The Misadventures of Mr. Wilt (1989)

An unlucky lecturer's wife goes missing and he's accused of her murder.

Director:

Michael Tuchner

Writers:

Tom Sharpe (novel), Andrew Marshall (screenplay adaptation)

Stars:

Griff Rhys Jones, Mel Smith, Alison Steadman

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Griff Rhys Jones	...	Henry Wilt
Mel Smith	...	Inspector Flint
Alison Steadman	...	Eva Wilt
Diana Quick	...	Sally
Jeremy Clyde	...	Hugh
Roger Allam	...	Dave
David Ryall	...	Rev. Froude
Roger Lloyd Pack	...	Dr. Pittman
Dermot Crowley	...	Braintree
John Normington	...	Treadaway
Tony Mathews	...	Gladden
Charles Lawson	...	Cranham
Gabrielle Blunt	...	Mrs. Bulstrode
Edward Clayton	...	Mossop
Jeffrey Chiswick	...	Macari (as Geoffrey Chiswick)

Storyline

Henry Wilt is a more or less failure of a teacher who fantasizes about murdering his dominant, non-attentive wife Eva. At a party Wilt is stuck to an inflatable doll and makes a complete fool of himself. Eventually, he dumps the doll in a hole at a building site. However, he has been witnessed getting rid of the doll and when his wife disappears on the night after the party, the police with inspector Flint strongly suspect Wilt of being guilty.

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Plot Keywords:

inflatable doll | based on novel | independent film | 

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Taglines:

An inflatable love story!

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 November 1989 (UK)

Also Known As:

The Misadventures of Mr. Wilt

Filming Locations:

Middlesex Polytechnic, Bounds Green, London, England, UK

Box Office

Gross USA:

$113,014

Company Credits

Production Co:

Rank Organisation, London Weekend Television (LWT), Picture Partnership

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Did You Know?

Trivia

Wilt was the first in a loose series of satirical novels featuring the character Henry Wilt written by Tom Sharpe; the others in the series were The Wilt Alternative, Wilt On High, Wilt in Nowhere and the Wilt Inheritance.

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Goofs

When Henry crashes into the phone box both his headlights are clearly intact and there is no serious damage to the panel work. This is also true when he drives off. Shortly after, we see his car has a broken headlight and severe panel damage.

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Quotes

Eva Wilt: [reads from the Bible on the lectern] "Beauty in a woman without good judgement is like a gold ring in the snout of a swine."

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Alternate Versions

A near identical version exists for TV broadcast that replaces all the strong profanity (such as the F word) with milder swear words such as 'bloody'. Closer examination shows that these scenes do not appear dubbed indicating that during filming some scenes were specially filmed again using the milder language. This version was broadcast on ITV in the UK in the 1990s and as this film was co-financed by an ITV network (LWT) this would appear to indicate that these changes were planned well in advance with television screenings in mind.

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Soundtracks

Love Hurts
Written by Felice Bryant and Boudleaux Bryant
Performed by Leo Sayer
Produced by Anne Dudley and Ted Hayton for Buffalo Music Ltd.
Published by Acuff-Rose Opryland Music Ltd.

User Reviews

Too family-friendly

I was looking forward to this film, because I'm a big fan of Tom Sharpe's novels. At the same time I was rather apprehensive as well. This is a comedy, and comedy movies are made these days with a family audience in mind. Tom Sharpe's novel Wilt certainly does not fit into this bracket and so I expected some dreaded compromises.

Inevitably, they came. Of course, the film still has a US R-rating and a UK 15 rating, but this has more to do with the intrinsic adult nature of the basic material than with the film makers' attempts to preserve the spirit of the novel. The whole thing still felt much too sanitised, too toned down, too understated. Part of the problem might have been that filming faithfully the original story would have made some middle-aged established actors and actresses occasionally prance around in the buff, simulate drug abuse, and molest each other, but the story really needed a higher dosage of excessiveness.