Adventures of a Private Eye

Young and randy private eye Bob West investigates a case in which a beautiful young woman called Laura is being blackmailed over some sex photographs of her. This is the second entry in the British "Adventures of.." sex-comedy series (and I use the word "comedy" loosely). Bob is a new lead character and Christopher Neil is fine in the role but how they got the gorgeous and talented Suzy Kendall (as Laura) to appear in this crap surprises me, I will always know her for appearing in some classic Italian Giallo movies. For British viewers of a certain age there are many familiar faces among the cast - John Pertwee, Diana Dors, Harry H Corbett and Willie Rushton, etc - but the one that I liked most of all was a very young Peter Moran, who went on to play Pogo Patterson in the fantastic BBC school drama "Grange Hill". For a film that was marketed as a sex-comedy there is in fact very little sex, not enough quite frankly. Likewise, there is nudity but it is all very brief. And in terms of comedy, bar a few scenes, it fails miserably at being funny. Bob stays at the home of Laura, a Gothic looking English mansion, the residents of which include a creepy butler, an eccentric female medium and a buxom blonde housemaid. There are secret passages and one good jump scare, as a horror fan I liked this. One of the few laugh out loud moments has Bob use shoe polish to go in disguise as an Arab, snowflakes might be shocked by this blackface gag but I laughed. At 96 minutes (Blu-ray) the film felt way too long. These "Adventures" are obviously a knock-off of the better known "Confessions of.." sex-comedy series but having now watched two out of the trilogy so far I am not impressed.

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.

The second of the "Adventures" series, this one features Chris Neil as Bob, an assistant to a P.I. who tries to crack a case when his boss is on vacation. The whole ordeal is done in a slow, boring, unfunny, contrived sort of way.

However, the film perks up when Adrienne Posta comes in. Posta delivers a superb impersonation of Oscar-winning actress Liza Minelli (named Lisa Moroni here) who gives him shelter when the bad guys attempt to eliminate him when he's starting to get a bead on solving the case. Posta portrays Minelli from her role in Bob Fosse's "Cabaret" and looks and sounds like her as well. It's a darkhorse candidate in my book for the best mimic job in the history of cinema. Otherwise, there's not much here to like.

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!

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!