Confessions from a Holiday Camp

Due to age I missed out on the UK 1970's sex comedy boom, so have been watching movies from this genre as they make themselves available on TV. Because these aren't exactly the kind of things you would pay money to watch or go out your way to see at the cinema. As if cinemas would play this kind of thing, seeing as they are now all staffed by woke feminists in 1950's tea dresses and ironic NHS glasses. Unlike the Carry On Series, the Confessions series is less family friendly due to its content, so it doesn't get as much love. The narrative is also much more streamlined as the Confessions series basically follows the protagonist in his job role as numerous nubile women decide they want to have sex with him now and for no apparent reason. And there are plenty of opportunities as this is a holiday camp. The humour is generally around nudity in public and the fear of being caught having sex from others. There is little crude language and the sex scenes are tame compared to what can be seen on the average teenagers phone. Is it ironic that these movies did and still do have feminists frothing at the mouth, when 40 years of feminist intervention have lead to even more extreme content being normalised by the public? This is definitely a UK time capsule movie and shows a more innocent time, regardless of the "that didn't age well" comments from the virtue signallers who are looking at far worse stuff.

Confessions From a Holiday Camp, the fourth and final film to star Robin Askwith as working class lothario Timmy Lea, fails spectacularly as a comedy, the unsophisticated script resorting to embarrassing racist remarks, crass homophobic jokes, and childish slapstick in a desperate attempt to illicit giggles from its audience.

'So, if it's not all that funny, then why have you rated it so highly?' I hear you ask. The answer: the endless quality British crumpet, of course. The plot, which sees Timmy organising a beauty contest at Camp Funfrall, allows for plenty of bare breasts, some shapely female derrieres, and more bush than Hampton Court Maze. Not only does the lovely Linda Hayden, star of the first Confessions film, return to play foxy French holiday host Brigitte, but we also get sexy brunette Caroline Ellis as yummy Brummie Gladys, Kim Hardy as the camp's tasty announcer, Nicola Blackman as Blackbird, the camp's curvacous Caribbean queen (and, sadly, the brunt of the racist jokes), and busty Janet Edis as a horny MILF.

Unfortunately, there's also rather a lot of Robin Askwith's hairy ass on display, but you can't win 'em all I suppose.

I am a fan of the whole series of movies, but this movie had a different feel to it. I would say it was more like the on the buses holiday movie but obviously more naughty. If you are a fan of the carry on series of movies or have seen the adventures of, series of movies then I would recommend seeing this movie and the others too.

I admit a certain affection for the CONFESSIONS... series of '70s sex comedy, which perfectly captured working class attitudes during that decade, much as the later CARRY ONs did. CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER and CONFESSIONS OF A DRIVING INSTRUCTOR are my favourites, with Askwith's professions lending themselves perfectly to a series of episodic shenanigans.

The last of the quartet is CONFESSIONS FROM A HOLIDAY CAMP, and it really is a last-ditch attempt to wring more money out of audiences. This time around, Askwith and Booth end up working at a dodgy sub-Butlins type place, where girls parade around in the bikinis a lot and end up getting into saucy encounters with a permanently befuddled Askwith.

There are some funny moments here - like the bit with Askwith in the swimming pool - but a lot of it is cringeworthy rather than amusing and the slapstick scenes are very childish. Lance Percival's portrayal of a gay guy is really awful, as are Askwith's off-colour jokes at the expense of a black woman. It's a pity the script is so poor, because there's some top totty here in the form of Liz Fraser and Penny Meredith, but they would have been better served in one of the other, better, instalments.

"Timmy Lea" (Robin Askwith) and his philandering brother-in-law (Anthony Booth) from "Confessions of a Window Cleaner" (and two other "Confessions" movies I haven't seen) are working together once again, this time running a holiday camp called "Camp Funfrall". Their jobs are on the line, however, when the camp gets a new uptight owner. The brother-in-law tries to redeem them by sponsoring a beauty contest for the unusually large amount of nubile lovelies that patronize the camp, but his efforts are jeopardized by Timmy's customary habit of falling into various madcap sexual situations, which always seems to result in him running naked around the camp (to the point where he is dubbed "the Camp Streaker"). And to make matters even worse, Timmy's goofy parents and sister also show up to add to the zaniness.

Compared to "Confessions of a Window Cleaner" this British sex comedy has a little less emphasis on sex and a little more on comedy. Unfortunately, the comedy isn't nearly as funny as in the earlier entry, mostly because Timmy's hilarious parents don't have nearly as large of role. The lovely Linda Hayden (who played his fiancée in the first movie) returns as a different character, a French co-worker. Hayden's French accent is none-too-convincing, but she's never clad more than scantily, and often not at all. The same is true of the other women at the camp, including a black girl (to whom Timmy makes some very politically incorrect comments that nevertheless don't dissuade her from going to bed with him), an older married woman (Penny Meredith), and two giggly teenage friends (Carol Ellis and Sue Upton) . As usual, however, Askwith himself spends more time in the buff than any of the women. (I sometimes suspect that this series, with pretty-boy, Mick Jagger-lookalike Askwith, was aimed more at a 70's British version of a "bi-curious" audience as opposed to an entirely straight one).

If you liked the first movie (like I kind of did), this is not as good, but it's not necessarily bad. If you didn't like the first one though, you'll probably find this one even worse.