As I write this, Norman Wisdom is a very confused old man who spends most of his waking hours cackling and yelping old catch-phrases at his increasingly suicidal nurse.
Indeed, by the time you read this he will probably have joined the hereafter and the obituaries will record a near 80 year career of hysterical mirth-making from the lovable funster with the crooked chequered cap. What most of these obituaries won't recall is how Norman Wisdom had already committed a form of suicide back in the late 1960s with this staggeringly poor, yet strangely compelling endpaper to his movie career.
The signs are ominous from the off "Tony Tenser Presents" go the titles. You scratch your head "Where have I seen that name before..?" Well, on the titles of a lot of the cheapest, crappiest British films of the 1970s so just take your pick.
Then it says "A Menahem Golan Production". Oh dear.
From what I could make out what follows is a combination of Confessions from a Holiday Camp and Last Tango in Paris. Sponsored by the Southport Tourist Board.
Norman Wisdom is very versatile at being Norman Wisdom (or a variation of such) here. Even in trash like this, he's never off form and somehow keeps you watching through parted fingers as he paws and dribbles all over a (clearly insane) Sally Geeson. Tony Tenser and Menahem Golan were, between them, responsible for some true cinematic horrors but the bedroom scene in filmic atrocity reborn. Sally plays the role of a lobotomised sex toy very well, by the way.
I wonder if any of the crazy young cats who populate this movie's party scenes maybe thought to themselves in a quiet moment "Umm old Norman+sex+hippies. Get me outta this mess!!" I guess it was a payday for them.
A do feel sorry for The Pretty Things though. They probably thought "Yeah! This'll do for us what Blow Up did for the Yardbirds"
And so old Norman's leading man career ended. Freezing his little balls off in Southport.
I went there once. It was a depressing place.
Indeed, by the time you read this he will probably have joined the hereafter and the obituaries will record a near 80 year career of hysterical mirth-making from the lovable funster with the crooked chequered cap. What most of these obituaries won't recall is how Norman Wisdom had already committed a form of suicide back in the late 1960s with this staggeringly poor, yet strangely compelling endpaper to his movie career.
The signs are ominous from the off "Tony Tenser Presents" go the titles. You scratch your head "Where have I seen that name before..?" Well, on the titles of a lot of the cheapest, crappiest British films of the 1970s so just take your pick.
Then it says "A Menahem Golan Production". Oh dear.
From what I could make out what follows is a combination of Confessions from a Holiday Camp and Last Tango in Paris. Sponsored by the Southport Tourist Board.
Norman Wisdom is very versatile at being Norman Wisdom (or a variation of such) here. Even in trash like this, he's never off form and somehow keeps you watching through parted fingers as he paws and dribbles all over a (clearly insane) Sally Geeson. Tony Tenser and Menahem Golan were, between them, responsible for some true cinematic horrors but the bedroom scene in filmic atrocity reborn. Sally plays the role of a lobotomised sex toy very well, by the way.
I wonder if any of the crazy young cats who populate this movie's party scenes maybe thought to themselves in a quiet moment "Umm old Norman+sex+hippies. Get me outta this mess!!" I guess it was a payday for them.
A do feel sorry for The Pretty Things though. They probably thought "Yeah! This'll do for us what Blow Up did for the Yardbirds"
And so old Norman's leading man career ended. Freezing his little balls off in Southport.
I went there once. It was a depressing place.