Adventures of a Private Eye

This is just dreadful for a comedy attempt...the bumbling idiot was pathetic doing his best to create laughs out of terrible situations...if it wasn't for some fairly decent looking women in the cast i likely would have quit viewing after the first five minutes of this disaster...well, i've seen enough to know this is a turkey that should be avoided

British pop singer Christopher Neil stars in this Carry On film Adventures Of A Private Eye. It has the look of a Carry On movie without the cast of Carry On regulars.

Cinema fans will also recognize the plot premise from Bob Hope's comedy from the 40s My Favorite Brunette. That's the one where Hope is asked by Alan Ladd to watch his office and take messages. Of course Hope decides he'd rather survey Dorothy Lamour.

Neil has the same situation as Jon Pertwee just asks him to mind the store, but Neil wants a chance to soar and Suzy Kendall certainly makes him soar.

In fact this film has the look and feel and general raunchiness of a Carry On film. But it would have been so much better with Carry On regulars.

All B-Movie boggled eyes are sure to be on glistering Giallo Glamour Girl Suzy Kendall who sizzles sensationally in serial smut-wrangler Stanley A. Long's riotously ribald, stupendously silly, bra-burstingly boorish comedy misadventure 'Adventures of a Private Eye' (1977). Witness the blissfully bawdy, barrel scraping buffoonery of charisma-challenged Christopher Neil's brainlessly bumbling private dick enthusiastic attempts to get to the bottom of things, and frequently getting more than his own knickers in a twist!!! One of muck maestro Stanley Long's frivolously frothy, fitfully filthy film's many highlights is the legitimately fabulous burlesque routine by the distractingly delicious Adrienne Posta, energetically performing her rewardingly 'not-so private', eye-catchingly exotic Liza Minnelli Cabaret routine! The more forgiving fans of prosaic Carry on-style pratfalls, dribble-entendres, juvenile jackanapes, and grubby-fingered, saucy postcard piffle will certainly dig on the asinine antics and retrograde tomfoolery of Christopher Neil's scurrilously salacious sleuth, plus the surprisingly glittering cast is a burnished Brit-cult dream, featuring the estimable acting talents of Jon Pertwee, Harry H Corbett, Diana Dors, Ian Lavender, Anna Quale, Irene Handle, Liz Frazer and William Rushton.

'The 'Adventures of a Private Eye' is an unapologetically lurid, lowbrow B-Movie bacchanal of puerile bottom-pinching perfidy, and, sadly, we shall never see it's inglorious like again!

This reminds me of what I think TV comedies were like in the 1970s - not the good programmes which get repeated but rather the hundreds of other ones which we've successfully purged from our collective memories. It's not the funniest comedy but it's by no means the worst. There's a fair bit of nudity but nothing you couldn't watch with your mother in the room.

The last two Carry On films from the 1970s were rightly criticised for becoming seedy, sordid and smutty - not in keeping the traditional Carry On saucy seaside postcard spirit. Their slide into the gutter was because they were competing with the so-called sex-comedies such as the 'Confessions of' and 'Adventures of' series which unapologetically set out to give the audience daft childish humour and lots of lovely, luscious topless ladies! This film actually feels more innocent, more cosy .....almost more family friendly than the last two Carry On films! Unlike the Confessions films or the dire Carry On England, this one's got a proper story, a reasonably clever script, proper stars doing proper acting playing proper characters - some quite funny and even some of the jokes are funny. Also Christopher Neil is pretty good. He's likeable which is important in a weak film like this, he keeps you watching. Unlike the stereotypical working class cheeky chappie caricature Robin Askwith played in the Confessions films, you can relate to Christopher Neil.

As a comedy, you don't need to take precautions against the possibility of your sides splitting. As a smutty movie you don't need to worry about your grandma turning up - she'd might even enjoy it more than you! It's called a 'sex-comedy' but it's very tame, the sex scenes are there for comedic purposes only and the nudity isn't much more explicit than you'd see queuing up outside your local nightclub these days. How strange that not too long ago this was what couples would go the cinema to see. Innocent naivety!

I thought that, by working backwards through the 'Adventures of…' films, I might see a slight rise in quality with each one I watch, ending with the best, but that is most definitely not the case: in fact, Adventures of a Private Eye, the middle film in the 'trilogy', is so diabolical that it's a wonder they ever made a third film.

The action starts in expected low-rent Confessions knock-off style, with private eye assistant Bob West (Christopher Neil) unable to resist taking over the role of detective while his womanising boss (Jon Pertwee) is out of the office for a few days. Agreeing to help sexy Laura Sutton (Suzy Kendall), who is being blackmailed for £50k, he takes off for the countryside to see which of the other potential heirs to Laura's late husband's fortune could be the the extortionist. As the silly plot progresses, the film turns into a very tired murder/mystery farce, albeit one with plenty of gratuitous nudity and soft-core sex featuring some very attractive British babes.

A cavalcade of crass and not in the least bit funny japes, Private Eye is a sorry state of affairs that makes even the weakest of the Confessions movies look like pure comedic genius. But what is REALLY sad about this film is seeing such a talented cast of British comic actors going to such waste: among those given absolutely nothing to work with are Irene Handl, Diana Dors, Liz Fraser, Harry H. Corbett, Willie Rushton, and Ian Lavender.

2.5/10, generously rounded up to 3 for the nostalgia factor, the film showing me West Byfleet Railway Station in all of its 70s glory and an early appearance by Peter Moran, who would go on to play obnoxious ginger Pogo Patterson in classic kids' TV series Grange Hill.