"SPANISH FLY" (1976)

Starring

Leslie Phillips

Terry-Thomas

Graham Armitage

Nadiuska

Frank Thornton

Directed by Bob Kellett

82 minutes

For a film that sports one of the most mouth-watering title credits ever – Leslie Phillips v. Terry-Thomas, a showdown of the two biggest cads in the business – Spanish Fly is a little film that seems to have slipped quietly into oblivion. Though it apparently received quite a publicity campaign at the time, with car-stickers, specially branded bottles of wine, and an LP release of the title song "Fly Me" by Geraldine (a tune that manages, despite itself, to be insanely catchy) all being churned out to mark its theatrical run, Spanish Fly quickly garnered mixed reactions and disappeared off the face of the Earth. A few years ago it quietly turned up in the DVD schedules courtesy of Momentum Pictures, and it is through this over-saturated fullscreen version that we can sit back and finally have a gander at this titanic powerhouse of vintage caddery…if that is indeed what it is. Ahem.

It’s not a very popular film. For a start, hardly anybody has ever seen it. Only 23 people have given it any votes at all over at IMDB. And with even that paltry number, it still hasn’t achieved more than an overall 4/10 rating (though four of the voters appear to have awarded it 10/10, which seems a trifle OTT). The problem is that Spanish Fly is one of those cheap and cheerful saucy sex comedies that were in vogue throughout the 70s, but which often get panned now in the Daily Mail TV guide. Like most sex comedies, it lacks a certain elegant touch – the script is better than most of its like, but there are quite a few "Getting it up!" jokes scattered throughout the running time. I’ve also got a sneaking suspicion that if it were headed by Leslie Phillips alone, it would have had little to recommend it even at the time it was made, never mind now – I adore Phillips, but at this point in his career he really was the single bright spot in a series of dire films, with your opinions being torn between his naughty but nice and highly entertaining performance and the sheer bilge through which he was made to walk through (Don’t Just Lie There, Say Something being a typical example – which also featured a one Katy Manning). However, the fact that the overwhelming class of Terry-Thomas graces the film as well raises it by quite a few notches, being, at the very least, somebody for Phillips to talk to and spar with. Now, I’m not going to declare that Spanish Fly is one of the best comedies ever made – it certainly has its faults. But I do think it’s unfairly neglected, and it’s a jolly fun little feature to boot.

We open slam bang with a bit of the old Terry-Thomas, chatting with an overzealous foreign sort with big specs. Even when confronted with such a dire bit part actor over-enunciating every single one of his lines, T-T can’t help but come out of things unscathed, managing to grab a laugh in his first scene simply by looking unsure of the chap he’s talking to. It takes some doing to be able to scorn your co-actors whilst still remaining in character, but T-T manages it, and top marks to him for doing so. Thankfully, said initial comedy foreigner (and believe me, there’s a lot of comedy foreigners popping up throughout this film) trots up some stairs muttering some I’m-Spanish-but-pretending-to-be-English-ha-ha-old-boy-wot-ho malarkey, and doesn’t crop up again for another eighty minutes.

T-T and his chauffeur / manservant Perkins stop by at a nice little Spanish bar (they’re in Spain, you know) and have a bit of a chat. Apparently, T-T’s going broke, and may have to sell off all of his luxurious trappings if he can’t get things back together again before every bank in Europe starts knocking at his door. Fortunately, he’s got a plan – purchase the local wine cheaply, rebottle it, give it a fancy French name, and sell it on to a "rich silly sucker" (yes, that is a Terry-Thomas line) for an extortionate price. The crafty devil.

Cut to Leslie Phillips complaining of impotence whilst being given a medical by none other than Frank Are You Being Served? Thornton, who tells him that "twice a week is enough for a man of your age!" Phillips replies that he can’t even manage "twice a month" and his wife, Janet (played by Sue Lloyd), is getting restless. Thornton laughs at this like the tactful soul that he is, before going on to talk about "sexy undies" and seemingly advising him to have an affair instead (?). Now there’s an interesting prescription. Phillips, y’see, works with his wife in the fashion industry – she designs lingerie, and he goes off to oversee the modelling, so often finds himself surrounded by beautiful and attractive young women. He’s going off on another trip soon, as it happens – and, as it also happens, he’s going to a hot, tropical holiday resort! Can we guess what’s going to happen here, children?

That’s right; Phillips goes to France.

Actually, no, he does go to Spain. But I had you going there. Meanwhile, back at the Spanish bar, T-T’s attempts at palming off some of the dodgy wine to the bartender result in what is perhaps one of the funniest moments of his film career. It’s hard to convey the sheer impact of it in writing, but; T-T sips the wine, under the scrutiny of his potential buyer, and within seconds his face has begun to slowly contort into one of the most horrified and pained expressions you’re ever likely to see, yet he’s desperately trying to suppress it. "Good God!" he chokes, before adding "That’s good," with an utter lack of conviction and eyes as shifty as a spaniel with shades. It’s truly rather wonderful.

At the same time, Perkins is being chased out of a neighbouring bar, obviously having offended the landlord with the same vintage of wine. A thrown bottle results in a passing car grinding to a halt, and out from the car steps Phillips, his wishy-washy comedy foreigner photographer, and the four models. Coincidence? Why yes, yes it is. Phillips and T-T recognise each other from school, apparently, and spend a while good-naturedly demeaning one another in front of the pretty ladies. Terry attempts to get everybody to drink his wine, but everybody hates it – particularly Julie, one of the models, who spits it out, retching "Urgh, cat’s piss!" "Cat’s piss…" T-T replies some moments later, "She must have been to a very expensive school." In any case, he realises that he’s going to have to do something with the wine to make it a bit more palatable, and sets Perkins that very task. And so it is that the addition of certain leaves and a strange type of green insect (the Spanish Fly of the title, which is also the name given to the wine itself) give the plonk that extra kick in ways unforeseen… Have you ever wanted to see Terry-Thomas wandering about Spanish locales flogging off aphrodisiac wine? Well watch this film and be grateful for the wonders of DVD, y’hear?

And so the film continues, with two seemingly unconnected plotlines – Terry-Thomas and his wine-brewing, and Leslie Phillips with his model cavorting – which eventually get intertwined, though it takes far longer than you might think. There’s still a fair bit of T-T/LP interplay, particularly when T-T decides to invite the photoshoot round to his place for a meal and some wine tasting, which predictably ends up in some nudge-nudge, wink-wink antics back at Phillips’s hotel (and Terry asks Perkins to get his camera and take pictures of it – um, quite). But the wine production shenanigans don’t begin until 60 minutes into the film, and by then the whole thing has begun to fall apart at the seams. But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

It’s been suggested that both of the leads are looking rather tired and past their prime in this feature. I would agree with that assessment for Phillips to a certain extent – though he gets a good look in, he was beginning to show his age at this point in his career, and seeing him play the sex-mad gent, with lots of twenty-something glamorous females falling over themselves to have it away with him, was beginning to look a bit ludicrous. I hope this doesn’t sound like too much of a slight against Phillips himself – after all, he still tries his best with some rather lacklustre material ("There’s something irresistibly sexy about underwear…" - Gosh, really?) – but it starts to suspend disbelief a bit. He does also seem a bit bored by the proceedings too, compared to his performances whilst dealing with similar material in movies like Doctor in Trouble some six years earlier. It doesn’t help that most of the funny lines are given to T-T, though he does get some good’uns too – upon realising that there’s nobody to carry his luggage for him at the hotel, he dryly ruminates "Bet the porter’s gone on holiday… bet he’s gone to Brighton." And there’s a delightful moment of incomprehension when chatting to the wet-behind-the-ears photographer, who says "I never deceive my mother!" "Really?" "I tell her everything!" "Incredible." But for the most part, he’s not given a hell of a lot to do. It’s little wonder that Spanish Fly ended up being the last film he made for some eleven years, by which time he’d managed to successfully shake off his wolfish cinema persona image.

But then we come to Terry-Thomas. Despite Spanish Fly being made in the twilight years of his career, when Parkinson’s disease was beginning to gain a stronger grip on him, Terry’s performance is fantastic, and there’s nary a sight of his reported ill health on screen. The fact that he’s playing it in a far more relaxed manner than in, for instance, his 50s and 60s comedy roles in things like Too Many Crooks and The Naked Truth, means that, rather than rushing about all over the place and pulling increasingly alarming facial expressions, he relies far more on wringing out every ounce of tired resignation, sardonic disdain and boisterous proclamations of how damned good it is to be English out of the script, and turns what might otherwise be a collection of OK lines into comedy gold. Though he’s required to do the occasional leering at busty beauties – an aspect of his typical characterisation that’s often played down in other films, despite popular opinion to the contrary (he rarely, if ever, plays lotharios – he’s usually just a comedy Englishman) – this doesn’t really detract from his otherwise stiff-upper-lipped Brit portrayal of Sir Percy de Courcy, who spends the majority of the film far more interested in his gin-and-tonics than in the lovely ladies. The moment that Perkins has to explain a disastrous calamity whilst they sit onboard their private yacht has me in stitches – "Run out of tonic?!" His following assertion "Do you realise that gin and tonic is the cornerstone of the British Empire?" is pure Terry-Thomas top-notchness (a plot point has him setting off flares to attract emergency attention from the mainland so that they can go out and get asked "Haven’t got any tonic, have you?"), and his series of grumbles – "What do you put in gin if you haven’t got any tonic?… More gin I suppose…" always get a giggle. His blackmailing of Phillips is great, too – handing over various photos of Leslie with a bevy of beauties, he innocuously asks "How’s Janet, by the way?" He’s the chap who provides the feature with its laugh-out-loud moments, and makes everything feel somehow more innocent than it has any right to be. "You’re an absolute shower!" indeed.

Rounding up the cast we have Graham Armitage (who looks astoundingly like Sam "Bunny Warren in Porridge" Kelly) as Perkins, who manages to be a bit smashing too – after all, he’s got the plum part of the weary English butler type, and they’re always decent roles to get your teeth into. Despite having to play opposite Terry-Thomas for the majority of the film, he manages to snatch some priceless comedic moments for himself, notably in the "Spanish fly research" scenes, involving a minute quantity of wine, a couple of fleas, and a magnifying glass ("You’ve killed them, sir!") However, that’s as far as it goes for acting talent, really. Sue Lloyd is all right as Phillips’s wife but gets about ten minutes of screen time, and Ramiro Oliveros as Juan the photographer is merely serviceable. It doesn’t help that most of the other characters aren’t played by actors – the models are, well, models, and I’ve got a feeling that most of the Spanish citizens are… Spanish citizens. In particular there’s one fiendishly annoying woman playing the barkeep’s large and erratic wife, who seemingly spends all of her time throwing her head back, screaming, and waving her hands about in the air like an epileptic hippo on holiday. The whole "Aren’t foreigners funny?" angle is a bit wearying, especially one moment when the sea-rescue brigade sets out to answer a distress signal, and attempt to row their boat away from the port whilst it’s still tied to the moor. See? Hilarity!

If there’s one thing that’s lopsided about this film, it’s the direction. The name Bob Kellett probably doesn’t mean much to you – it certainly didn’t for me. However, researching the man on IMDB reveals that he was the chap behind such disasters as Don’t Just Lie There, Say Something, the Are You Being Served? movie, and Frankie Howerd’s Up… trilogy. Spanish Fly is another film that doesn’t benefit from his lacklustre direction, and is actually marred by it. Around the 52 minute mark, when T-T finds Phillips to blackmail him into purchasing some cases of plonk, it seems as though the makers had realised that they’d run out of scenes to get the film out to its required length, and so Kellett’s solution was to bung in approximately fifteen minutes of extraneous material. We’ve already had one model shoot so far, which was amiable enough, but there’s another similar sequence, interspliced with shots of Terry and Perkins walking up and down lots of steps, which seems to go on forever, with the girls dancing about to a rock version of the Spanish Fly signature tune. Ironically, such scenes are the only ones in which Kellett seems to feel inspired to actually move the camera, getting a fair few hand-held shots and zooms in there, but why bother when its in a scene that has nothing to do with anything anyway? Shortly afterwards, we get a massive four and a half minute wine production sequence, with interminable shots of local Spanish children running around fields collecting the Spanish fly insects, and as if that wasn’t bad enough we then have to sit through lots of scenes of randy locals enjoying the wine at the bar a few minutes later (apparently we’re meant to believe that Spain only has one bar along is entire coastline). Terry-Thomas all but disappears from the film, and we’re subjected to some truly atrocious dubbing as well – one of the side effects of Spanish Fly is that it constricts the throat, for some reason making everybody bark like a dog. One shot of two real dogs apparently speaking in English is particularly dismal and makes you want to throw sharp objects at the screen.

There’s also a fair bit of topless nudity on show throughout, there mainly to knock the censor certificate up a bit on initial release, and, of course, it’s pure cheap titillation. Not that there’s anything wrong with cheap titillation, I might add – breasts are rather nice things, really, in my humble opinion (sorry to shock you there). But if having Leslie Phillips giving a backrub to a topless bird in the shower doesn’t raise your eyebrows a bit, having grand old T-T himself reacting to a naked woman onboard his boat certainly will. It just feels wrong somehow, and the "Absolutely splendid!" remarks come off as purely lecherous, rather than funny. It rather works against the "naughty but fun" feel of the film as a whole, though the other Kellett directorial productions listed above all feature shots of this nature anyway, so its probably his trademark or something. The tone of the film is unbalanced, with the story, the direction, and the presence of the lead actors all conflicting to a varying extent throughout. It’s unfortunate that Phillips’s adultery here is passed off as funny and natural, though the same could be said of the majority of the comedies of this sexually permissible period, which often presented the subject as something to be giggled and smirked at. I’m probably just being tedious, but I’d rather prefer to see the unattached, flirty Phillips characterisation of earlier times than a Phillips apparently married but content to do the dirty with various other females he hardly knows (though the wife herself seems pleased with the fact that he can do that sort of thing at all, so what do I know?) The film could easily be accused of being sexist with its copious amount of female flesh and dim attractive girls, but then again most of the males are shown as being sex mad fools as well, so it probably works both ways.

Time to wrap this review up, I think – I’m banged on about this pretty inoffensive comedy far more than I thought I would. Despite my criticisms, I still stand by my affirmation that Spanish Fly is a good little film if you’re in the right mood for it. It’s carefree and fun, and Terry-Thomas is sublime, so it’s well worth a viewing if only for him. But it has to be said that the lead billing is distinctly let down by the nature of the material surrounding them, and that a Leslie Phillips v. Terry-Thomas confrontation should have been so much more.

"I know what we’ll do, Perkins. Row to the horizon, and then turn right."

Score out of Ten