Victor Spinetti's tears... This, That and the Other (1969)

Victor and Vanessa

So, another British sex comedy and a film directed by Derek Ford who went onto a string of productions in this lucrative sub-genre; Groupie Girl (1970), The Wife Swappers (1970), Suburban Wives (1971), Commuter Husbands (1972), Keep It Up, Jack (1974) and Sex Express (1975) and more. The mind boggles at the idea of 70’s British Rail allowing an express service of any description let alone one involving these additional benefits.

 So far, so salacious, but exactly how sexy is This, That and the Other – aka A Promise of Bed in the USA – and how funny is it? Well, it’s a mixed bag… and, as usual, the laughs are often at the film’s expense. There are three stories of varying tone and only loosely linked by theme and events but, overall, it’s a fun ride if taken in context.

Dennis is menaced

 First up we find Vanda Hudson as Susan Stress who is so desperate for a role in producer Gordon Sterne’s film that she decides to seduce his innocent photographer son, played by Dennis Waterman no less. Whilst it’s hard to think of our Dennis as in anyway this innocent after all the moments we’ve shared over the years, he does his best as he nervously tries to photograph Vanda who goes to ever more outlandish lengths to shock him in a succession of increasingly provocative costumes. Full marks to Vanda here as she has to improvise madly for most of this story before ending up in the bath and then in bed with the future TV detective and Minder…

All her efforts are not wasted on the young man but there’s a delicious twist in the tale that wouldn’t work quite as well without her commitment to the role.

The second story has the most substance and an especially impressive performance from the highly versatile Victor Spinetti as George, a young man preparing for suicide until he’s interrupted by a lovely young woman called Barbara played well by Vanessa Howard who thinks his is the location of a party. Spinetti does so well to play George’s depression in ways that win our sympathy but not distress; suicide’s no laughing matter, especially in this context, and what we’re left with is a poignant tale that rises above the sauce and still makes us hope for the best outcome.

Victor hangs on

Barbara rationalises his masking tape, continental quilt and open gas fire as the theme for a party which is to be based on suicidal people and when the other guests arrive they take on the personas of various forms of suicide with Valery Leon deciding to dive in the bath – director Derek Ford not wasting his assets here. We also get the sublime Alexandra Bastedo as bored socialite Angie whose arranging her next event almost as soon as she arrives along with Michel Durant as a so-drenched-in-ennui-you-don’t-know-he’s-completely-pissed aristocrat.

All of these characters send flickers across George’s eyes merely highlighting his isolate desolation but perhaps there’s hope for him after the party’s over if only Barbara has truly noticed him…

The film can’t possibly linger on such thoughts as we enter the mostly surreal final segment in which a sex-starved taxi driver, the excellent John Bird, leaves a cinema after watching an X-rated film just like this one, only to be caught up in a psychedelic party that blows our minds. His post film reverie, and boiled egg dinner break, are interrupted by a call to take a glamorous blonde, the sublime Yutte Stensgaard, from a London night club to an ultra-mod house in the countryside. She falls asleep drunk in the back of his cab but he can’t stop looking at her and fantasising… I like the way this section pokes fun at its own audience!

Hallucinations of a Taxi Driver...

The dopey driver is hit by a sports car driven by the posh drunk from the previous episode and the former falls into a dream, as his blonde makes her way to the country house and he follows to witness the most outrageous of events. Women frolic naked in an indoor pool and appear and disappear as the swooning psych sounds of Christos Demetriou and John Kongos score illuminate events. Cleo Goldstein dances as a girl wearing only polythene hands, and our taxi driver has clearly travelled way too far south of the river…

It's a Stanley Long production with a budget of some £8,500 so well played all round for coming up with something that is more substantial than many a Brit sex-com. As The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, it may have been "… short on comedy but rather better performed than these things usually are.” Although I don’t quite agree that “… the one barely memorable moment is provided by Miss Hudson being pursued round an apartment to the strains of the Light Cavalry Overture."

It's available on Amazon Prime and an increasingly collectable DVD!

 

 

Yutte is covered in fruit... much like the cover of the prog blues LP, Juicy Lucy (Vertigo, 1969)

 

But it was only… Corruption (1968)

 

In the same way as science fiction is really more about the present than the future, horror films have a lot to say about the time in which they were made. Here there are lots of heavy-handed nods to the swinging London of the year before, as well as deliberate referencing of Blow Up; photographers, models and a narrative that may or may not be the actuality. It’s a “psyche-sploitation” film which may or may not shoot itself in the foot with an improbably-powerful laser beam but, what they heck, it has some style.

It also has some good actors, notably Peter Cushing, as Sir John Rowan, a plastic surgeon finding himself in the unlikeliest of happenings thanks to his young model fiancée named Lynn played by Sue Lloyd who always manages to carry across the complex emotion with just a tinge of irritation. Here she encourages her husband to be to make the effort to attend a party at her photographer’s fab flat.

Sue Lloyd

The snapper is Mike Orme, “randy Scouse git” Anthony Booth, yes future father-in-law to Labour’s most-successful PM… here he’s a shallower/shabbier version of David Hemmings’ character in Antonioni’s classic and clearly here to show the gap in age, style and attitude to Sir John. While Mike makes like Bailey with Lynn, Sir John tries to make small talk with a wide-eyed young woman called Kate (Vanessa Howard) who’s already so far gone with the spirit of the evening that she’s far too high above the light fandango to trip over it.

Kate is just a passing character… or is she? Anyway, events take an unpleasant turn for the worse when Sir John, trying to pull Lynn away from the attentions from Mike only succeeds in starting a fight during which a huge, hot lamp falls onto Lynn’s face, scarring her for life.

Vanessa Howard

It’s a tragic accident and one caused entirely by Sir John’s jealousy and as Lynn struggles bitterly with her disfigurement with the help of her rather striking sister Val (Kate O'Mara, who does have a lucky face…), the surgeon focuses all his energy on devising a cure.  There is no known cure of course but you know he’ll find one and, when Sir John is caught hanging around the morgue with his bag and some sharp knives you know he’s up to no good. His colleague, Noel Trevarthen (Steve Harris), overlooks the mild infraction of stealing a small body part form a dead person… but that’s his last warning (probably).

Cushing, Booth and Lloyd... before things blow up!

Soon after Lynn appears and her face is restored to its former beauty; it’s astonishing and Noel cannot believe it fast enough… But, of course, it’s only a temporary fix and soon Lynn requires more treatment and, John being barred from the dead has only one choice, to take what he needs from the living. He heads off to old Soho to find someone morally less deserving of life… it’s gruesome and the next day whilst the papers are full of stories on the new “Ripper”, medically trained and everything, whilst Lynn reappears ready to resume her modelling career.

The more she’s cured the more she wants to be cured and you know that this life will only lead the couple to more and more desperate straits. Sir John pursues a young woman onto a train (Valerie Van Ost), the type with carriages and no walk-way, he traps her and their struggle is genuinely quite unpleasant to watch.

Wendy Varnals runs for her life

Worse is to come as the couple hide away from the febrile world of metropolitan suspicion in a seaside cottage but even there, they find the temptation of young flesh as they spot a lone girl on the beach, Terry (Wendy Varnals). They invite her in just as your screaming at the screen for Terry to run for her life, but there’ll be time for that later as there’s more to the youngster than meets the eye. During the night she invites her boyfriend in through her bedroom window, it’s Rik (future Bill star Billy Murray) and they too are not alone as events start to spin faster and faster towards a devastating conclusion that earned the film its alternate title of “Carnage”!

There’s another horrific scene in which Terry runs for her life pursued by both John and Lynn on the beach; Wendy Varnals acts her socks off here and it is again genuinely unsettling, trapped on a Sussex beach with little chance of escape, the basest of animal pursuits. And, far worse is to come…

Dusty Verdict: Corruption is fast-paced, uneasy and a super vehicle for Peter Cushing to mix it with The Youth. Directed by Robert Hartford-Davis it is, of course, of its time and features many familiar tropes all mashed or rather mangled together.  By the end and a twist so massive you could see it from space… you’re left with less certainty than you’d expect… exploitative yes but amusing none-the-less.

Cushing’s great as is Sue Lloyd and Kate O'Mara and the whole is improbably just about greater than the sum of the parts. I also like the marketing which claims the film shouldn’t be watched by women on their own… or men for that matter: we all need to hold hands on this one!