of these and Ingrid was mentioned. It was all rather fun on set. Apparently.
Leicester Bangs says
I’ve never seen a Confessions film, but I love the British horror of that period: Norman J Warren, Pete Walker, etc. and Robin Askwith was always popping up in those. He was in Horror Hospital, Tower of Evil, The Flesh and Blood Show… probably loads more if I could be bothered to look. I sometimes get him mixed up with Nicky Henson.
Sewer Robot says
The Flesh And Blood Show! Isn’t that the one that starts with a woman getting up in the middle of the night to answer violent knocking at her door entirely in the nip?
Moose the Mooche says
Is that not normal?
My house. My rules.
Slug says
Robin Askwith now makes a decent living doing public talks about his life in films. Having attended one of these recently, he is a very engaging and entertaining speaker, and not at all what you might have expected. I don’t quite know why this surprised me, but it did.
Moose the Mooche says
He was recently in a stunningly awful Channel 5 drama starring Sally Lindsay and the keyboard player from Phoenix Nights. Robin’s teeth (TMFTL) were spectacular.
Jaygee says
I saw him doing dinner theatre in some play at the Mill in Sonning a few years back. His face was red enough for any amateur photographers in the audience who still used film to develop contact sheets by
hubert rawlinson says
@Jaygee I’m a tad confused as red light will not expose film, or do you mean use his red face to see to develop the contact sheets?
I saw an episode of Father Brown once where he wrapped a reddish scarf over a light so that he could develop a photograph. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have spent money on expensive lights to do it.
Jaygee says
Not sure. Been a while since I took a photograph with anything other than a phone
Don’t (didn’t?) photographers used to fit red bulbs into the hight sockets in their darkrooms so they could see what they were doing without exposing their negs?
GCU Grey Area says
I used to develop and print black and white film at college.
The red light allows you to get photographic paper (which is sensitive to daylight) out of its light-proof box, and place it into the enlarger. When you put a negative in, white light is projected through the enlarger onto the paper. The exposed paper goes into the developing solution under red light, and when ready, the print is fixed and washed. That done, you can put the ‘white’ room lights on.
The exposed film had to be loaded into a developing tank in darkness; we used film cassettes which unscrewed, and then gave them in for refilling (also done in darkness).
dai says
No sex please, we’re British. While the Confessions films purport to be raunchy sex comedies they are actually the complete opposite. Showing the male protagonist to be completely clueless in his pursuit of the opposite sex and (pretty much) failing completely. Also poorly acted, poorly scripted, poorly directed, low budget efforts that exist to show us the worst that cinema can offer.
There are many other 70s films (a great decade) that are amongst the best that cinema has ever produced, mostly US films. If kids don’t want to watch them then it is their loss, they may come round to them later. I can watch films from the 30s and 40s and while I acknowledge that the acting, directing and editing styles are dated I can still see things of worth in them and the very best still hold up today.
count jim moriarty says
The simple reason that the Confessions films kept being made is that they were extraordinarily successful at the box office – among the highest grossing films in Britain at the time. It was in attempting to follow them by getting rather more explicit (relatively) than suggestive in the last couple of films (England, Emmanuelle – nobody wanted to see Kenneth Williams’ bare arse) that led to the final demise of the Carry On series.
Jaygee says
They were also incredibly cheap to make. Hire RA, get a couple of household names who needed the dosh to come in and film a cameo for half-a-day and. you were in business. Their sheer awfulness means that not even Talking Pictures designs to show them nowadays
Jaygee says
They were also incredibly cheap to make. Hire RA, get a couple of household names who needed the dosh to come in and film a cameo for half-a-day and. you were in business. Their sheer awfulness means that not even Talking Pictures designs to show them nowadays
retropath2 says
Tommy Godfrey tended to be my yardstick of whether a film was truly dreadful or just plain shite. Down next to the Old Vic, at the end of the Cut, in Lambeth, is (was?) the Royal Vic, a fairly salubrious boozer, where King Tommy held court of an evening. Quite an interesting place.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Luvaduck! I’ve only just realised that Greg Wallace isn’t actually Tommy Godfrey.
Jaygee says
Presumably he would cause regulars’ sides to split each time he said “I’ll ‘ave an ‘alf!”
Vincent says
Tommy Godfrey! For years I have conflated him with Arthur Mullard.
Martin Hairnet says
Good call on Tommy Godfrey. Ronald Fraser is another actor from that period who sometimes dabbled in the same realm. Were they drinking buddies?
retropath2 says
My dad knew Ronald Fraser somehow, a connection I never got to the bottom of. He used to comment that he was a lovely fella when he was sober, which sadly was never. Fraser, not my dad.
mikethep says
I used to see him often in the Sir Richard Steele when I lived round the corner. Great actor, but a nasty drunk.
deramdaze says
As usual the answer is – it went shite sometime in that murky is it?/isn’t it Golden Age? era of the late 60s/early 1970s. There’s a book there.
I disagree about Benny Hill, but the On The Buses (started in 69) end of the market is for me the start of the demise; but then 69 is about the start of fashion’s demise, and pop music’s demise, and football’s demise. It’s a demise not unique to British comedy.
Specifically on comedy: it’s the crucial bit where the squares are finally addressing the swinging 60s which, ironically, has already finished! 1973 episodes of On The Buses typically have them togged-up in clothing that would have looked dated in 68.
As for the Carry Ons, the difficulty of getting them right can be seen in Carry on Columbus, with Rik Mayall, Stephen Fry, Peter Richardson and the woeful Sara Crowe all hopelessly out of their depth.
Dave Ross says
I’ll just leave this here…..
fishface says
Look…Sid James Chopper.
Moose the Mooche says
That picture is the 70s-est thing in the universe.
Arthur Cowslip says
You are correct. It hits every possible button – architectural, cultural, sociological, sartorial, architectural and tonsorial.
Black Celebration says
Crikey the more you look, the more 70s it is:
Sid James
Chopper Bike
Smoking a pipe
No visible tattoos
Giant shirt collar
Garish shirt design – possibly nylon
Analogue watch
White tiled outdoor ceiling
Frosted plastic faux awning effect
Outer wall of building is entirely grey concrete
And yet the trousers don’t look very flared and the sockless slip-on look is a more 80s thing.
Slug says
By the 70s Sid was no spring chicken. Much more a child of the 50s, his choice of trouser is entirely appropriate for a man of his years. Sid in flares is a scary thought
Moose the Mooche says
I was scared-uh
By Sid James in flares-uh
Martin Hairnet says
Sid Is looking pretty svelte there. Is he taking his cycling proficiency test?
He’d be 108 years old if he was still alive today.
Jaygee says
Scary thought.
Despite looking impossibly ancient, Sid was just six years younger than I am now when the curtain came down on his career that night in Sunderland.
Uncle Wheaty says
I have watched, and enjoyed, all of the Confessions and Carry Ons at sometime 20 years or more ago.
Never need to see any of them again.
Rigid Digit says
There must’ve been a surplus of celluloid in the early 70s as just about every Sitcom ended up as a big screen version. Some OK, most just repeated parts of earlier scripts in a longer form.
1980 was (I think) the last outings for Big Screen sitcoms with Rising Damp and George & Mildred (the last thing Yootha Joyce ever did).
The best of this bunch (for my money):
The Likely Lads
Porridge
Both written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais – writers who had the ability to go outside the 30 minute story
fishface says
Didn’t it have summat to do with the Eady Levy?
IIRC a tax charged at the ticket booth and paid to the British film industry to finance output offsetting the might of Hollywood.
The TV company applies for funding…presto jingo, free film.
I think I may have seen a short doc on this Tax, ironically as an extra on one of these films rerelease via the BFI
Rigid Digit says
Yes, that’s it. I remember reading the same thing.
When the Levy ended, we were denied film versions of Hi De Hi and Allo Allo
Gatz says
They were almost always based around the usual cast going on holiday, presumably because the film production company didn’t have access to the same sets used in the TV shows.
Black Celebration says
Thanks @gatz – That’s something obvious but has never occurred to me before. The films are generally poor because they have taken the situation away from the comedy.
Twang says
I remember Bilitis, which was Athena poster style winsome girls in the buff out in poppy fields plus tinkly piano music from Francis Lai which was rather soothing. The music that is. The rest left a 17 year old me in a thoughtful mood.
Skirky says
Surprisingly successful soundtrack album, many of which may even have been played at some point.
Twang says
I had a copy! My girlfriend gave it to me!
Sniffity says
If i told someone Twang’s girlfriend gave him Bilitis, they’d probably say there was an ointment that could be obtained for it.
Askwith says
It’s touching that you’re all talking about me 🙂
mutikonka says
Have just finished reading the Lynda (Oxo Mum) Bellingham’s autobiography. She was married to the guy who conceived and produced the Confessions series, and he was – by her telling – simply a hustler who saw the potential to cash in on a crossover between Carry On films and soft porn. He was also in her experience a vile & abusive man. She liked Robin Askwith though.
Black Celebration says
Robin Askwith’s Twitter feed is really good.
Moose the Mooche says
HMHB song title.
Sewer Robot says
Still can’t forgive him for giving young me the impression that even boot-faced mofos could do alright with “birds”. Adult life was a rude awakening!
mikethep says
Especially in their greyish y-fronts.
Moose the Mooche says
You mean a not-rude-enough awakening.
Tiggerlion says
Her husband did give Lynda Bellingham one of her first film roles, in Confessions of a Driving Instructor.
Tiggerlion says
I’m ashamed that I knew this. Fortunately, I don’t know it any more in 2022.
NigelT says
I may well be jeered at, but I’ve always liked Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush. Sure it is ‘of its time’, but rather gloriously so, and the Barry Evans character breaking the fourth wall with commentary beat Fleabag to it by 50 years. It also has Judy Geeson, which is always a plus.
I have the Likely Lads boxset, and I was working my way through it recently and my daughter got curious. I waxed lyrical about it, so we put on the next episode in line….it was the one where they meet a mate and his wife out somewhere for dinner and spend the whole time making sexist comments and leering at ‘birds’. It was very possibly the worst episode ever….she never forgave me.
Moose the Mooche says
Phfffft. Plautus beat Fleabag to that by about 2000 years.
Jaygee says
Alfie pulled the same trick a couple of years earlier (than Barry not Plautus).
Let us also not forget BE’s sterling turn as the teacher in Mind Your Language
He ended up as a taxi driver (in Leicester iirc) ad ended up the victim of a murder that has remained unsolved fir 40 years.
Jaygee says
@NigelT
It was the best of shows, it was the worst of shows
Pessoa says
I confess that Dick Emery’s film “Ooh..You Are Awful” has its moments , though it has vanished from YouTube. That’s another Ronald Fraser film btw.
I also like the two Barry Mackenzie films from that time, except I realise they were essentially Australian films set in the UK (and directed by the reputable Bruce Beresford), so don’t count.
EDIT: just noticed the date of this thread, so a bit late.
Jaygee says
The bit where the train station announcer breaks down in tears (“you see, Smithers, they do care!”)
Occasionally crops up on talking Pictures and may well be on their website
Jaygee says
Ah, the always reliable Ronald Fraser.
Anyone remember a late 60s/early 70s series called Badger where he played a crusty army/expat who returned home from a lifetime spent in the colonies only to find the UK totally changed beyond his comprehension?
mikethep says
Yes I do. That might have been the first time I encountered him.
He also played Apthorpe in the TV of Waugh’s Men at Arms trilogy, forever going on about his missing thunderbox.
Beezer says
One of my work colleagues is a dead ringer for Dick Emery. Complete with the cheesed orf cockney accent.
I’ve never mentioned it to him and if he’s aware of the likeness he’s never alluded to it. He’s an ex-copper so I’m not minded to say ‘Hello Honkytonks, how are you?!’ next time I see him.
Sewer Robot says
Beezer! I’ve done it wrong again, Beezer!
Sniffity says
“Au Pair Girls” is a rolled gold stinker from 1972…BUT…the theme music is loungetastic, which is great because it means you only have to watch the first six minutes…
Extra points for using Futura for the titles…minus points for making them (unreadably) red.
mikethep says
There was an actress called Me Me Lay?
Even though I’ve never seen that, a quick look at the cast (John le Mesurier, Richard O’Sullivan, Geoffrey Bayldon, Norman Chappell, Trevor Bannister) tells me all I need to know about the plot.
Featuring Maria Coyne as Naked Woman Washing Car (uncredited).
Diddley Farquar says
Nick Drake’s sister features I believe with an interpretation of Pink Moon.
Rob C says
A descant recorder, Toni Arthur, and the theme tune of ‘Picture Box’.
*necessarily in that order*.