Oh le petit vilain!

Just before he died Dick Emery in a television interview lamented his forays into film were not successful, commercially and critically and it was now too late.

Emery died several months later. Ohh... You are Awful is now a rare chance to see Dick Emery's comic creations as his shows are so rarely repeated.

This is a saucy caper comedy with Emery playing chirpy con man Charlie Tully who is always on a swindle which includes persuading the son of a wealthy Italian family that marriage to Princess Anne is available at a price or a dowry.

With the aid of his womanising friend Ronald Fraser they swindled £500,000 out of the Italians who have hotfooted to the Mafia for revenge.

Charlie gets arrested at the Airport as he tries to sell a bulldog to some American tourists when he meets up with Fraser after his release from prison all he knows that Fraser deposited the money in a Swiss bank account before the Mafia henchmen knock Fraser off.

Charlie needs to track down some tattoos on some ladies Fraser has had in recent months which is actually on their rear and will tell Charlie the actual bank and account number. As he tries to track down the ladies he also falls foul of a local cockney gangster.

Emery gets to play his famous comedy characters such as Mandy and Lampwick during his quest.

For non Emery fans this would just be a dated British comedy with plenty of Carry On innuendo. Some of it really feels icky. Ronald Fraser looks revolting with all those poor tattoos supposedly with the names and phone numbers of his conquests.

Only in the mind of a desperate casting agent would Fraser ever be regarded as a ladies man. Derren Nesbitt who plays the cockney gangster would had been more suitable in that role.

Emery is having a hoot playing his comedy characters but really it is not funny enough despite a decent story.

March 2022

The Uk version is called "ooh you are awful" rather than the title thats on imdb.

A British comedy starring Dick Emery as a con man and on the whole its very likeable, good but not great.

The main interest for me about this now is the fact that there was a film made in Hong Kong called "aces go places" or "mad mission" depending on the version you are watching, that uses this as its template, that is superior to this film and features lots of James Bond gadgets as well as the comedy and action. Aces go places was very successful and in fact was followed by 4 sequels, i think those 5 films are all great.

As for OOh you are awful, yes i like it but as i said its not the best.

7.5 out of 10.

Dick Emery plays all of his most loved characters in this film. The plot revolves around Emery and his recently deceased former partner in crime. Eight women have tattoos on their bums which Emery has to find. It is actually a very clever and original plot. It would be ideal for a remake by Austin Powers. I have a feeling it could have been funnier though; probably by NOT including all of Emery's TV characters. Sometimes they appear in a very unnatural way.

If you are a fan of Dick Emery then this will appeal to you. I was 10 when this film first came out so it was the normal thing on television to see the kind of jokes and cheeky innuendo that was typical of the 70's.

And of course we get to see a lot of bums as Charlie(Emery) looks for tattoos on the girls bums that added together give him a swiss bank account where his partner in crime stashed the cash after they conned an Italian by getting him to pay up front for a supposed wedding to Princess Ann!

The best joke has to be where he told Pat Combes what happened to his partners ashes.. I wont say , watch the film..I think it was a classic for Emery fans, maybe now, the jokes appear a bit dated, but I love it.

Similar jokes alongside the Carry On films..but this has a proper story..

Almost every UK comedy show seemed to get a filmed version back in the early 1970s, and Dick Emery's sketch show was no exception. OOH...YOU ARE AWFUL is a film which brings the comedian's own unique brand of smut to the big screen, complete with all the saucy innuendo and cross-dressing you could hope for.

In fact, this turns out to be a rather disappointing little film, and insipid with it. The problem is that there's far too much of the complicated plotting, and very little in the actual way of laughs. The story is about a hidden fortune and the continuing attempts to retrieve it, but the problem is that a particular woman must be found with a particular tattoo on her bottom. I'm sure that's similar to a storyline in a spaghetti western I saw, and just as silly.

The acting in this film is pretty routine, with only a couple of familiar faces like that of Ronald Fraser, Pat Coombs, and the ever-nasty Derren Nesbitt enlivening the screen. Watch out for Pete Walker's muse, Sheila Keith, in her cameo as a magistrate. As with all early '70s British comedies, there's a bevy of beautiful female faces, attempts at sniggering humour, and a deep sense of time and place, but overall it's not much cop.