Ooh... You Are Awful

Charlie Tully and Reggie Peek are confidence tricksters who pull off a big score when they con a rich Italian family out of half a million pounds by pretending to arrange a meeting with the Royal family. At the airport, Charlie can't resist conning a couple of tourists out of £200 but gets caught in the act. While Reggie flees the country with the cash, Charlie gets six months. Reggie puts the money in a Swiss account but, before he can tell Charlie the details, he is killed. Charlie finds that Reggie has tattooed clues on the asses of four girls he slept with in the past few months - and sets off to find them.

With the thinnest of plots (but the most complicated set up) this film allows Emery to wheel out the characters he was famous for in an uniquely British `romp' with heavy smut and innuendo. Needless to say it isn't very clever or funny and it probably requires you to be a fan of Emery's (and even then.). The story is not important but it is way too elaborate for a series of impressions and jokes revolving around girls' *rses! The fact that Charlie has several groups of criminals after him is too complicated considering it is only used to set up a few gags with Charlie's unofficial minders.

I have never been a big fan of Emery - he was before my time and his brand of impressions and innuendo have been done better by others; if you were looking back for an example you likely wouldn't look to him. He does have some talent but the material isn't very sharp and I just wasn't laughing. Ronald Fraser is amusing even if his tattoos looks like a child has put them on with a felt tip pen and the rest of the cast just mug around. I know this film is over 30 years old and body shapes have changed (in terms of what is the media's ideal) but, for a film that focuses on women's bums, it would have been nice if more than 1 of the four actually had a cute one!

Overall this is a very unfunny film that will only appeal to fans of Emery and even then I wonder how good they would think this is. The plot is convoluted for such a silly film and the majority of the supposed laughs are drawn from smut and innuendo that didn't make me laugh.

A real hoot as barefaced on artist Charlie Tully (Dick Emery) goes on the run after pulling a fast one on the Mafia.

To cop it all, old pal Reggie has gone and bedded Jo Mason, nubile sister of London gangster Sid Sabbath. Reggie stashes their money in a Swiss account before tattooing the number on his girlfriend's bottom, only to find his own number is well and truly up.

Learning of his friend's plight Charlie sets to work for his share of the cash, donning an array of disguises as he makes the best of a bum deal.

It's seaside humour all the way as he ticks off the gags one by one on his way to claiming back the loot.

But of course, not everything goes according to plan. "I'm not that sort of girl," Jo Mason primly warns his bogus solicitor. Then again, however ... a share of the spoils calls her bluff, and as she bares all for the camera a quick peep at her bare bottom proves very costly as her psychotic brother catches him at it, leaving him more than just the Mafia to worry about.

This is one the Carry On team would have killed for. Enjoy

Just before he died Dick Emery in a television interview lamented his forays into film were not successful, commercially and critically and it was now too late.

Emery died several months later. Ohh... You are Awful is now a rare chance to see Dick Emery's comic creations as his shows are so rarely repeated.

This is a saucy caper comedy with Emery playing chirpy con man Charlie Tully who is always on a swindle which includes persuading the son of a wealthy Italian family that marriage to Princess Anne is available at a price or a dowry.

With the aid of his womanising friend Ronald Fraser they swindled £500,000 out of the Italians who have hotfooted to the Mafia for revenge.

Charlie gets arrested at the Airport as he tries to sell a bulldog to some American tourists when he meets up with Fraser after his release from prison all he knows that Fraser deposited the money in a Swiss bank account before the Mafia henchmen knock Fraser off.

Charlie needs to track down some tattoos on some ladies Fraser has had in recent months which is actually on their rear and will tell Charlie the actual bank and account number. As he tries to track down the ladies he also falls foul of a local cockney gangster.

Emery gets to play his famous comedy characters such as Mandy and Lampwick during his quest.

For non Emery fans this would just be a dated British comedy with plenty of Carry On innuendo. Some of it really feels icky. Ronald Fraser looks revolting with all those poor tattoos supposedly with the names and phone numbers of his conquests.

Only in the mind of a desperate casting agent would Fraser ever be regarded as a ladies man. Derren Nesbitt who plays the cockney gangster would had been more suitable in that role.

Emery is having a hoot playing his comedy characters but really it is not funny enough despite a decent story.

I love Dick Emery's TV shows , but this is nowhere near the same quality.

It does start well, but soon runs out of steam, and the fact some of his regular characters are missing in action doesn't help.

Worth a one time watch, but it isn't something most people will find themselves going back to.

Almost every UK comedy show seemed to get a filmed version back in the early 1970s, and Dick Emery's sketch show was no exception. OOH...YOU ARE AWFUL is a film which brings the comedian's own unique brand of smut to the big screen, complete with all the saucy innuendo and cross-dressing you could hope for.

In fact, this turns out to be a rather disappointing little film, and insipid with it. The problem is that there's far too much of the complicated plotting, and very little in the actual way of laughs. The story is about a hidden fortune and the continuing attempts to retrieve it, but the problem is that a particular woman must be found with a particular tattoo on her bottom. I'm sure that's similar to a storyline in a spaghetti western I saw, and just as silly.

The acting in this film is pretty routine, with only a couple of familiar faces like that of Ronald Fraser, Pat Coombs, and the ever-nasty Derren Nesbitt enlivening the screen. Watch out for Pete Walker's muse, Sheila Keith, in her cameo as a magistrate. As with all early '70s British comedies, there's a bevy of beautiful female faces, attempts at sniggering humour, and a deep sense of time and place, but overall it's not much cop.