Ooh...You Are Awful

Review by Brian Slade

The conversion of small screen success to movie theatres in the 60s and 70s was a regular occurrence at a time when British film making was not at its best. The likes of On the Buses and Up Pompeii happily battled Bond films with great success, and in the most part it was sitcoms that provided the best return. Sketch comedy wasn’t always successful – even the great Morecambe and Wise failed to find a successful movie formula. But one man whose only big screen outing seemed to garner a slightly more positive reception was Dick Emery, bringing his talents for characterisation to cinemas in 1972 with Ooh…You Are Awful.

The opening credits of Emery’s movie are exactly what one would expect from him. A photographer stopping a variant of Emery’s Mandy, suggests, after a brief exchange about oil painting, that her boyfriend has presumably done her dozens of times…in all kinds of positions. The inevitable pause and grin follow before Mandy belts him one after the immortal line, ‘Ooh, you are awful…but I like you.’

The film itself is based around a criminal who has gone to jail. Charlie Tully (Emery) and his partner in crime, Reggie Peak (Ronald Fraser) have conned a very influential Italian family, the Ferrucis, out of half a million pounds by orchestrating a fake wedding between the eldest Ferruci son and Princess Anne. Charlie doesn’t know when to quit and his next attempt at getting even more money results in his arrest. While Tully is jailed for his crimes, Reggie enjoys the perks of his freedom, including a dalliance with one particular lady that proves to be his downfall. Sid Sabbath, a decidedly dodgy East Ender, is the brother of one of the girls Reggie has been involved with. Sid (Derren Nesbitt) orders the murder of Reggie.

While in jail, Charlie had told Reggie not to reveal details of the Swiss bank account to him due to his tendency to talk in his sleep. When Charlie is released from prison, his reunion with Reggie is cut short by Sid, Reggie meeting his maker before he can let Charlie know the account number and bank name where his stash is held.

In an inventive manner almost certainly not brought to our screens before or since, Reggie had a backup plan – tattooing individual elements of the bank name and account number on the behind of four ladies. What could be simpler for Charlie than tracking down these girls and getting to see their posterior in order to access his money. But as if Charlie’s pursuit of the women is not tricky enough, he has somewhat of a timebomb ticking as members of Sid’s gang are after him, as are some Italian gangsters seeking revenge.

Charlie’s attempts to get to the ladies’ rear ends and piece together the necessary information for his fortune rely on his mastery of disguise, which of course brings Emery to his prime. A variety of guises, male and female, appear as he tries to fool the girls into a variety of positions that will enable him to photo the tattoos they hide. Such things as cutting a hole in a wedding dress and painful police combat training are enough to allow Charlie to get to his targets.

While Mandy and man-mad Hetty make an appearance, as does veteran Lampwick, Emery didn’t rely entirely on knitting together sketches and characters from his successful television show. The storyline, keeping in mind this was the early 1970s, is a bit more imaginative than some of the other British comedy movies of the time. Indeed, film-critic Barry Norman, not renowned for adoration of what would be termed low-brow humour, issued a review that by his standards represented almost gushing praise, remarking that, ‘…certainly it derives from his television persona but it is at least a genuine film – and a very jolly one at that.’ He even found time for crediting the director, suggesting that, ‘…all is directed by Cliff Owen with considerably more imagination than one usually finds in television spin-offs.’

Of course, this being 1972, what was acceptable to a movie audience – let’s face it, TV audience, transplanted briefly to the cinema – is considerably different to what is deemed acceptable now. The very idea that photographing girls’ bottoms without them knowing would have had Mary Whitehouse choking on her bourbons long before we reached today’s world, and it has to be accepted that such a premise is pretty dodgy, even for a film in excess of 50 years old. Emery’s characters remain reflective of his talent, but the film has all the tactlessness and stereotyping that would be the norm in 1970s comedy. It is essentially a Carry On… film in a different wrapper, and with a little more flesh on display, though falling short of the subsequent Confessions of… series.

While not setting the world alight and certainly not having a story that could be tolerated now, Ooh…You Are Awful is very much a snapshot in time. It’s bawdy and rude, but the reflections and images of Britain 50 years ago are somehow quite a distracting pleasure and the whole package reminds us that at his peak, Dick Emery was a huge television star whose material perhaps costs him the nostalgic gratitude that is dished out to some of his peers of the same era.