What a heap of drivel. This early Ken Russell effort starts feebly then gets worse. It's a one-joke movie whose one joke isn't funny.
Jim is a cheeky young chap who works as a deckchair attendant for the council of Gormleigh, an imaginary holiday resort on the Kent Coast of England. Jim has a chubby friend called Henry and an American girlfriend, Judy. Judy is a cute kid who works as a journalist on the local paper, but wants to be a serious writer. Jim's brilliant idea is to galvanise tourist interest in Gormleigh by importing French sex-kitten actress, Francoise Fayol.
The single gag is the fun which arises (did I say fun?) when French sexiness meets English aldermanic pomposity. And there you have it.
Jim is played with barrow-boy chirpiness by James Booth, an actor very much in vogue at the time. The late, much-lamented Roy Kinnear is Henry, the dull and cowardly council employee who always seems to mess up. Alita Naughton makes her debut in this film, playing Judy. She is projected as the 'kooky' babe, an Audrey Hepburn for the beat generation. To the best of my knowledge, she was never heard of again.
"Dunno what you're laughing at," observes Henry at one point, and it might well be directed at the cinema audience. The humour seems to consist of getting people wet. We even have the old Walter Raleigh gag of spreading a cape over a puddle, then when the woman steps onto it she sinks up to her neck. And there is the platform of local worthies which slides into the sea. Yes, it's really as dire as that.
Merisa Mell (another starlet who didn't twinkle for long) plays Francoise Fayol. She pouts and wears bikinis. Because she is French, she says "Oh la la" quite a lot and breaks into "Gentille Alouette" when she's happy. Russell makes fun of the self-important Nouvelle Vague in 'Pavements of Boulogne', the film within a film, and Francoise's creator Vladek (Sandor Eles) seems to be a satirical thrust at Vadim.
Alita McNaughton is pretty, and Russell rather over-indulges the lingering close-ups during which she is expected to pull cute faces. She sings very nicely during her end-of-the-pier farewell to Jim and Henry, but she has little else to offer. She shows her stocking-tops twice (once, unaccountably, after removing a pair of jeans) - and it is twice too often for such a totally un-voluptuous woman.
The film falls between two stools. It fails as an old-fashioned seaside romp, and though one catches a whiff of rebellious sixties counter-culture ("What am I going to do with the flag?") it is too hidebound and middle-aged to work as a companion piece to "Hard Day's Night". Bryan Pringle was to spend the subsequent decade and more playing straight-faced comical weirdos, and he established the pattern in this film with his portrayal of the randy Mayor of Gormleigh.
Johnny Speight (whom I have always regarded as over-rated) provided additional dialogue, but whatever his contribution was, it didn't help. The 'big scene' - the riot in the cinema - is depressingly lame, in that oh-so-familiar British way.
Russell being Russell, there have to be some obtrusive auteurial camera tricks. We get bits of 'hip' sixties rapid-cut montage (the camel photos) and monotonous use of fast-motion for allegedly comic effect (Jim pedalling his bike hard, the Francoise disguise sequence, etc). Filming the boat conversation from another boat is, at least, visually interesting and in fairness to Russell the parting for France is attractively done, shifting the point of view between the pier and the ferry.
Robert Robinson appears as himself in what I can only assume was the consequence of a well-oiled Garrick Club wager.
