Adventures of a Private Eye

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.

For those who won't have been around at the time that this film was released they will look at the cast and wonder.There is Jon Letters,Dr Who,Harry H.,Corbett,Steptoe,Ian Lavender,Private Pike.Additionally Diana Ford,Irene Handel and Fred Emney.The reason for their participation in this film is that other than spin offs and a few American financed films this is the only type of film that was being made.So the actors were prepared to take What they could get.Now you can have some funny sex films but this wasn't one of them.It is unfunny and truly dreadful.It took the British film industry many years to get out of the doldrums.

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

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!

Like its sequel, "Adventures of a Plumber's Mate", "Adventures of a Private Eye" is a cut above the average Brit sex comedy from the same era. There's more going on than just the standard "hapless lad has a job that involves meeting lots of frisky housewives with violent husbands", although there's that, too, of course. There's also a sub-film noir plot our inexperienced hero tries to solve, a gothic horror setting in a manor house with a macabre butler, and a séance.

More comedic set-ups - and the movie has more than you can count - means more jokes, which also means more likelihood that the jokes might land. Unbelievably, this time, a few actually do, and I found myself chuckling on occasion.

For future reference, this is the sex comedy where the other Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, plays a swinging private eye - though there's certainly nothing about him that would suggest being a babe magnet - who leaves his business in the hands of his young protégé, who ends up taking on one of his cases. He gets a new secretary, and expects a sexy, available "bird" like the one his boss had, but instead gets an odd, ageless woman with round spectacles.

There's also a scene where he ends up dressed as a woman - nothing too special about that - but then has to perform on stage with a burlesque dancer.

Both the actress who plays the dancer, and the one who plays the odd secretary, are superior to the material, especially the multi-talented dancer.

I say check it out.