Saturday Night Out

Seven sailors in London have an evening out before they have to return to ship.

It's an example of the 'Swinging London' genre of film, which means a diversity of exploits, from David Lodge, who spends the evening in with an old girl friend, to Bernard Lee, who thinks he's struck gold, to John Bonney and Coiln Campbell, who find love and frustration. There's a lot of seaminess to this movie, which turns out to be essentially normative and no worse than PG-12 by modern standards.

Liverpool band The Searchers play one number in a night club. The producers got the Beatles for the gig, but decided they didn't want to pay the train fare.

Think of Godard, Rivette and Varda, all taking the camera into the streets and making masterpieces, and then look at how the English did the same and made a formless mess like this. Without style it shows the vulgarity of London in the early 1960's and its clubs, drunk people and violence. Heather Sears after being in ' Room at the Top ' is watchable, and so was Colin Campbell. Both of them could act, but the rest are stereotypes with hopeless dialogue, badly constructed scenes and confusion of motivation. Basically a hotchpotch of ' stories ' it does not convince, and I give it a two for those actors coping with terrible direction. Oh, I forgot the premise of the film; sailors on leave and this is no ' On the Town. '

If ever a DVD should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act this is it. To actually be released under the banner of 'The Best Of British' defies logic as it is mind blowingly awful from start to finish. There are few saving graces apart from a chance to revisit a London now long gone in the mists of time and see the blossoming beauty of the lovely Francesca Annis who shares her screen time mainly with the likable Colin Campbell. Bernard Lee has the best line after turning the tables on the smarmy Derek Bond and Erika Remberg's failed blackmail attempt, but the appearance of Nigel Green who spent the whole of his role drinking and stereotyping a drunken Irishman seemed utterly pointless. To have David Lodge as a lothario was another case of miscasting and I spent a lot of the time watching the film to see if Inigo Jackson was wearing a syrup or as they say in the States, a rug. I know times change and one shouldn't be too harsh on a film made nearly 50 years ago, but this was probably a film just as boring in 1964 as it is today. The less said about the Heather Sears role as a kind of forerunner hippy the better; her scenes seemed to go on forever and anyone who watched this on a Saturday night out would have wished they's spent a Saturday night in rather than going to see this codswallop. This was also the last film appearance of Freddie Mills who died a year later in mysterious circumstances. Rumours that his demise came after a disgruntled patron had seen this film were apparently unfounded.

Although strictly a 'quota quickie', this British picture is lively and passably entertaining in it's episodic telling of the adventures of five sailor's spending a night in London. The two youngest go looking for girls but only find prostitutes ( discussed in a surprisingly frank manner) although photogenic Francesca Annis and naive Colin Campbell do find common ground. David Lodge heads for bed with floozy Margaret Nolan ( a popular glamor model of the time--she was also in 'Goldfinger') for a saucily comic diversion. Bernard Lee takes the acting honors as a quiet, mature gentleman who is almost caught in a badger game. Add to this an appearance by Merseybeat group, The Searchers, and you do have a fairly peppy Saturday Night Out!

Not to be mistaken with the famous British kitchen sink drama SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING; the next day hardly matters and there are hardly any sinks in SATURDAY NIGHT OUT...

Except maybe at Heather Sears' bizarro apartment as a flaky, blunt and childish Beatnik chick, having met one of several merchant seaman on a weekend pass, starting out at a nightclub where house band The Searchers jovially blast their dance-steady Beatlesque rock...

Providing the kind of source music (non-composed and heard by both the audience and characters) that'd become normal a decade later in the 24-hour spanning all-night classic AMERICAN GRAFFITI...

Alas this forerunner has a bland existential plot yet is loaded with fine British actors like Bernard Lee (despite being way too old for ingenue Erika Remberg), Nigel Green and David Lodge...

And while not crime-centered like many B&W British New Wave flicks, the best story involves Inigo Jackson seduced by and progressively ripped off by a darker club's b-girls Caroline Mortimer and Vera Day as he slowly catches on, providing the most situational suspense herein...

Meanwhile the only satisfying arc has Francesca Annis forever hooked with the handsomest of the traipsing males: all of whom should have had a wilder, more intriguing SATURDAY NIGHT OUT...

Overall this feels more like a Tuesday.