It's 1947. A young man (Robin Askwith) has just been discharged from the army. He is given the keys to a luxury apartment (for reasons that eluded me), but on his first night there he gets involved with a famous actress (Fiona Richmond) who lives next door and who has just killed a man. He helps her dispose of the body, but he accidentally pockets the man's cigarette lighter, which gets him involved in a whole ridiculous post-war spy plot. But the whole thing is periodically broken up by song-and-dance musical fantasy sequences involving Richmond, usually sans most of her clothing.
These UK sex comedies are a strictly British phenomenon and well before my time, but I've read a couple books about them by Simon Sheridan. Apparently, their primary audience was the same type of guys in raincoats that were attending hardcore porn movies across the pond in America in the 70's (and if you don't know why they were wearing raincoats, you probably don't want to). Anyway, it's amazing to me how these guys could "do their thing" to a movie like this, given how much plot there is to get in the way of the sex scenes and how comparatively tame the said sex scenes are. But I actually kind of like these movies far more than tedious hardcore American stroke-fodder (and certainly more than any modern-day stroke-fodder) because, inept as some of them are, they are at least REAL movies.
Robin Askwith (who I think was separated at birth from Mick Jagger) is mostly famous for the "Confessions of" series, which is much funnier (and sexier) than this movie. Askwith is really playing against type here as an uptight guy who's not particularly successful with women. Like the director's previous effort "Expose" (a VERY different movie), this features both Fiona Richmond and Linda Hayden, but Richmond here has the lead role while Hayden is largely wasted. I find Hayden more attractive than Richmond and there's NO DOUBT she was a far better actress. Richmond isn't bad though--she could certainly pull off this kind of very broad, intentional camp (this is apparently loosely based on a theatrical revue she had been doing). She has a great body (which you get to see a lot of), but with her clothes on she kind of looks like a female impersonator (albeit a very good one). She's better than she was in "Expose" (but "Expose"is a much better movie). I simply don't understand, however, the strange 70's trend of combining softcore/nudie flicks (which appeal to straight men) and musicals (which appeal more to women and gays). Oh, well. I wouldn't personally recommend this, but I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it for themselves either.
