Review of Soft Beds, Hard Battles

Introduction

When I reviewed, Waltz of the Toreadors from the Peter Sellers boxset from Carlton, I said that I was glad that my initial assumption that it was a tawdry sex comedy was mistaken. From the same boxset comes Soft Beds, Hard Battles and to my surprise, it turns out to be a tawdry sex comedy. I guess you can`t win them all. However, there is always the chance that despite the label, Soft Beds might turn out to be a funny film. After all, I have been known to snigger at the occasional Carry On film, and done the right way, even a T.S.C could be hilarious.

Soft Beds tells the story of a Parisian brothel during the Second World War, and the part that the prostitutes played in winning it. Madame Grenier and her young ladies find themselves entertaining German officers during the occupation, but due to the overzealous effort of a British intelligence agent, a couple of German officers wind up dead while `enjoying their furloughs` Madame Grenier inadvertently finds herself part of the French resistance movement and her brothel contributing to the demise of the upper echelon of German command. Through this, she plays cat and mouse with the head of the Gestapo in Paris, Herr Schroeder.

Video

The picture is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic ratio. It`s a nice clear picture if a little soft. It looks like a colourful seventies comedy.

Audio

The sound is DD 2.0 mono. I noticed a moment of hiss, but the dialogue is clear enough.

Features

You get a half hour of deleted and alternative scenes. Most of them are scenes with the original Peter Sellers narration and are an improvement on the dodgy American accent used in the feature. There are a few deleted scenes amongst this but by now my interest had waned considerably. While the screen ratio for the extras is anamorphic, it automatically switches to 4:3 and you`ll have to manually select the right mode.

Conclusion

This film just didn`t work for me. For a comedy, the laughs were few and far between, though I must admit I did laugh at the death by flatulence scene. Soft Beds did it before Blazing Saddles. But although there was innuendo galore and many scenes that should have been hilarious, I was left curiously unaffected. A major problem was the voiceover, which intruded at the expense of dialogue and slowed the film right down. But the voiceover is only the least funny thing about this dull morass.

In the best tradition of comedy as exemplified by Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets, or more recently Mike Myers in the Austin Powers movies, Peter Sellers takes not one but six roles in Soft Beds, Hard Battles. As well as Herr Schroeder of the Gestapo, other notable appearances included the British Major Robinson, Japanese Prince Kyoto and Adolf Hitler himself. While Sellers was spot on with his creations, the script did nothing with them, and there was little point to them. It just seemed an exercise in ego massage for Sellers who was at the peak of his fame when this film was made. Five of the characters he creates, including Hitler are insipid and underwritten. They barely sparked on my consciousness before my attention wavered. The only decent character that Sellers creates is Herr Schroeder of the Gestapo, and to be frank, the character is identical to Herr Flick.

And that is the crux of the problem. The whole scenario of Soft Beds, Hard Battles was done infinitely better in the BBC comedy Allo Allo. The wonderful dialogue, the rich characters and lampooning of national stereotypes is so pervasive in my consciousness that all through this film, I was looking for a `Fallen Madonna with the big boobies` or a `Good Moaning`. I would have settled for a `You stupid woman!` Compared to Allo Allo, Soft Beds comes a poor second. This is one for die-hard Peter Sellers fans only.