I first saw EMr.S as a teenager who had just come out of the closet. As a child I was a fan of '60s horror films (Carradine, Cushing, et.al.) and black comedies (e.g., "No Way to Treat a Lady") and suspense/murder ("Eye of the Cat" or "Wylie", "What Happened to Aunt Alice?", "Daddy's Gone a Hunting", "Who Killed Teddy Bear?"). EMr.S, at least as I remember it after 20 years, combined those genres. The title character, handsome and bi-sexual, added the homo-eroticism that made for a very happy young gay movie fan indeed. It also led me to learn that the Brits were years ahead of Hollywood in the treatment of gay characters in movies, and I now count "Who Killed Sister George?" and "The Leather Boys" as other personal favorites.
16 Reviews
Controversial film way ahead of its time in sophistication...
Doylenf3 October 2006
ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE is certainly an uneven adaptation of the Joe Orton play, but it does create a few sparks with the performances of BERYL REID as Kath, PETER McENERY as Sloane and HARRY ANDREWS as Ed. The trio is involved in a three-way affair with Mr. Sloane who charms them both with his good looks and apparently bi-sexual leanings.
It's certainly not the usual fare one expects to see on screen, even in the '70s when the material was considered quite daring. But the script gives the three principals some rich material to work with and the film now has a cult status with fans of black comedy.
Orton is the gay playwright who was killed by his lover who then committed suicide and was dead before this film version of his hit London play was made. Whether he would have approved of some of the changes is debatable, but it still has the power to shock and cause ripples of laughter despite the darkness of the theme.
Summing up: As oddball as they come.
It's certainly not the usual fare one expects to see on screen, even in the '70s when the material was considered quite daring. But the script gives the three principals some rich material to work with and the film now has a cult status with fans of black comedy.
Orton is the gay playwright who was killed by his lover who then committed suicide and was dead before this film version of his hit London play was made. Whether he would have approved of some of the changes is debatable, but it still has the power to shock and cause ripples of laughter despite the darkness of the theme.
Summing up: As oddball as they come.
Orton coarsened, vulgarised, messed-up but well-performed
jaibo17 November 2007
Warning: Spoilers
The film of Joe Orton's great West End play gathers together an almost perfect cast which it then scuppers by making fundamental mistakes with Orton's material. Beryl Reid is definitive as ageing nymphomaniac Kath, and in the midst of the Gothic over-egging of Orton's pudding she pulls out moments of not just grotesquery and hilarity but also pathos; Harry Andrews is strong as her chicken hawk gay brother Ed; and Alan Webb is a fine old gargoyle as the Dada. Peter McEnery has some good moments as Sloane, occasionally hitting the requisite sense of sociopathic narcissism but really he is too old for the part (Orton wanted an actor who was 17 - "someone you'd like to f**k silly") - and a lot of the time far too obvious; he should be at least trying to convince Ed of his innocence.
It is the trappings of Ed's lifestyle which most betray Orton's material. Ed in the play is an outwardly respectable small-town burgher whose appearance of Puritan propriety masks a predatory ruthlessness and desire for kinky, dominating sex. In the film, Ed drives around in a pink car! Orton's character would never do this, as it rather gives the game away and, what's worse, throws away Orton's withering analysis of petty bourgeois hypocrisy.
The ending of the film is very cheap, with Orton's subtle trade-off of sexual favours to cover up the father's murder ("it's been a pleasant morning") being turned into an absurd and ugly mock-marriage ceremony over the Dada's corpse, replete with some toe-curlingly on-the-nose dialogue.
Orton's humour makes no sense if the characters are not at least attempting a degree of propriety. His Austen-like sense of social satire is here buried under inappropriate Gothic trappings, no doubt influenced by grand guignol turns like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Reid's previous hit film version of The Killing of Sister George. Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a misfire, all in all, although worth catching for the great performances and what's left of Orton's sparkling dialogue. Perhaps the best moment of the film is the one in which his name on the opening credits is super-imposed over a grave-stone, as this film does indeed conspire to bury him.
It is the trappings of Ed's lifestyle which most betray Orton's material. Ed in the play is an outwardly respectable small-town burgher whose appearance of Puritan propriety masks a predatory ruthlessness and desire for kinky, dominating sex. In the film, Ed drives around in a pink car! Orton's character would never do this, as it rather gives the game away and, what's worse, throws away Orton's withering analysis of petty bourgeois hypocrisy.
The ending of the film is very cheap, with Orton's subtle trade-off of sexual favours to cover up the father's murder ("it's been a pleasant morning") being turned into an absurd and ugly mock-marriage ceremony over the Dada's corpse, replete with some toe-curlingly on-the-nose dialogue.
Orton's humour makes no sense if the characters are not at least attempting a degree of propriety. His Austen-like sense of social satire is here buried under inappropriate Gothic trappings, no doubt influenced by grand guignol turns like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Reid's previous hit film version of The Killing of Sister George. Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a misfire, all in all, although worth catching for the great performances and what's left of Orton's sparkling dialogue. Perhaps the best moment of the film is the one in which his name on the opening credits is super-imposed over a grave-stone, as this film does indeed conspire to bury him.
Entertaining certainly but hardly one of the great comedies
MOscarbradley29 April 2017
"Entertaining Mr Sloane" is regarded in some quarters as one of the great post-war British comedies though you would hardly think so after seeing this 1970 film version. It's not at all bad, is frequently very funny and its cast of four, (Beryl Reid, Harry Andrews, Peter McEnery and Alan Webb), give it all they've got. Reid and Andrews are siblings; she's a nymphomaniac and he's gay and McEnery is the eponymous Mr Sloane, the object of both their affections. Webb is their ancient father and it's he who rubs Mr Sloane up the wrong way. Douglas Hickox directed without much imagination, relying too heavily on the material. Entertaining it certainly is but great? Best you see it on stage before making up your mind.
AN UTTER DISASTER
Pangborne25 August 2004
This adaptation of the brilliant Joe Orton play in an unmitigated disaster. Every joke is overdone to the point of surrealism. The wit is killed dead, and any pretense to psychology is thrown out the window in a late sixties psychedelic mish-mash completely at odds with the stage farce tone of the source material. If people like this movie, it's for the sheer oddness, not because it has any of the qualities evinced by the play. It's like watching a Noel Coward play performed by lunatics in an asylum.
Speechless
watf-711447 January 2022
I really don't know how to describe this film or the feeling I had after it.
But it did keep me on tenterhooks about what was going to happen.
Overall it is pretty good and I doubt I will see another film like it for many years.
But it did keep me on tenterhooks about what was going to happen.
Overall it is pretty good and I doubt I will see another film like it for many years.
"I generally spend my holidays in places where the bints have rings through their noses...."
Brucey_D2 October 2017
Warning: Spoilers
this is a generous slice of cinematic black comedy, adapted from Orton's play, concerning the amoral Mr Sloane, who lodges with a far from normal family.
Pretty good performances from the four leads, but for me, the standout is Harry Andrews, driving around in that bright pink monstrosity of a car, that apparently used to belong to Syd Barrett (of Pink Floyd).
Is it a good film? I dunno really, but it is well worth watching.
Pretty good performances from the four leads, but for me, the standout is Harry Andrews, driving around in that bright pink monstrosity of a car, that apparently used to belong to Syd Barrett (of Pink Floyd).
Is it a good film? I dunno really, but it is well worth watching.
Superb Gothic comedie-noire
rickvan4 January 2003
If you haven't seen this superb film - put it to the top of your "must view" list! Featuring two of Britain's best character actors, the late Beryl Reid and the late Harry Andrews, this scintillating black comedy is based on Joe Orton's wonderful play of the same name. Reid is marvellous as aging nymphomaniac Kath and Harry Andrews provides a superb foil as her roue brother Ed, who both attempt to secure the sexual services of their libidinous lodger, Sloane (played by Peter McEnery). Set in an eerie graveyard lodgehouse and with Alan Webb as their grubby father this brilliant film has gained cult status since its release over 30 years ago and is the only film I can watch - and enjoy - repeatedly.
Unsavoury charm
Prismark108 March 2017
The adaptation of Joe Orton's play Entertaining Mr Sloane is a misfire. Beryl Reid is the middle aged nymphomaniac Kath who spots the amoral narcissistic drifter Mr Sloane (Peter McEnery) lying half naked sunbathing in the cemetery. Kath herself who lives by the cemetery is dressed seductively, a see thorough dress and we initially see her suggestively licking an ice lolly.
Kath invites Mr Sloane to become her lodger and quickly seduces him. Her elderly father, Dada recognizes Mr Sloane as the man who killed his employer and then disappeared.
Mr Sloane is having a fine time womanizing, tormenting Dada and being playful with Kath and her brother Ed (Harry Andrews) who drops by every now and then. Ed seems straight-laced but drives a pink Pontiac and makes Mr Sloane the chauffeur with a tight leather uniform.
The film is supposed to be a grotesque, sexual black farce but the film reveals its hand too early. McEnery is too old as Mr Sloane, he should had been held back as an innocent charmer than unveiled as a murderer as soon as he met Dada. As for Ed, that pink Pontiac gave him away not matter how much of a country gent he tried to pass off as.
The ending was also rather abrupt and disappointing although I suspect a gay marriage ceremony would had been seen as shocking at the time.
Kath invites Mr Sloane to become her lodger and quickly seduces him. Her elderly father, Dada recognizes Mr Sloane as the man who killed his employer and then disappeared.
Mr Sloane is having a fine time womanizing, tormenting Dada and being playful with Kath and her brother Ed (Harry Andrews) who drops by every now and then. Ed seems straight-laced but drives a pink Pontiac and makes Mr Sloane the chauffeur with a tight leather uniform.
The film is supposed to be a grotesque, sexual black farce but the film reveals its hand too early. McEnery is too old as Mr Sloane, he should had been held back as an innocent charmer than unveiled as a murderer as soon as he met Dada. As for Ed, that pink Pontiac gave him away not matter how much of a country gent he tried to pass off as.
The ending was also rather abrupt and disappointing although I suspect a gay marriage ceremony would had been seen as shocking at the time.
Still entertaining after all of the years.
RatedVforVinny14 April 2020
A worthy film adaptation from a farcical play by Joe Orton. Really as fresh as the day it was made and only dated in the most endearing of ways. To be honest I have never seen anything quite like it before or since and over the years it has certainly gained a strong, cult following. The cast including Beryl Reid, Harry Andrews and Mr Sloane himself, played by Peter McEnery, are all on great form. Top Entertainment from start to finish.
Who knew Peter mcEnery was so gorgeous
bremnerflamingo14 February 2021
A brilliant piece of entertainment.
mike kent15 April 2001
Have watched this film many times and enjoy it just as much as the first time,a mark of a good film.Joe Orton certainly had a strange sense of humour very evident in this black-comedy.A must see if never seen.Perhaps immoral,so what the blazes its entertaining to say the least.Great performances from the cast.
Entertaining Mr Sloane
henry8-314 April 2021
Joe Orton's classic play is bought to the big screen and features just 4 eccentric characters. Young lothario, arch manipulator and potentially murderer. McEnery cons his way into love starved Beryl Reid's house by a graveyard where she lives with her old father, Webb. All is well but McEnery needs his wits about him when Reid's gay businessman brother Harry Andrews arrives.
The script is all in this witty, very dark black comedy, although the performances are spot on with Reid wonderful as the sad, past it sex mad landlady and particularly Andrews in full military swagger preaching morals to McEnery whilst still longing to get into his pants. Hilarious.
The script is all in this witty, very dark black comedy, although the performances are spot on with Reid wonderful as the sad, past it sex mad landlady and particularly Andrews in full military swagger preaching morals to McEnery whilst still longing to get into his pants. Hilarious.
A Classic "English Black Comedy" You have to laugh
anthonymcdonald-5290212 September 2023
A Classic "English Black Comedy" You have to laugh
Well Miss Reid.. who knew you were a tart. And she kills it. From scene ONE. We're off on a trip. It's an ageless, magnificent English comedy as only they can do. Farce, black comedy and more, so much more. The characters. How did Beryl and Harry Andrews have the guts to do it. This is Harry from Ice Cold In Alex. Played Upper Crusts all his career. Then this manic. But everyone's mad in Joe Orton world.
Confession time I watched this for the first time as a young boy with my mother as she laughed her head off. Me ... Embarrassed not a bit of it.
Back to Mr Sloan. Every word is a gem. Every word has so much meaning. Double, Multiples. It rips along and the brother/sister switch around in their affection/hate/dominant/submission/up .. down and anyway you want. The opening scene for each of the 4 lead's are brilliant. We get them. Get them in what ever works for you. McEnery, ok he's not a perfect Mr Sloan. But he is up against 2 fantastic actors revelling in what was the performance of their careers. He does have to be in almost every scene after all. Dada. Ok. He's annoying. But it's Reid and Andrews who are so funny, sad, Kath and Ed. As sad, weird, fuuny, needy pair as you'll ever find in cinema. But you have to laugh.
Watch this. You'll learn about England, the secretive, crazy people who lived in the home counties with their double lives, fantasy's and sadness.
An the theme song my Georgie Fame.
Confession time I watched this for the first time as a young boy with my mother as she laughed her head off. Me ... Embarrassed not a bit of it.
Back to Mr Sloan. Every word is a gem. Every word has so much meaning. Double, Multiples. It rips along and the brother/sister switch around in their affection/hate/dominant/submission/up .. down and anyway you want. The opening scene for each of the 4 lead's are brilliant. We get them. Get them in what ever works for you. McEnery, ok he's not a perfect Mr Sloan. But he is up against 2 fantastic actors revelling in what was the performance of their careers. He does have to be in almost every scene after all. Dada. Ok. He's annoying. But it's Reid and Andrews who are so funny, sad, Kath and Ed. As sad, weird, fuuny, needy pair as you'll ever find in cinema. But you have to laugh.
Watch this. You'll learn about England, the secretive, crazy people who lived in the home counties with their double lives, fantasy's and sadness.
An the theme song my Georgie Fame.
Subversive Humor
portaeporta-4706028 June 2018
Looking beyond the Shock Factor
JamesHitchcock22 March 2024
Warning: Spoilers
Joe Orton was the enfant terrible of the British theatre during the mid-sixties. His public career only lasted three years from 1964 to 1967, but during this period he both shocked and delighted audiences and the critics with a series of dark and cynical, and often sexually explicit, black comedies. In August 1967 he was bludgeoned to death by his lover Kenneth Halliwell, who then committed suicide.
"Entertaining Mr Sloane" is based upon the play which first brought Orton to the public's attention in 1964. It tells the story of how a young man, the "Mr. Sloane" of the title- we never learn his first name- is invited into the home of a middle-aged brother and sister. The sister, Kath, meets him one morning while he is sunbathing in the cemetery next to her home, and invites him to become her lodger. Kath's brother Ed initially objects to Mr Sloane as a lodger, but he soon takes a liking to the young man and offers him a job as his chauffeur. Indeed Ed, who is a closeted homosexual, takes something more than a liking to Mr Sloane, and the young man quickly becomes the lover of both siblings. The one member of the family whom Sloane is unable to charm is Kemp, Kath and Ed's elderly father who works as the cemetery groundsman. Kemp takes a dislike to him, largely because he recognises him as the man who killed his boss.
There are two wonderful contrasting performances from Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews as the two siblings. Kath and Ed are very different from one another. Kath is slatternly, blowsy and emotionally incontinent, always wearing her heart on her sleeve and making no secret of her obsessive desire for Mr Sloane, with whom she will openly share all the most intimate secrets of her past life. (And she has quite a few, including an illegitimate child).
Ed is uptight and reserved, doubtless due to the need to keep his homosexuality a secret. He dresses smartly and conservatively, probably works in some well-paid white-collar job and can be quite snobbish about his social position. His one concession to the otherwise hidden flamboyant side of his nature is that he drives a bright pink Pontiac Parisienne convertible, and makes Sloane (dressed in a tight leather uniform) his chauffeur. Andrews, normally seen as a "character actor" in supporting roles, was here making a rare appearance in a leading one. You could argue that, at 59, he was too old for the part- he was only five years younger than Alan Webb, who plays his father- but watching the film I hardly noticed.
Peter McEnery as Sloane gives an unsubtle performance, but in an Orton play this perhaps does not matter. You never really get the impression that he is anything other than a handsome thug and you wonder how he managed to insinuate his way into the good graces of Kath and Ed when there is nothing insinuating about him. On the other hand, McEnery was strikingly good looking, and director Douglas Hickox may have been trying to suggest that the siblings were so blinded by pure lust for him that they managed to overlook his obvious thuggishness.
The manner of Orton's murder may have been shocking but it cemented his reputation as an edgy, transgressive writer, and in the years following his death he became even more of a cult figure than he had been while alive. In the sixties the British theatre was in some ways more liberal than the cinema, and it is hard to imagine a film like this being made in 1964, the year when the play was first produced. Things, however, were changing quickly and by 1970 it was no longer taboo to make a film focussing on homosexuality and nymphomania, and in which a murderer is allowed to go unpunished. The film must, however, have seemed very controversial and even shocking at the time to many cinema-goers.
More than fifty years on we have become used to far worse things in the cinema, and a film like "Entertaining Mr Sloane" no longer seems shocking, except perhaps to those of a particularly puritanical disposition. That is, perhaps, all to the good. We can look beyond the controversy and the shock factor and see Orton's writing for what it is- mordant, cynical and very funny. 8/10.
"Entertaining Mr Sloane" is based upon the play which first brought Orton to the public's attention in 1964. It tells the story of how a young man, the "Mr. Sloane" of the title- we never learn his first name- is invited into the home of a middle-aged brother and sister. The sister, Kath, meets him one morning while he is sunbathing in the cemetery next to her home, and invites him to become her lodger. Kath's brother Ed initially objects to Mr Sloane as a lodger, but he soon takes a liking to the young man and offers him a job as his chauffeur. Indeed Ed, who is a closeted homosexual, takes something more than a liking to Mr Sloane, and the young man quickly becomes the lover of both siblings. The one member of the family whom Sloane is unable to charm is Kemp, Kath and Ed's elderly father who works as the cemetery groundsman. Kemp takes a dislike to him, largely because he recognises him as the man who killed his boss.
There are two wonderful contrasting performances from Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews as the two siblings. Kath and Ed are very different from one another. Kath is slatternly, blowsy and emotionally incontinent, always wearing her heart on her sleeve and making no secret of her obsessive desire for Mr Sloane, with whom she will openly share all the most intimate secrets of her past life. (And she has quite a few, including an illegitimate child).
Ed is uptight and reserved, doubtless due to the need to keep his homosexuality a secret. He dresses smartly and conservatively, probably works in some well-paid white-collar job and can be quite snobbish about his social position. His one concession to the otherwise hidden flamboyant side of his nature is that he drives a bright pink Pontiac Parisienne convertible, and makes Sloane (dressed in a tight leather uniform) his chauffeur. Andrews, normally seen as a "character actor" in supporting roles, was here making a rare appearance in a leading one. You could argue that, at 59, he was too old for the part- he was only five years younger than Alan Webb, who plays his father- but watching the film I hardly noticed.
Peter McEnery as Sloane gives an unsubtle performance, but in an Orton play this perhaps does not matter. You never really get the impression that he is anything other than a handsome thug and you wonder how he managed to insinuate his way into the good graces of Kath and Ed when there is nothing insinuating about him. On the other hand, McEnery was strikingly good looking, and director Douglas Hickox may have been trying to suggest that the siblings were so blinded by pure lust for him that they managed to overlook his obvious thuggishness.
The manner of Orton's murder may have been shocking but it cemented his reputation as an edgy, transgressive writer, and in the years following his death he became even more of a cult figure than he had been while alive. In the sixties the British theatre was in some ways more liberal than the cinema, and it is hard to imagine a film like this being made in 1964, the year when the play was first produced. Things, however, were changing quickly and by 1970 it was no longer taboo to make a film focussing on homosexuality and nymphomania, and in which a murderer is allowed to go unpunished. The film must, however, have seemed very controversial and even shocking at the time to many cinema-goers.
More than fifty years on we have become used to far worse things in the cinema, and a film like "Entertaining Mr Sloane" no longer seems shocking, except perhaps to those of a particularly puritanical disposition. That is, perhaps, all to the good. We can look beyond the controversy and the shock factor and see Orton's writing for what it is- mordant, cynical and very funny. 8/10.
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