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)