Febbre bionda

Filmed partly on location in the West Yorkshire town of Batley (given the name Barfield in the film), you know what you are going to get as soon as you watch that Salvation Army band marching up the cobbled market place in the drizzle and soot. Good fun for those of us who live in the town spotting the landmarks. Batley's a lot cleaner now, and the buildings are sandstone again instead of black - it still rains a bit though.

Chaley (John Gregson) owns a rag mill, the economy of the town for much of the twentieth century being based on recycling rags into reconstituted cloth known as either 'Shoddy' (now used as an adjective), or 'Mungo'. And he does what all Rugby League fans do once a year, and that's head south for the sport's Challenge Cup Final. Taking the local stories into account, the weekend trip is as traditional as ever, involving a lot of beer, food and going to clubs and pubs - and the final itself of course.

However, it's not usual for one of the girls in a club to follow you back north in the hope of parting you from your money - and that's when the fun starts in 'Value for Money', especially if you already have a girl back home who's 'sweet on you'.

Good-natured comic shenanigans follow that pulls the legs of stereotypical northerners and southerners alike. Luckily, the twain shall meet after a few plot twists and turns, and it all works out right in the end.

Note - Fifty years after the film was released, people in the town still sometimes refer to Batley as Barfield, and you can here the name being shouted from the terraces at Mount Pleasant (Batley RLFC's ground) on many occasions.

Eh, it's grim 'oop north.

A number of (I presume, younger) reviewers regard this film with some distaste, citing dated regional and gender stereotypes.

I think that they need to relax a bit.

The film is a comedy that pokes fun on males, females, northerners and southerners alike.

Beautifully photographed and well acted, but really not to be taken seriously.

Two scenes stand out.

Firstly when the errant husband's return from their jolly in the capital and the wives await.

The camera pans along the coach as one by one the male passengers wipe the condensation from the window and view the reception committee.

Dramatic irony at its finest, followed by a wide panoramic shot as each emerging man is seized by the collar and frog marched away like naughty children, with the attending threat:Wait till I get you home!

The second is the scene later that day when Chayley proclaims to Ethel that Ruthin is the most "beautiful woman he has ever seen" ;followed by reassuring his fiance that She (Ruth in) is not for me. She is an ideal placed upon a pedestal.

One does not have to be Einstein to figure out what the reaction will be.

Enjoy John Gregson as the hapless Chayley, Diana Dors in her dazzling prime with great support from the ever excellent and sadly underrated Susan Stephen.

And wallow in world long gone.

Batley as it looked in the fifties got the film star treatment photographed in Technicolor & VistaVision by top cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth masquerading as the fictitious mill town of Barfield in this silly farce in which parsimonious northerner John Gregson inherits £62k from his old man (seen solely in pictures played by an uncredited Frederick Piper) and visits the fleshpots of London where we're treated to a breathtakingly vulgar and gaudy musical number before he falls for the voluptuous charms of hard and brassy Diana Dors.

Miss Dors (who at one point dives into a swimming pool in a bikini, plainly doubled for the dive itself, and emerging from the water her blonde mane still dry & set) demonstrates she sure knew how to spend money in those long-ago days when a seven-bedroom timbered house in the North of England cost a eye-watering £5,800.

"Chayley" (John Gregson) comes from good Yorkshire stock where thrift and prudence are the order of the day. That attitude is thrown to the wind, though, when on a visit to London he encounters the glamorous and charming nightclub entertainer "Ruth" (Diana Dors). Now she knows when she is onto a good thing, as soon has this poor lad hook line and sinker. Despite his upbringing, and the ghost of his father warning him of the coming dangers, he is powerless - he is addicted to her, and soon she has come to his town, they are engaged, and she is looking for a nice big house. Can he see reason before it's too late? Is she really quite such a gold-digger? For the first half hour, when it's just the two at the top of the bill, then the film - and the dialogue - work quite well. You can see her manoeuvring the vulnerable but proud young man and it looks like both are having fun. For the rest of this, though, it really is just a bit of a stereotype-fest that runs through the joke as quickly as she would run through his inheritance. It's always good to see Ernest Thesiger (the doting "Lord Dewsbury)" and there are a few lively cameos but not enough to sustain this after about an hour when the writing is on the wall for a rather tame solution that lets it all fizzle out. The moral might be, though - always check your restaurant bill!

Diana Dors was billed as the British Marilyn Monroe. A few years before her death I saw her opening an arcade in the Isle of Man. By that time she had ballooned in weight but she still could bring out the crowds. I was only a kid so did not really know what all the fuss was about.

In Value for Money, Dors plays glamourous singer and actress Ruthine West who gets enticed up to Batley to open a children's play area.

The cause for her relocation from chic London is Chayley Broadbent (John Gregson) who has inherited his father's textile fortune. Like his later father Chayley is a miser who watches the pennies. His long suffering fiancée Ethel, a local journalist wants Chayley to go to London to enjoy himself and find a purpose away from his father's penny pinching ways. He finds Ruthine in a show instead and instantly falls in love with her.

So Chayley, Ruthine and Ethel are in Batley. Ruthine hates the grim Yorkshire industrial town but likes Chayley's money. Ethel hangs around patiently for Chayley to come to his senses.

Value for Money is a colourful light romantic comedy, with a couple of nice musical numbers.

Chayley is a shallow fool who is always hearing his late father's muttering about not driving a hard enough bargain. It is a bit of froth and fun. Dors does look slim and sexy. It is a mildly entertaining movie with dated views on women.