| Confessions of a Window Cleaner | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Val Guest |
| Produced by | Norman Cohen Michael Klinger Greg Smith |
| Written by | Val Guest Christopher Wood |
| Starring | Robin Askwith Antony Booth Linda Hayden Sheila White Dandy Nichols Bill Maynard |
| Music by | Sam Sklair |
| Cinematography | Norman Warwick |
| Editing by | Bill Lenny |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 8 November 1974 |
| Running time | 90 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £150,000 [1] |
Confessions of a Window Cleaner is a 1974 British sex comedy film, directed by Val Guest.[2]
Like the other films in the Confessions series; Confessions of a Pop Performer, Confessions of a Driving Instructor and Confessions from a Holiday Camp, it concerns the erotic adventures of Timothy Lea, based on the novels written under that name by Christopher Wood. Each film features Robin Askwith and Antony Booth.
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Like many British sex comedies of the 1970s the narrative involves a male protagonist who gets into compromising situations with a succession of women.[3] The optimistic and inept Timothy Lea is freshly employed by his brother-in-law Sid as a window cleaner. With Sid an impending father to be, he looks to Timmy to fully 'satisfy' his customers, little realising that Timmy's accident prone ways often stretch to his sex life with his clients. Timmy bed hops from unsatisfied housewives to even a lesbian love tryst, all the while with his main eye on successful police woman, Elizabeth Radlett, who will have none of Timmy's sexual advances. He proposes as a result, much to his family's upset, unaware that Timmy's usual run of luck will effect the outcome!
It has been called, "perhaps the best known and most successful British sex film" of the era, and was the top-grossing British film of 1974.[3] As well as its sequels in the Confessions series it spawned another unrelated series of films which began with Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1975).[3] The film made Robin Askwith a star in the UK.[3] When the films were originally released they were regarded as very risqué and essentially soft core pornography, owing to the amount of nudity involved - generally female, with Robin Askwith being the only male shown naked. However the sex scenes themselves are more suggestive than explicit, being essentially played for laughs. Nonetheless, it was not until 1997 that Channel 5 became the first British terrestrial channel to show the entire series of Confessions films. At this time the Daily Mail newspaper was very critical of the sexual content of Channel 5's late night schedule, referring to Channel 5 as Channel Filth and the Confessions series as "Films from the darkest days of British cinema".
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