A Touch of the Sun

Our boy Frankie comes into a sizeable amount of money as a hotel receptionist. After spending some of his money living it up in France, he decides to come back to London and buy up his old hotel. However, he needs some fincial backers who will only invest if the hotel is successful. Only problem is they have no guests, so the staff play the role of guests while still doing their jobs.

The film spends too much time with Frankie in France experiencing a series of contrived annoyances that eventually leads to his decision to come back to England.

This means there is little time to develop and run with the farce element of the film. The plots tries to be frenzied and amusingly chaotic, but it never really makes it. Everything rules far too smoothly. With no edge of the seat potential errors that could bring the entire ruse crashing down.

The film doesn't explore any comic potential such as regular faces being recognised as both staff and guest or people needing to be in two places at the same time. No quick changes no split-second timing.

As a result, the film trundles along at a pace with nothing really happening.

A forgetable film that is not worth remembering.

Frankie Howerd can only play one character, the one we see all the time. He was OK in this but his performance would not have had casting directors rushing to sign him up for other films. The plot was OK, the inherited £10,000 being about £312,000 in 2023, that's inflation for you. Farces were all the rage at one time, in films and on stage, but they are just about dead now. All of Frankie's stand up routines were written by Eric Sykes but he is not alone in being a successful stand-up comedian only due to the writing skills of others. It's worth watching for curiosity and historical value only.

I was never a great fan of Frankie Howerd's brand of comedy, but he's actually not bad in this rather quirkily entertaining tale of rags to riches. He is "Darling" who takes great pleasure in quitting as an hotel porter when he is left a small fortune. He soon bores of the high life and returns to his former workplace only to find it's struggling. He sees a chance to rescue it, settle a few old scores - and maybe even turn a profit if he can rope in a few gullible investors. To that latter end, he galvanises the staff and some of their friends to create the impression that this is a bustling, thriving, business that is a must-have for anyone looking to get into the hotel business. Howerd tones down his usual style of smutty humour here and tempered by the practically minded "Ruby" (Ruby Murray) and the odd dignifying appearance from manager "Hatchard" (Dennis Price) delivers a quickly moving story of the grass not always being greener. If nothing else, it does serve as a reminder of just what we were watching back then - simple comedy themes rather over-delivered, and though it's a bit on the long side I found it an OK watch.

An ambitious but fascinatingly shambolic attempt at a big screen vehicle for Frankie Howerd (that morphs into a rehash of 'The Happiest Days of Your Lives') that simply ensured that he henceforth concentrated on cabaret and TV.

The sleazy North Country financial backers played by Alfie Bass (who is hardly inside the door before he promptly propositions receptionist Dorothy Bromley with the smooth chat up line "Give us a kiss love!!") and Reginald Beckwith (who gets so drunk he propositions a dragged-up Howerd) demonstrated over sixty years before the Harvey Weinstein scandal that this sort of thing had been going on since the days of Herod.

Frankie Howerd takes the leading role in this standard British farce that was so common in the late fifties and doesn't do a bad job either. Usually more familiar in a supporting role,he takes centre stage here and all the action revolves around him.

The basic plot is the grass isn't always greener on the other side as Frankie finds out when his desired dream to retire to the French Rivera is a complete disaster. Returning to the UK he buys his old employment hotel and has to convince three businessmen it's worth investing in. Cue lots of rushing about farce proceedings as Frankie makes the hotel look busy with his small staff putting on numerous disguises.

Still quite amusing and watchable for it's short running time but it's the little things that kept me interested. Most of all Frankie's strange 'Eraserhead' hairstyle, Alfie Bass,the atypical Jewish performer,playing a Yorkshireman! And Ruby Murray's appalling attempt at acting, thank goodness she has a nice singing voice that's all I can say....