| Entertaining Mr Sloane | |
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Original poster |
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| Directed by | Douglas Hickox |
| Produced by | Douglas Kentish |
| Written by | Joe Orton (play) Clive Exton (screenplay) |
| Starring | Beryl Reid Harry Andrews Peter McEnery Alan Webb |
| Music by | Georgie Fame |
| Cinematography | Wolfgang Suschitzky |
| Editing by | John Trumper |
| Distributed by | Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors Ltd. |
| Release date(s) | 27 July 1970 (USA) |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Entertaining Mr Sloane is a 1970 black comedy film directed by Douglas Hickox. The screenplay by Clive Exton is based on the 1964 play of the same title by Joe Orton. This was the second adaptation of the play, the first having been developed for British television and telecast by ITV on July 15, 1968.[1]
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Murder, homosexuality, nymphomania, and sadism are among the themes of this black comedy focusing on a brother and sister who become involved with a young, sexy, amoral drifter with a mysterious past.
Kath is a lonely middle-aged woman living in the London suburbs with her ageing father Kemp, referred to as Da Da or the Da Da. When she meets the attractive Sloane sunbathing on a tombstone in the cemetery near her home, she invites him to become a lodger. Soon after he accepts her offer, Kath seduces him. Her closeted brother Ed makes him the chauffeur (complete with a titillating tight leather uniform) of his pink 1959 Pontiac Parisienne convertible. Kemp, recognizing Sloane as the man who killed his boss years before, stabs him in the leg with a gardening tool.
Sloane takes delight in playing brother against sister and tormenting the elderly man. He gets Kath pregnant and a jealous Ed warns him to stay away from her. When Sloane murders Kemp to protect his secret, they blackmail him by threatening to report him to the police unless he agrees to participate in a ménage à trois in which he becomes not only a sexual partner but their prisoner as well.
The film was shot on location in Brockley, East Dulwich, and the Camberwell Old Cemetery in Honor Oak.
The theme song was sung by Georgie Fame. Fame released it as the B-side of his 1970 single "Somebody Stole My Thunder".
Roger Greenspun of The New York Times observed, "I think that the play's real interest lies precisely in its grotesque avoidance of the depths with which the movie is so vividly familiar. But in most of its particulars the film succeeds—with a superb cast, Douglas Hickox's inventive and generally restrained direction, and a screenplay by Clive Exton that . . . opens up the action mainly to enlarge the characterization of Ed, a real virtue if only for allowing more time and scope to the wonderful Harry Andrews. To a degree the drama has been realized on film . . . and this seems worth the effort and the occasional misdirections, and the nervous discomfort that is likely to be an audience's most immediate response."[2]
Time Out thought the original play "loses much of its savoury charm in this movie version. Clive Exton's script opens out the play conventionally, to little effect, and Hickox's direction shows little flair for farce in general or Orton in particular."[3]
The film was released on DVD by Cinema Club on June 20, 2005.
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