The Love Pill (1971)

User Rating:

3.7/10   

Director:

Ken Turner

Writers:

Laurence Barnett (screenplay)
Jesner (screenplay)

Release Date:

11 July 1975 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

A man discovers a candy can also be used as an aphrodisiac--and a contraceptive. |

Plot Keywords:

Candy | Television Commercial | Small Town | Contraception | Sex

Cast

Henry Woolf	...	Libido
Toni Sinclair	...	Sylvia
David Pugh	...	Arnold
Mel Churcher	...	Linda (as Melinda Churcher)
Kenneth Waller	...	Professor Edwards
John Stratton	...	Newsreader
Tilly Tremayne	...	Mary Tighthouse
Jackie Andrews	...	Lady Feellitt (as Jacqueline Andrews)

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:18 (video rating) | UK:X (original rating) | USA:X (self applied) | USA:R

Filming Locations:

London, England, UK

Company:

Mayfair Film Productions Ltd.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Twisted Sex Vol. 16 (1996) (V)

From the maker of 'Jolly Hockey Sticks' and 'Girl Guide Rape'

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

SPOILERS INCLUDED

The Love Pill was the first film produced by the double act of John Lindsay and Laurence Barnett. The pair had previously worked together on Derek Ford's The Wife Swappers, Barnett was a boom swinger on the film, while former photographer Lindsay worked as the film's stills man, even earning an acting role in the film, albeit by accident, due to walking into frame whilst taking snapshots of a staged abduction on Westminster Bridge. In between softcore work on The Wife Swappers and The Love Pill, Lindsay had begun shooting numerous hardcore loops and would achieve infamy for directing literally hundreds of 'blue movies' throughout the Seventies and early Eighties (some representative titles include: Convent of Sin, Jolly Hockey Sticks, Schoolgirl Seduction and Girl Guide Rape). Ultimately Barnett's aspirations of graduating from lowly boom man to sex film mogul, and Blue movie man Lindsay's flirtations with softcore comedies lasted for just three films, this, 1975's I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight and that long lost London After Midnight of British sex films, The Hot Girls made in 1974.

The Love Pill opens in the formerly sedate village of Bodley whose female inhabitants have been mysteriously transformed into nymphomaniacs. Soon Bodley's male inhabitants have to contend with women young and old climbing up their legs, even the males who are less than blessed with matinee idol looks like Arnold Crudley (picture Ronnie Corbett's taller, older brother). Crudley's father is in fact responsible for the outbreak of sex mania by producing pom-pom like 'aphrodisiac sweets' from his shop. He's managed to keep his invention low profile by only selling the sweets to married couples. After the elder Crudley and a scientist researching the phenomena are both mistakenly shot by a near blind huntsman, young Arnold leaves the town with the sweets to seek his fortune in London. The fish out of water is easily shocked by the permissive attitude of 1970's London, represented by topless waitresses and the late scientist's female assistant Linda who's liberated enough to share a flat with Arnold and walk around it naked which has the country boy cowering in fear.

Showing almost as much naivety as Arnold, Jenny offers the chance to market the sweet to Mr Libido, a cartoonish con-man complete with pencil thin spiv moustache. After Libido's first advert for the sweets flops, he decides to shoot a second raunchier advert whose punch-line has Arnold being dragged into a bi-sexual threesome. As 'sex sells', the sweets rechristened 'Libido specials' are soon flying off the shelves. Good news for women who after one sweet can get to act as sexual as they want to be, and as the sweet is also part contraceptive don't have to fear pregnancy. It's however bad news for tired out men folk, since Crudley's invention turns out to be, to quote from the film's cheap, pink coloured poster, `The sweet that started the Rape of Mankind!'.

Opening with a blonde stripping off, then wrestling a helpless male into the bushes Love Pill offers some gender reversing tweaks on the sex comedy genre, even anticipating the 1990's spectacle of a female audience behaving as staggishly as their male counterparts in strip-clubs. As a comedy though this is fairly weak tea, aimlessly drifting from one unfunny sketch to the next, because the plot is paper thin Barnett and Lindsay pad the film out with some rather pointless parodies of popular TV ads of the day. The Heinz Baked Beans jingle gets a makeover here as 'a million housewives everyday, open a bottle of pills today'. While the famous tobacco advert with the 70's man about town who needs a bodyguard to fend off female admirers- sent up with more success in The Goodies' Kitten Kong- also receives the leg-pull treatment. Given that the comedy isn't too hot maybe more nudity could have saved the day but the big surprise is how tame the film is, to the degree that you'd never guess Britain's most notorious pornographer was one of the brains behind it. The only evidence of Lindsay's mischievous handy-work comes with the appearance of a Mary Whitehouse proxy being turned from moral reformer to sex maniac on national television. Another disappointment is that while some fun can be had in 'I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight' by spotting the comedy regulars who owed director Joe McGrath a favour, or Lindsay's blue movie discoveries doubling as nude extras, here the supporting cast are all unknowns.

The Love Pill is distinguished only by silly scenes of men being grabbed off London streets by over lustful women and the exaggerated ugly features of the male characters, most of who seem to sport buck teeth, coke bottle glasses and country bumpkin accents. Tying to find any entertainment value in The Love Pill however is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Needless to say Lindsay's decision to turn his back on mainstream sex comedies and return to the under the counter world of hardcore loops soon after seems a wise career move, even though they threw him in jail for it in the end.