Come Play with Me

Years ago, I saw SEX & FAME: THE MARY MILLINGTON STORY and learned about this tragically doomed (and victimized!) British pseudo Marilyn Monroe, and while researching this on the Internet decades later, I opted to purchase COME PLAY WITH ME. Only to learn ominously from the helpful included booklet that Mary scantly (!) appears in the movie. And what a mess this movie is! I concur with Mr Riley's 2001 review word for word. Why they had to have caricatures as main characters, is, well, not actually beyond me. It's how the infantile repressed mind works when finally given an opportunity to express itself.

False advertising to the highest degree. Does an injustice to sex comedies. Avoid all these trashy films from that era like the plague.

By way of constructive criticism, the movie needed a much younger male cast, somewhat dashing, in the lead parts. As it is, all they had going in the right direction, were the girls themselves. A total script rewrite, a total plot rethink. In short, a colonic irrigation for the feeble minds behind this atrocity. Starting with George Harrison Marks. Who is deceased, so I shall attempt to retain a modicum of class by not speaking ill of the dead. But really, a much better movie could have been made just from their starting point of a dozen or so stocking-clad dolly birds. Anything less risible would have been a marvelous improvement. And doubtlessly no-one would refute that previous sentence.

On the plus side is that night-club performer in the semi-contorted pose early on in the movie when that fat little guy goes to Burlesque. The one with the black lingerie Valentine designs to cover her, uhm, modesty. Wow. That ribcage, and those 1977 natural breasts. Nowadays we don't see sculpted waists like that (AnnaLynne McCord of 90210 excluded of course) and breasts are all too often surgically enhanced. Another nice one in this flick is that girl in the gymnasium who walks away across the screen on tip-toe. Another wow.

However, nothing can move me from giving this one the lowest score possible, and you know what? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, it didn't even deserve a 1, but dear ol' IMDb is too kind- hearted a soul to have included 0/zero/zilch/big fat nothing as an option.

British sex comedies are kind of like "Lake Woebegone" in-reverse--they're all below average. And then some of them are downright awful. This was one of the most famous films of the genre since it featured sex star legend Mary Millington. But she has about as big of role here as she did with her brief cameo in "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle", and that movie is a lot more fun to sit through than this one.

There's no shortage of naked dollybirds, of course--like "The Playbirds" this was produced by British porn magnate David Sullivan and features a lot of the same "actresses" pulled from the pages of his nudie magazines (Millington, Suzie Mandel, etc.). Unfortunately though, it also has a plot: two counterfeiters (Alfie Bass and George Harrison Marks, who also directed)go on the lam from the law and hide out at a Scottish health spa run by a septuagenarian (Irene Handl). Then a bunch of strippers also start working at the spa for some reason (OK, so it's not much of a plot). What we have here is the same old problem--the Brits can't seem to make a straight-out sex film, so they have to try to "class" it up by throwing in a bunch second-rate, over-the-hill comedians. Bass, Marks, and Handl have an unfortunate amount of screen time and they're all painfully unfunny.

Like all sex films this movie is horribly cheap, and the incompetent film-making makes it seem even cheaper. I have no idea why it was so popular in Britain. At the time, I guess, they were such a sex starved country (due to stringent censorship laws) that their movie audiences would apparently just watch anything. This was a popular film in a certain time and place, but now it's little more than a curiosity

Given that this film ran for years in certain London cinemas, I'm intrigued as to what spectators were expecting (and I can only assume that many were mightily disappointed). While the US's Deep Throat constructed a skeletal plot on which to hang its extreme sexual action, Come Play with Me does the reverse: it is plot heavy on its focus on two forgers on the run (and how the government attempts to counter the flood of their fake notes into the UK), pursued by London gangsters to a failing Scottish Spa, run by Irene Handel. Like many 1970s sex films, this one features many veteran British actors (Alfie Bass, Henry McGee, Bob Todd, and Ronald Fraser), but it also boasts (fairly lengthy) musical numbers and general farce-like scenarios (and an awful recurring song on the soundtrack). However, such nonsense is punctuated by the periodic appearances of scantily-clad or disrobed 'nurses,' all of whom are (for some reason - it is not that clear why they go along with it) charged with revitalising the spa. In this regard, there are sex scenes, but nothing that much beyond the likes of the Confessions films (bar one or two scenes), and compared to its American counterparts, Come Play with Me is pretty tame (which again fails to explain its four-year run in one London cinema - clearly the hype machine was well operated). The writing is weak (and features a strange subplot focused on the government official, Podsnap, that goes nowhere as he tries (in disguise) to track down the forgers). In terms of performances, they are hammy (such as actor/director George Harrison Marks in a bizarre wig and fake teeth), or just on an amateur level (although Alfie Bass is good, but he always was), and if the draw of Mary Millington is the magnet to seek out this film, prepare to be disappointed, as she is not in many scenes. So, a curio from a curious cinematic British age, but its reputation far exceeds its delivery.

COME PLAY WITH ME is an astonishingly awful British sex comedy from George Harrison Marks, never known for making quality productions in the first place. This one's an interminable nudie feature set in a health resort, where various characters come together and butt heads in a story I can't make head nor tail of. The astonishing thing about all this is the number of well established and familiar faces they've roped into appearing; you don't expect the likes of Irene Handl and Alfie Bass to feature but here they are, dragging their reputations through the mud all the same. Non-stop nudity from the likes of Mary Millington does very little to make up for the appalling quality of this deeply unfunny production.

Here's another of these bawdy, saucy, naughty, eye candy flicks, that the English do so well. Set on a sex health farm, with hotties and open nudity, a plus, we have two money forgers hiding out. They're quiet and demure amongst the much other younger guests, and with good reason, but really these two aren't the sociable type. With an intrusion of half clad hotties waking them up, they hardly even react. This verging cult hit has some great songs, one music choreographed number, done by some of the actors I couldn't get, out of my head. As in other sex farces too, some recognizable faces, you wouldn't expect to see in this, pop up. This movie too, gives a whole new meaning to irrigation, I don't want to go into. Come Play With Me is actually a saucy little entertainer with way enough nudity, to get your hormones rising, humor, and some likable forgers. A very naughty, raunchy comedy, London Style.