Positively Prehistoric

JamesHitchcock

I cannot imagine a play called "No Sex Please, We're American" packing them in on Broadway. Nor "Kein Sex Bitte, Wir Sind Deutsch" being a hit in the German theatre. As for "Pas de Sexe, S'il Vous Plait, Nous Sommes Francais", I cannot imagine a play with that title ever being written.

We Brits, however, are keener on national self-deprecation, especially when it comes to sex. "No Sex Please, We're British" was one of the great success stories of the London theatre during the seventies and eighties. I never saw it, and it was by all accounts almost universally loathed by the nation's critics, but it was a smash hit with the public. It opened in 1971, and by the time it finally closed in 1987 it had become the West End's longest-running play apart from the perennial "The Mousetrap". By 1973 it was already regarded as something of a phenomenon, and a film version became inevitable. Farce was a popular genre in the British theatre during this period; another example, "Don't Just Lie There, Say Something", also made it onto the cinema screen in the same year.

The action takes place in the ultra-respectable town of Windsor, home of Her Majesty the Queen. A sex shop has recently opened in the High Street, much to the disgust of many local citizens. Owing to a mix-up in the address, a consignment of pornography intended for this establishment is delivered in error to the local branch of Barclays Bank or, to be exact, to a flat above the bank occupied by its deputy manager, David Hunter, and his young wife Penny. The plot revolves around David's attempts, aided by Penny and his hapless, diminutive colleague Brian Runnicles, to dispose of the unwanted porn before it can come to the attention of the police, of his formidable mother Bertha or of the Bank's puritanical manager Mr Bromley. (I am not sure why the police would want to get involved. We never see any of the offending dirty pictures, but if they can be sold from a shop on Windsor High Street, there is presumably nothing illegal about them. In seventies Britain it was quite legal to sell softcore porn, even if hardcore was still a bit dodgy).

Or at least Bromley pretends to be a Puritan. When, following another misunderstanding, two attractive young prostitutes arrive at the Bank, they immediately recognise him as one of their clients. It is almost a given in films of this sort that anyone, especially an elderly or middle-aged man, taking a strong anti-permissive line will be exposed as a hypocrite. The womanising Government minister in "Don't Just Lie There, Say Something" is, of course, leading a very public anti-filth campaign.

The cast contains several well-loved legends of British television comedy, including Arthur ("Dad's Army") Lowe and Ronnie ("Two Ronnies") Corbett. Michael Bates and Brian Wilde would both later find fame in "Last of the Summer Wine", with Bates also appearing in "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" and Wilde alongside Corbett's comedy partner Ronnie Barker in "Porridge". Frank Thornton was later to become one of the stalwarts of "Are You Being Served?" Lowe was probably cast as Bromley because had already won fame playing a pompous, self-important bank manager, Captain George Mainwaring, in "Dad's Army". There is, however, a major difference between the characters; beneath his bluster Mainwaring has a certain integrity and decency which Bromley lacks.

Comic talent, however, does not always transfer well from the small screen to the large. The Pythons, particularly Michael Palin, might be an exception, and Dudley Moore became something of a Hollywood star in the eighties, but many of my personal comedy heroes never really excelled in feature films. Moreover, even a comedy legend, no matter how well loved, is only as good as his material, and the material Lowe. Corbett and the others have to deal with here is poor stuff indeed.

Any humour arising from the attempts of David, Penny and Runnicles to rid themselves of the dirty pictures is laboured in the extreme. The film is based upon the premise, a popular one at the time, that any mention of sex or matters sexual is "naughty" and that if it is "naughty" it must be amusing. Like a number of ideas which seemed trendy or daring in the early seventies, this premise did not stand the test of time. Although the film was made in 1973, it was not released in America until 1979, when a reviewer for The New York Times wrote about its "simple-minded and by now rather outdated double and triple entendres". And that was only six years after it was made. If "No Sex Please...." was starting to look outdated before the decade was out, another four decades on it looks positively prehistoric. As I said, I have never seen the original stage play, but if it was anything like as bad as the film I am surprised that it ran for sixteen performances, let alone sixteen years. 3/10

score 3/10

JamesHitchcock 1 May 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5696277/