The Adventures of Jane

I see the leading lady nearly every day.She was the model for "The Naked Lady" statue which stands near the junction of the A406 and A1 in Henleys Corner North London.I would say that she is a lot more mobile as the statue than she was as the leading lady of this almighty load of rubbish made at Brighton Studios.She simply cant act and so the film is simply amateur theatricals.the story,when it actually gets going is strictly second rate.However we do get to see a young petter Butterworth drunkly get into bed with Fritz the dog,being kissed and thinking he is with Jane.That is probably about the only memorable moment in this truly awful film.

Low-budget attempt to cash in on the (waning) popularity of the saucy British comic strip is very thin soup indeed. The innocent Jane would repeatedly lose her clothing in the course of her adventures in print but only has her skirt ripped off a couple of times on celluloid due to the censorship rules of the time. The plot, involving diamond smugglers who use Jane as an unsuspecting mule, feels like an afterthought. Carry On regular Peter Butterworth makes an early appearance as an unfunny drunk who mistakenly sleeps with Jane's dachshund, Fritz.

Christabel Leighton-Porter is Jane Gay, a pretty girl in show business in some vague way that has her and her dachshund taking bows on stage in London and judging beauty contests elsewhere. Somehow, she gets involved in a diamond-smuggling operation that involves smuggling one diamond at a time.

It's based on the comic strip created by Norman Pett, in which Jane was a competent young woman who was always having her outer garments accidentally torn away -- in one morale-boosting event during the Second World War, she lost all of her clothes amidst a bunch of soldiers. Originally Pett's wife was the model for Jane. After 1939, Miss Leighton-Porter became the model.

This was Miss Leighton-Porter's only movie role, and the rather dull handling by directors Edward G. Whiting and Alf Goulding show why. Miss Leighton-Porter's skirt goes away only twice, although she does roll down a hill. Peter Butterworth plays a drunk who winds up in her bed by accident, and Sebastian Cabot can be spotted, although, as usual, I missed him.

In the United States, there is a stereotype that the British are extremely well mannered and sophisticated. This is in spite of evidence to the contrary which seems to say they can be just as lowbrow and dopey as the rest of us. Sure, they have produced many classic films as well as television shows (such as "Downton Abbey" and "I, Claudius")....but they also have brought the world "The Benny Hill Show" and drivel like "The Adventures of Jane".

So what IS "The Adventures of Jane"? Well, apparently it is a movie based on a comic strip for adults and Jane is apparently very accident prone and always ends up having her clothing ripped off of her! Sophisticated? Hardly! And in the film, it's pretty much what you'd expect, as it's filled with very bad jokes (the sorts you'd expect to hear on stage in a burlesque-type review) and Jane standing about in her underwear.

Overall, this film was too broadly written, acted and directed to be seen as anything other than a bad little curio. Apparently, the plan was originally to make a series of these films but the British public, fortunately, did not embrace the movie and further movies were dropped. It's bad and difficult to watch....trust me on this!

This is little better or more than an extension of the 1930's "Daily Mirror" comic strip about a rather hapless heroine "Jane" who frequently gets herself into scrapes that usually end up with her scantily clad (by the standards of the day) and in need of some sort of gallant rescue. In this film, she is given a bracelet without knowing that it contains an expensive diamond and her admirer and his slimy associate try to use her to smuggle the jewel into the country then to abscond with it. If one was to be seriously critical at all of this farcical little yarn, then it would that Christabel Leighton-Porter was probably just too old to portray the rather empty-headed bimbo that she was meant to be. There's a fun little cameo from Peter Butterworth as the drunk; but otherwise this is just a rather politically incorrect, forgettable, Saturday morning feature.