Let's Get Laid

How did a frothy Windmill Theatre farce co-starring John Inman generate this 1947-set period piece, complete with spies, corpses and chases? And what was the reaction of fans of Robin Askwith's CONFESSIONS series on seeing him as a bashful lad from Lancashire, who spends most of the movie not getting the girl, and who even appears (quite effectively) in drag at one point, in this curious mixture of black farce and sex, with a musical number thrown in. Whatever, it's worth watching, especially for fans of Fiona Richmond. She's first glimpsed not in the flesh, so to speak, but on the cover of a clever mock-up of the 1940's fan magazine, 'Picturegoer'. As Maxine Lupercal, "international star of stage and screen", she has the same impact on Askwith's adoring fan, Gordon Laid, as she did on thousands of British men in the 1970s as a 'sex queen' a role she took on with innate good humour, not taking any of it remotely seriously. Exquisitely dressed, in an array of exotic outfits that come off at regular intervals, she's enchanting and ravishing throughout; her unique, studied, campy delivery is a delight. Askwith does well in both of his atypical dual roles, though Linda Hayden is given little to do, while most of hardcore starlet Lisa Taylor's amusing cameo appears to have fallen victim to the stringent censorship of the time. A number of 1950's stars are involved, not least former matinée idol Anthony Steel, here with an abundance of hair, and Patrick Holt has a brief turn as the Commissioner, but it falls to Graham Stark, making the most of his Inspector, to utter the inevitable line, "Let's Get Laid!".

Despite one or two gags that fall flat, including the running one that has Maxine rendering the same lines in all her pictures, and a few anomalies - the younger mens' haircuts and the returning troops' bawdy antics on the train, LET'S GET LAID! Is mercifully lacking in all those strained and unfunny puns that littered the likes of the CONFESSIONS films. Costume and production values, in particular Phil Meheux's photography, are considerably above average for the genre and the whole enterprise has, for the most part, a certain style and polish by definition usually lacking in British sex films.

The plot about secret agents trying to get hold of a fairly sophisticated electronic cigarette lighter and the poor sap (Laid) that gets in the middle is just a thin thread to string together some fairly arousing sexual vignettes as he fantasizes about the femme fatale (Lupercal). Although shot mostly about the "upper crust", the humor is mostly low brow, kind of like Benny Hill--definitely not your usually sophisticated British sex comedies.

The height of the film is the sexual vignettes and they are quite well done, the girls are beautiful to gorgeous and there is plenty of gratuitous nudity to go around for all but the most jaded hard core sex fiend. It was definitely a cut above the usual American films of the same ilk.

It's 1947. A young man (Robin Askwith) has just been discharged from the army. He is given the keys to a luxury apartment (for reasons that eluded me), but on his first night there he gets involved with a famous actress (Fiona Richmond) who lives next door and who has just killed a man. He helps her dispose of the body, but he accidentally pockets the man's cigarette lighter, which gets him involved in a whole ridiculous post-war spy plot. But the whole thing is periodically broken up by song-and-dance musical fantasy sequences involving Richmond, usually sans most of her clothing.

These UK sex comedies are a strictly British phenomenon and well before my time, but I've read a couple books about them by Simon Sheridan. Apparently, their primary audience was the same type of guys in raincoats that were attending hardcore porn movies across the pond in America in the 70's (and if you don't know why they were wearing raincoats, you probably don't want to). Anyway, it's amazing to me how these guys could "do their thing" to a movie like this, given how much plot there is to get in the way of the sex scenes and how comparatively tame the said sex scenes are. But I actually kind of like these movies far more than tedious hardcore American stroke-fodder (and certainly more than any modern-day stroke-fodder) because, inept as some of them are, they are at least REAL movies.

Robin Askwith (who I think was separated at birth from Mick Jagger) is mostly famous for the "Confessions of" series, which is much funnier (and sexier) than this movie. Askwith is really playing against type here as an uptight guy who's not particularly successful with women. Like the director's previous effort "Expose" (a VERY different movie), this features both Fiona Richmond and Linda Hayden, but Richmond here has the lead role while Hayden is largely wasted. I find Hayden more attractive than Richmond and there's NO DOUBT she was a far better actress. Richmond isn't bad though--she could certainly pull off this kind of very broad, intentional camp (this is apparently loosely based on a theatrical revue she had been doing). She has a great body (which you get to see a lot of), but with her clothes on she kind of looks like a female impersonator (albeit a very good one). She's better than she was in "Expose" (but "Expose"is a much better movie). I simply don't understand, however, the strange 70's trend of combining softcore/nudie flicks (which appeal to straight men) and musicals (which appeal more to women and gays). Oh, well. I wouldn't personally recommend this, but I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it for themselves either.

The other reviews on here (4 at time of writing, 2025) are broadly correct, though one is a little misguided in thinking the movie was aimed at the 'dirty mac' brigade.

I saw this recently on an obscure British channel that seems to specialise in showing films from the 60s/70s/80s era, mildly (very mildly!) erotic, lots of boobs, the occasional appearance of pubic hair (girls then were invariably 'bushy'!), and the feeblest excuse for a 'plot' that enables the nudity to be on show.

From memory, these films were aimed at late night crowds of young guys, on Friday and Sat nights, looking for some "wahey" titillation between umpteen pints at the pub and a late-night curry before staggering home?

Askwith was a natural to be cast, after the assorted 'Confessions' films, this one had the extra help of Fiona Richmond, by then getting some notoriety due to regular appearances in 'girly' mags and getting in any papers she could, and on TV in any way possible. In this film she showed that though she looked good without clothes, she couldn't act for toffee, though the intended audience probably wouldn't notice?!

By an odd coincidence, Linda Hayden (really a page-3 girl I think) and Shaun Curry both had minor parts later in the 80s TV sitcom Just Good Friends (Paul Nicholas, and the delicious Jan Francis) though they weren't on screen together.

I've rated this film as 3, it had a little curiosity value due to Richmond?