Spent the afternoon watching one of the many British sexploitation comedies from the 70s via YouTube and I was lucky to find one I had not seen before which was a result.
Excellent production values including gorgeous period costumes - it is set in 1904 - mark this 'Upstairs Downstairs' spoof out as an above average entry in the 1970's Brit sex comedy stakes of the time. It is a tale of a bunch of sex-obsessed aristocrats and their equally randy servants.
This kind of film was a staple of British film of the time with their low cost production and quick turn around there were seen has a cheap cinema fuller.
So the film. Earl Cockshute is faced with a grave dilemma: Snotty Shuttleworth, a local villager who ventured to Australia and made his fortune in trade, has bought the debts of the once-great family. Now he is back in England, and fancies himself as Lord if they cannot pay what they owe within a month.
Butler Hampton is perhaps more despairing of such a notion then his master, and the rest of the staff are equally aghast at the idea of life at Cockshute not being what it was - for all enjoy casual and fulfilling liaisons of a hot and sweaty nature.
With no family heirlooms left to sell, Lord and Lady Cockshute turn to that old aristocratic trick of a convenient marriage. Young Lady Kitty recalls that a school-friend, Betsy Ann Dureneck, is an obscenely wealthy American oil heiress, and would be a perfect match for Master Peregrine. He, however, is far more interested in his basement scientific laboratory...
As the Durenecks visit for the weekend, things go quickly awry. Hampton recognises Betsy Ann's mother as a dancing girl he was once engaged to, and comes to a realisation about her parentage; Shuttleworth declares his love for Lady Kitty; and Betsy Ann seems as buttoned-up and uninterested in love or sex as Peregrine! Is a staged jewellery theft the only answer left to ensure the status quo at Cockshute Towers is maintained?
As a time capsule of the era it was made, it is priceless. Holding the whole thing together is Neil Hallett, who has perfected his long-suffering look as the butler, Hampton, but he has given ample support from a whole bevy of familiar British faces. Watch out for OLIVER! Jack Wild as a mad scientist type, Diana Dors as a visiting aristo, and Francoise Pascal and Mary Millington as a pair of sexy maids.
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