Those seventies classics are NOT NOW DARLING (1973) and NOT NOW COMRADE (1976) - just from those titles you can see that Mr. I don’t see most of those friends much now, strangely. The west end farceur made two films, or “films,” in the seventies, both based on his stage hits. I was very excited about Ray Cooney’s return to the cinema. A shame, because if he’d gone all out on his other dramas, he might have built up a rep as a minor Hitchcockian. I get the feeling he’s taking the mickey, trying to liven up tired material, and he probably thought this kind of showmanship beneath him, normally. Then there’s Jackson’s choice of angles, which show an imagination and cheek not so evident in his other works. It is worth sitting through this muck for him, Esma Cannon, and the previously mentioned. Really eccentric, something you haven’t seen before in the world of acting. The best perfs come from the straight actors - Pleasence plays it eerily still, Gough lopes crookedly, and Michael Gwynn is a delight, all pixilated stare and rigid arms, a man unable to awaken from a dream. His eternal, dogged professionalism and scrotumnal fizzog carry us through the dross.Ĭonnor is a perfectly OK supporting player but becomes irritating over the long haul of a leading role, and his vulnerability is undercut by the script, which makes everyone an asshole. Sid James, of course, would say yes to anything, which is why we have BLESS THIS HOUSE: THE MOTION PICTURE.
Not now darling movie movie#
The early scenes showing Connor and James’ home life have a very Hancock feel, and I wonder if the movie were actually intended for the great Tony H.Ĭooney & Hilton are, God knows, no Galton & Simpson (RIP), so I can easily imagine Hancock turning his nose up at this sub-CAT AND THE CANARY tosh. I do honestly like the moose joke though. You also get to direct, because hey, how much worse can shit get? See NOT NOW, DARLING and find out. This is a unique gift to have, though not in any way a useful one… except in Britain, it seems, where it can get you a 58-year-and-counting screenwriting career. He has some kind of reverse Midas touch, though, which allows him to turn shit into much, much worse shit. Cooney, of course, is an unbelievably persistent and diabolical scourge on the British cinema: everything he touches would turn to shit except it already IS shit. The script is a pile of old tosh by Ray Cooney & Tony Hilton, who also wrote one or two serious thrillers like THE HAND around this time. It’s so gloriously stupid it achieves a kind of glory. There are very few good jokes, but here is one. His character name is Everett Sloane, but this is not an in-joke, so far as I can see, just laziness. Some brief intrigue is managed by bringing two Carry On film regulars into a spookshow populated by horror icons Michael Gough, Michael Gwynn (REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN, very funny here) and an unblinking Donald Pleasence. Being a coward, he brings his flatmate Sid James along. In this one, cowardly proofreader Kenneth Connor is summoned to an Old Dark House in Yorkshire for the reading of an eccentric uncle’s will.
But the three films have little in common. The movie is kind of a remake of THE GHOUL, supposedly, later re-remade by Amicus, I believe. I was impressed by the camera direction in WHAT A CARVE UP!, which is not, otherwise, a distinguished work. Crippen, Emeric Belasco (pictured) and Budgie.
Starring Hengist Pod, the Rumpo Kid, Jill Masterson, Louis D’Ascoygne, Dr.
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