Come Play with Me

This movie - which amazingly was a box office smash in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s (it ran non-stop between 1977 and 1981 in London's West End) - embodies everything that was bad about British so-called `sex films' of the era - namely a lame and tedious plot, a second-rate cast of comedy has-beens and never-were's, poor acting and very little actual sex and nudity. A version of the film containing very steamy and explicit sex scenes was actually shot, but in the puritanical climate of late-70s Britain with its notoriously restrictive anti-porn legislation sometimes known as the `Limp Dick Laws' (and sadly things haven't really changed much in the intervening 20-odd years), this was deemed unacceptable for screening to UK cinema audiences and never saw the light of day (no sex please – we're British!!). Instead, the only version of this movie that has ever been released is this sorry excuse for a film, which concentrates more on the pathetic, supposedly `funny' antics of a group of elderly crooks and the septugenarian matron at a health spa, being brightened up only occasionally by stocking-clad beauties portraying nurses. These girls are the film's only redeeming feature and indeed they should have been what the movie was all about. Instead, the few (I think there are about 4) short `sex' scenes have been so brutally edited that they come to a sudden, grinding halt just as things are getting warmed up, and we're back to the silly goings-on involving the `comedy' characters. And silly they truly are. It's almost painful to watch sometimes, encapsulting stupid, slapstick `mucky postcard'-style antics in the very worst traditions of the equally lamentable `Confessions' and `Carry On' movie series of the same era. The publicity blurb surrounding the movie at the time of its release claimed that it was `entertainingly funny and blushingly saucy', `fantastically erotic', `the sexiest sex comedy screened' and `of a highly explicit nature'. The makers should have been hauled before the courts on charges of multiple violations of the Trade Descriptions Act, because it is nothing of the sort. According to a recently published book about one of the film's more glamorous stars, the late and sadly missed Mary Millington, only one print of the uncut and unseen version is known to still exist, which is a pity. It's perhaps being a little optimistic to hope that this will one day appear on DVD as a more fitting testimony to the Mary Millington legacy.

Here's another of these bawdy, saucy, naughty, eye candy flicks, that the English do so well. Set on a sex health farm, with hotties and open nudity, a plus, we have two money forgers hiding out. They're quiet and demure amongst the much other younger guests, and with good reason, but really these two aren't the sociable type. With an intrusion of half clad hotties waking them up, they hardly even react. This verging cult hit has some great songs, one music choreographed number, done by some of the actors I couldn't get, out of my head. As in other sex farces too, some recognizable faces, you wouldn't expect to see in this, pop up. This movie too, gives a whole new meaning to irrigation, I don't want to go into. Come Play With Me is actually a saucy little entertainer with way enough nudity, to get your hormones rising, humor, and some likable forgers. A very naughty, raunchy comedy, London Style.

Years ago, I saw SEX & FAME: THE MARY MILLINGTON STORY and learned about this tragically doomed (and victimized!) British pseudo Marilyn Monroe, and while researching this on the Internet decades later, I opted to purchase COME PLAY WITH ME. Only to learn ominously from the helpful included booklet that Mary scantly (!) appears in the movie. And what a mess this movie is! I concur with Mr Riley's 2001 review word for word. Why they had to have caricatures as main characters, is, well, not actually beyond me. It's how the infantile repressed mind works when finally given an opportunity to express itself.

False advertising to the highest degree. Does an injustice to sex comedies. Avoid all these trashy films from that era like the plague.

By way of constructive criticism, the movie needed a much younger male cast, somewhat dashing, in the lead parts. As it is, all they had going in the right direction, were the girls themselves. A total script rewrite, a total plot rethink. In short, a colonic irrigation for the feeble minds behind this atrocity. Starting with George Harrison Marks. Who is deceased, so I shall attempt to retain a modicum of class by not speaking ill of the dead. But really, a much better movie could have been made just from their starting point of a dozen or so stocking-clad dolly birds. Anything less risible would have been a marvelous improvement. And doubtlessly no-one would refute that previous sentence.

On the plus side is that night-club performer in the semi-contorted pose early on in the movie when that fat little guy goes to Burlesque. The one with the black lingerie Valentine designs to cover her, uhm, modesty. Wow. That ribcage, and those 1977 natural breasts. Nowadays we don't see sculpted waists like that (AnnaLynne McCord of 90210 excluded of course) and breasts are all too often surgically enhanced. Another nice one in this flick is that girl in the gymnasium who walks away across the screen on tip-toe. Another wow.

However, nothing can move me from giving this one the lowest score possible, and you know what? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, it didn't even deserve a 1, but dear ol' IMDb is too kind- hearted a soul to have included 0/zero/zilch/big fat nothing as an option.

British sex comedies are kind of like "Lake Woebegone" in-reverse--they're all below average. And then some of them are downright awful. This was one of the most famous films of the genre since it featured sex star legend Mary Millington. But she has about as big of role here as she did with her brief cameo in "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle", and that movie is a lot more fun to sit through than this one.

There's no shortage of naked dollybirds, of course--like "The Playbirds" this was produced by British porn magnate David Sullivan and features a lot of the same "actresses" pulled from the pages of his nudie magazines (Millington, Suzie Mandel, etc.). Unfortunately though, it also has a plot: two counterfeiters (Alfie Bass and George Harrison Marks, who also directed)go on the lam from the law and hide out at a Scottish health spa run by a septuagenarian (Irene Handl). Then a bunch of strippers also start working at the spa for some reason (OK, so it's not much of a plot). What we have here is the same old problem--the Brits can't seem to make a straight-out sex film, so they have to try to "class" it up by throwing in a bunch second-rate, over-the-hill comedians. Bass, Marks, and Handl have an unfortunate amount of screen time and they're all painfully unfunny.

Like all sex films this movie is horribly cheap, and the incompetent film-making makes it seem even cheaper. I have no idea why it was so popular in Britain. At the time, I guess, they were such a sex starved country (due to stringent censorship laws) that their movie audiences would apparently just watch anything. This was a popular film in a certain time and place, but now it's little more than a curiosity

British sex comedy/crime caper with a host of very well-known UK TV names of the time, along with several 'adult entertainment' actresses - the best known of which was easily the ill-fated Mary Millington (she committed suicide just two years later). I remember seeing it not too long after it came out and thinking it was very daring. Watching it now it plays out like an extended Benny Hill sketch but with full nudity (Bob Todd and Henry McGee from The Benny Hill Show are in it); too bad it isn't anywhere near as funny as Benny Hill. There were rumours of a 'hardcore cut' although as far as I know it hasn't surfaced. Nostalgia ('spot the long forgotten face'), a lot of very cute girls, and (especially) Mary Millington get it 3/10.