Take Me High

While his 60s films fit in with the juvenile delinquent and teenage beach movies of the time, this one keeps up with those fans who were now in their 20s. Another romantic comedy with a memorable music score and set in the UK's second city, Cliff now has an office job but he's still a bachelor.

It would be a dozen years before Cliff would do the Dave Clark musical TIME in the West End (no longer in the office but a rock star) followed 10 years later by his version of Wuthering Heights. The musical Heathcliff was a life-long ambition of Cliff's (and he played the married, then widowed seriously misunderstood man quite well). TIME was never released in video format but Heathcliff was. Take Me High is also available on video. His voice only got better, so you can't go wrong with any of these releases.

OK so it's Cliff in flares in Birmingham but this film has a charm all it's own. The soundtrack is brilliant, these songs are very good and the storyline is refreshing in that it's based in England. Anthony Andrews and Hugh Griffiths are great and Cliff is, well, Cliff!

Watch it enough times and you'll soon have your favourite scenes, lines and even songs. The moral is still relevant today - money and the pursuit of real happiness. There are some good actors in this and George Cole is superb as a hardbitten socialist. Cliff has some great outfits in this, truly 100% 1973 gear and it's an interesting snapshot of life in this country all those years ago. I'd like to add that Gas Street IS in the middle of Birmingham - we did the map fold!!!!!

By any measure this is a very cheesy film, but it's so harmless and wholesome you can't really take umbrage with it. Based around the jewel of the British Waterways, the Gas Street basin it offers a fascinating historical insight into this very special area of Birmingham. Sort of film you can enjoy as long as you restrict watching it to, say, every ten years or so.

It's a pity that it has yet to be released on a modern format as I know many Brummies would enjoy just watching the film for the shots around the City. A City which has changed much, Take me High provides a good visual snap shot of the capitol of the British Midlands just before it's decline as a light industrial engineering world centre.

During Cliffs tenure on his canal boat in the Gas Street basin he would have had a neighbour in the fictional Wilf Harvey popular elderly Crossroads character who lived on dry land adjacent to the canals.

Essentially an extended music video clip for Cliff Richards.

Richards is a merchant banker who is moved to Birmingham and what follows is a montage of the brutalist concrete architecture that made Birmingham worse, and shots of flyovers before they were covered in tags and vomit.

George Cole is there and there's a famous scene of shooting the television set. Later there is a 1980s direct-to-video film style plot line where Richards and his girlfriend plan to open a burger bar selling "Brumburgers".

There's quite a lot of embarrassed people in the street scene, as if having to live in Birmingham wasn't punishment enough ! Product placement - BOAC airlines.

This is a shocker. No other word for it. Cliff has certainly grown up since his adolescent efforts of the late 1960s, but what they had by way of innocent charm and boppy numbers then has been replaced here by a ridiculous plot, some serious hamming from Hugh Griffiths, conceivably the worst song I've ever heard in a film - "Brumburger" (the story being set in Birmingham) and a banal dialogue that would test the patience of Mother Theresa. The poster claims there are twelve new songs, but they have neither the weight nor the catchiness to sustain this over-long story that shows the city at it's most architecturally brutal. The assembled cast including a debut appearance from Anthony Andrews and some mischief from veteran George Cole just make it worse. The story is all over the place, and the direction seems uncertain as to whether this is a piece of entertainment or a series of video-guides of the city's rather grim urban landscape - either way it really is quite a struggle. Sorry, but even his most ardent fans must appreciate that this is a poor film on just about every front.