Rentadick

How one film can so woefully underuse such a great line up of actors and actresses beggars belief. A lame script laces poor and very unfunny jokes.

An all round pathetic film.

We have watched this movie twice this week and my daughter and I both think it is very funny. Ronald Fraser could not be funnier. If you didn't like this movie, try it again. Rentadick should be considered a cult classic.

Gifted celluloid smut slinger Jim Clark's riotously ribald 'Rentadick' (1972) is a robustly risqué, rump-rockingly rumbustious, bra-bustingly boorish, luridly low-brow, hysterically fly-blown comedy from Brit-sinema's lustiest spray day! Give sulky sadness the shaft!!! As the bawdily backward 'Rentadick' rudely upturns your frumpy frown into a syndicated smirk!! 'Rentadick' rigidly grasps your flaccid giggle gland wiv both 'ahnds and gives it a proper good Tommy Tank! So if you feel all at Bell's End, think you've about bottomed out, fear the lusty lead's bled right out of ya' pencil, then don't despair, slinkily slip out of your plushly velvet Lionel Blair's, generously pour yourself a titanic tot of your most spirited spirit, and take a not-so sneaky peak at comely crumpet Julie Ege's permissively perky, lead-firming peaks!!!! And if luxuriously lewd 70s comedy be your hot cup of steaming meat, then this fleshly fecund film might just prove to be a terrifically tumescent, lingerie lifting, late night treat! Remember, it 'aint a crime to covet a bodacious behind!!! And it's not, as yet, against the law to sensuously stretch your jocular jaw over a prickly pawpaw! Made when PC happily stood for Perfectly Crude, Jim Clark's sinfully penetrating comedy 'Rentadick' is slickly ad-libbed for your illicit, rib tickling pleasure!

I watched "Rentadick", as I assume most people might, solely because I learned that John Cleese and Graham Chapman co-wrote the script; however, in my version at least, they are both uncredited, so they either took their names off out of embarrassment, or their initial work was completely discarded. In either case, the final script is godawful. The direction is so clumsy that it is impossible to know who is in any given scene or what they are trying to do; in its own way, this film is as hard to understand as any of Tarkovsky's work. The cast is a who-is-not-who of British film comedy; the only face (among other parts....) I recognized was Julie Ege. They say few people have actually seen "Rentadick" and lived to tell the tale. Don't risk it. 0 out of 4 stars.

Armitage runs a chemical company that is on the verge of producing a gas that causes temporary disability. Clearly the military want it but it is also sought by a group of Japanese. Both Armitage and Madam Greenfly hire different people in the same detective agency to guard the gas and steal it respectively……confusion, double crosses and hilarity ensue….

I had high hopes for this…get this…it was written by Python's Chapman and Cleese, with contributions from satirists Wells and Fortune (who still works with Rory Bremner). It has a lot of famous TV faces (Sinden, Griffiths, Keith, Briers) and has involvement from Goons Milligan and Michael Bentine. With this type of quality involved I assumed that the product would be good.

But this never rises above the standard set by all 1970's British comedy which rely on bawdy farce rather than humour to get by. It has plenty of little surreal touches that make it rise slightly above the pack, but really this isn't carried across into the dialogue or plot. It even builds to a keystone cop style chase – typical of the period. None of the cast really get into it – the cameos are OK, but you can't help feel the waste.

Overall this is pretty poor. It's better than the raft of smutty 1970's comedies that this is related to, but with the talent on board you can't help feel that greater things were possible.