I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight!

Oh dear! What happened to British cinema in the late seventies? It was a time when Britain was churning out more and more low budget fodder at an ever increasing rate, often with little or no thought about where this output would stack up in the great cinema appraisal of the future (i.e. video / DVD etc). Most Producers would have considered the work only suitable for a British audience and that audience was starting to decline. The idea that these films would be shown at any future date seemed improbable too so where to go with it? Well, there were several formulas for getting bums on seats and one of those was showing bums on seats, along with tits and occasional flashes of abundant pubic hair.



Though occasionally branded 'saucy sex comedies', this genre (which included the dire 'Confessions of' and 'Adventures of' series) were written by the last bastions of a mindless sexism where females were either birds or nags. Stalwarts like Irene Handl, Arthur Askey, Diana Dors, Liz Fraser and many more found themselves in films with titles like 'Rosie Dixon Night Nurse' or 'Keeping it Up All Night', often in the very twilight years of glittering careers.



So is it possible that anyone remembers the diabolical 'I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight' with even a modicum of affection? I doubt it. Apart from the splendid seaside postcard pun of the title, it is a film peculiarly bereft of laughs and / or eroticism. It's a film so bad that (apocryphally) the Director, Joseph McGrath, (known for his early work with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) couldn't even face his actors whilst filming. Which is a shame because, in common with many of these late seventies mishaps, it's full of actors who at one time had decent careers (Brian Murphy and Chick Murray amongst them).



The main character of the film, played by Jon Pigeon (Barry Andrews - Rentadick) works in a sex research institute which, naturally, is a place awash with naked couples bursting out of doors and into the corridors (yes- those same Pinewood corridors we've seen so often in Carry On medical films). Despite plenty of randy girls coming after him he lusts after one lady in particular, a pretty secretary called Cheryl. Luckily, whilst tinkering in his box room (full of cleaning materials) he manages to invent a machine (actually a strobe lamp with a coat hanger dangling from the front) that emits a sonic aphrodisiac which makes everyone in its path randy.



Naturally the 'tests' result in some particularly un-funny mishaps and orgies which mean that we get some decent flashes of topless girls and (steady with the pause button hand) some flashes of pubic hair - vital ingredients to get the punters into the cinema. Of course, it was a fine art in the day to get this stuff past the censors, and this 'uncut version' looks pretty tame (or should that read 'lame') today.



There are some notable moments for nostalgia freaks, including a young Mike Grady playing a boy scout who helps collect up the mountains of top-shelf magazines that have collected at Jon's home, and a sequence aimed squarely at Mary Whitehouse ('Mrs Watchtower' in this film) who gets a blast of the ray herself before throwing her own clothes off and joining an orgy in the back of Jon's van.



It all smacks of low rent Wardour Street sleaze and Stanley Long, the man most closely associated with the genre at this time, always had one foot in porn and one foot in mainstream.



Whilst the comedy is described as 'cheeky' or 'saucy', there is nothing very cosy or pleasant about any of it. Middle aged men slobbering over young girls who often have to fight them off as they force themselves upon them is not really very funny. It probably wasn't funny then either.



Apparently soft-core seventies star Mary Millington is featured though I was unable to recognise her (don't think I've seen any of her films) and for industrial music fans, Cosey Fanni Tutti (from Throbbing Gristle) can be seen fleetingly in a scene.



All in all, the film is a throwback to another age and someone somewhere may enjoy it just for that. For anyone looking for a funny sex comedy or a saucy Carry On film, you're going to feel horribly disappointed. This is British cinema at the very bottom of the barrel.

Extras on the discs include a few production stills, but that's all.

The whole film is not big and not clever. Oh - and not funny or erotic either. You have been warned!