Not Tonight, Darling

I saw this movie because I am a fan of Luan Peters and she looked great.

She was playing the role of a bored housewife....not trying to act! I believe this was made nearly 40 years ago...before all the digital, the CG, the high-tech that modern filmmakers are blessed with, but with a the little money that was available told a simple story of it's time.

The camera-work was unobtrusive...thank the Lord, unlike nowadays when cameras can go up somebody's nose or come out of their ****, for no other reason except... that the camera can! The mood of suburbia and the boredom was well displayed.

Someone writes, "Stop me if you've heard this one before: A bored housewife. A frigid husband. A scheming Lothario. A steamy affair. Secret photographs. Uh oh, blackmailed! Now she must star in some X-rated tapes or hubby will find out about her extra-marital activities....." This was 40 years ago...This was the original! The idea was so good, it's been copied hundreds of times DUH!

The people in the Olympics long ago ran as fast as they could in their time. Their numbers are laughingly slow compared to now, but they did their best and we should not make comparisons. Art is not comparative, art should be judged on its own merits. Luan rules OK!

I watched this film in the early hours on a VERY obscure Sky channel called 'Movies for Men' ( That says just about everything ) The ONLY reason I watched it was the hope of seeing the lovely Luan Peters with her clothes off . By any standard she is lovely . I had a real thing for her in the 70's and if any of you are 'Fawlty Towers ' fans , she was the Aussie in the yellow T shirt who Basil manhandles with oily hands .

The film is an illustration of the films that were bought out just to titillate male audiences and for film makers to see exactly what they could show .

The most laughable aspect is the actor Vince Ball, an aging Australian actor who must be years older than all the girls who describe him as 'gorgeous ' . I think he must of been a friend of somebody and probably paid them to get next to Ms Peters ! Like all these films it is more interesting to take note of the fashions, scenery, attitudes of the 70's rather than follow the plot .

The ending is weak and inconclusive . Really only for fans of Luan Peters .

Another undistinguished attempt to exploit the BBFC's slightly more liberal policy from about 1970, with a title suggesting the sort of naughty comedy that the British public were so fond of. Instead they get the story of Karen, a housewife with a young son who's neglected by her cold and pompous husband, falls prey to the voyeuristic fantasies of a sleazy shop assistant, prior to being seduced and blackmailed into swinging parties and porn by the repellent Alex, played by usually clean-cut Aussie hero-type, Vincent Ball.

It's a pretty glum affair, enlivened by Luan Peters, lovely and sympathetic as the vulnerable Karen. The husband's strange attitude is not explored and the ending is abrupt and unsatisfactory. It does make compelling viewing though for those interested in its era, not least those who enjoy revelling in how awful they consider things were back then. Certainly Ball 'grooving' to Thunderclap Newman, in rehearsal at La Valbonne, is hard to forget. They may have only had one hit, but I thought the group's appearance was about the highlight. There's a fleeting glimpse of a young, scarcely recognisable Fiona Richmond, while Bill Shine who'd started his film career over forty years previously, is seen enjoying The Tiffany Sisters strip in a Soho dive. Making a 'guest appearance' (how one member of the cast can be a guest beats me) is another veteran, James Hayter, making his first fictional venture into the retail trade as the store manager, prior to his more famous roles as the celebrated Mr. Tebbs in ARE YOU BEING SERVED? and the voice of 'Mr. Kipling'.

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!

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.........