Not Tonight, Darling

Now for the true story which explains how such an awful film came to be made and why.

The original screenplay, working title 'The Loving Game', was an intelligently written 3 hander about a, impossible to live with love affair. Alright, it was not exactly 'Casablanca' but not bad for its genre.

The eventual financial backers and distributors of 'Not Tonight Darling' (for such it had been renamed), Border Films, were the very last to be approached in the quest to raise the production budget.

Situated at the time at the very end of Wardour Street, the script had been touted around the circuit and, having been rejected by all and sundry, was surprisingly picked up by Border.

The real reason was simply that they were short of a British produced film which qualified for the Eady levy, allowing the lucrative import by Border of more foreign rubbish......but cheap rubbish.

This small distributor specialised in a more racy film style and the 'quid pro quo' for putting up the cash was a total rewrite. Lots of sex, nudity and a leading lady chosen more for her relationship with a big-wig with responsibility for circuit booking of films than for any special acting skills.

This is not meant to denigrate the lady in question or her acting talent but applies accurately to this production.

As part of the deal, an additional 2 minutes of 'hard-core' shooting were needed close the territorial film rights' sale to the Far East.

And so production started, lurching from one disaster to the next with Border not transferring money into the production company account as agreed and crew and actors going unpaid for long periods.

Finally, the special 2 minutes of hard-core required several good men and true to step up to the mark.

The first attempt at filming proved the old adage that 'the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak'. The poor lads just couldn't keep it up long enough to commit to film.

So a specialist troupe were flown in from New York for the scene and they proved well able to match the director's stringent requirements.

'Not Tonight Darling' was to be the first time that hard core material was sent to Humphries Labs for processing since the censorship laws had changed.

It was not until the rushes were delivered back to the production offices that the crew knew whether or not the scene had been junked. It hadn't and the 2 minutes were the best part of the film (never seen in the UK of course).

With money running out, tempers shortening, writers removing their name from the script and all of the normal problems of post-production, it is not surprising that all that came out was a turkey.

Ah well.........

NOT TONIGHT, DARLING is a surprisingly endearing British skin flick despite the obvious shortcomings of the plot and cast. A virtually forgotten low budget effort, this chronicles the adventures of a bored housewife who struggles with the inattentions of her husband and the Peeping Tom who spies on her when she's getting changed.

There really is no more plot to it than that - this is just a 'kitchen sink' style drama, enlivened with some sex scenes and a bit of skin here and there. Despite the fact that they're generally hopeless, I always get a kick out of this era of British film, where the scuzziness is outweighed by a great sense of realism and era authenticity. Hell, I feel nostalgic and I wasn't even there!

Fans will no doubt enjoy the cheesy song contributed by guest band 'Thunderclap Newman' - beaten only in terms of cheesiness by Stoneground's cameo in Dracula 1972 AD - and the general state of poor acting, particularly from the wooden male actors. Still, lead actress Luan Peters (TWINS OF EVIL) is a revelation: incredibly voluptuous and giving a sympathetic performance to boot.

A London housewife (Luan Peters) is bored with her sexually cold husband (Jason Twelvetrees -- and yes he is that wooden!) and is lead/blackmailed in to temptation with an Australian travelling salesman (Vincent Ball) and his rather more unbuttoned pals.

There are many films around where the story behind the film is far more interesting than the film itself. There are also films which are more interesting for the background than the foreground. This is both.

London in the early 70's was in a strange hangover of a place -- vice had been clamped down upon and the new thing were films that were sold as sexy, but were actually nothing of the kind (but hey, they have your money by then). Today this is less sexy than post watershed TV!

The one thing that I learn from watching this is that body painting had left the London sex scene as of 1971 and that heavy blue mascara could be worn all day long. Even in bed. Love the last sightings of the those wooden finished cars too.

Thunderclap Newman come on -- and don't (repeat don't) perform their only hit "Something in the Air."

Liz Taylor once said that she won an Oscar of Butterfield 8 because she had an utter contempt for the part (and her life at that time) and the Academy mistook it for great acting. No such luck for Peters who needs her whole life (on screen) to come apart to register emotion.

This is a film that has the air of multiple failure. The acting is cold and wooden and has a pretty bad script. Indeed if you stick with it, it doesn't even reach a conclusion to its rather weak storyline. That really twists the knife in the wound.

Antony Sloman (the director) is said to be one of the biggest film buffs in the UK -- but this proves that watching a lot of good movies doesn't mean you can learn a thing from them!

Confirming my theory that the 70s were the decade that taste forgot this movie has the production values of a school play and looks like it was shot in various crew members flats.

By modern standards it is utterly unsexy - it as also unfunny, undramatic, badly lit, the leaden dialogue is almost inaudible (spectacularly drowned out by traffic noises at one point) and there is no resolution to the incredibly thin story.

There is nothing to recommend it at all apart from the odd flash of breast - and a brief, weird interlude where two of the characters watch the band Thunderclap Newman rehearse a couple of numbers. (I guess that might be of historical interest to musicologists of the era... but it's easy to see why they only got to release one album.) The two watchers were shot without any idea of the music they were supposed to be listening to and probably had no playback to respond to so they tap their feet, nod their heads, and snap their fingers (groovy man!) in several random rhythms simultaneously - none of them unfortunately matching the music.

Avoid. (Why doesn't IMDb allow you to rate films as a zero ?)

Back in 1971, if you had never seen this and someone summarised it as "young blonde wife, frustrated by her husband's total lack of libido, decides to explore her sexuality", then I'm sure you'd have parted with your 50p at the cinema just as I would.

However, you'd have barely had time to lick your drink-on-a-stick before you'd have realised you'd been sold a pup.

The film says nothing, the acting is dire, the direction non- existent, the storyline meanders, wanders, then concludes by saying "make of this what you will. I give up"

However, this film is not without redemption. Here's why:

a) If you ever wondered what a seedy Soho strip club looked like in the daytime, this is for you. And what about that compere? ("Okay, remove your raincoats")

b) Captain Harrison (Bill Shine) may not be on screen for long but he does have the best lines. ("He called me Bill. Well, it was my name)

c) You really have to see the camera-work in the health club scenes to believe it. The young lady on the vibrator belt especially.

d) Thunderclap Newman playing live (along the lines of The Yardbirds in 'Blow Up' or Alan Price in 'O Lucky Man'). A previous reviewer mentioned this would interest those interested in the music of the era. It does.

e) The, shall we say, 'incredible' dream scene in the grocer's shop. Hard to believe and more than a touch of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band about it (if you recall Magical Mystery Tour).

So, all in all, a dreadful film if you look on it as a film - but a fascinating slice of what 1971 was capable of, if you come at it from another angle!