Sex comedy is a term for comedy movies with sexual content usually referring to those made in the United Kingdom in the mid 1970s. They may range from comic pornographic films like the Confessions series to relatively innocent comedies that include jokes about sex and other sexual related humour, like the Carry On films.
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The precursor to British sex comedies was Norman Wisdom's last starring role, What's Good for the Goose, made in 1969 by Tony Tenser. He specialised in producing exploitation films and founded his own production company Tigon British Film Productions in 1966.[1] In the movie, he leaves his wife and kids to go off on a business trip and has an affair with a young girl played by Sally Geeson[2] There apparently are two versions of the film, one being an uncensored version (105 minutes versus the cut 98 minute version), which shows nudity from Sally Geeson; this version was released in continental Europe.
Percy was directed by Ralph Thomas and starred Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer, and Britt Ekland. The film was followed by a sequel, Percy's Progress. The film is about a successful penis transplant. An innocent and shy young man (Bennett) whose penis is mutilated in an accident and has to be amputated wakes up after an operation to find out that it has been replaced by a womanizer's, which is very large. The rest of the movie is about its new owner following in his predecessor's footsteps and meeting all the women who are able to recognize it.
To move with the times, the Carry On series added nudity to its saucy seaside postcard innuendo. Series producer Peter Rogers saw the George Segal movie Loving and added his two favourite words to the title, making Carry On Loving the twentieth in the series.[3] Starring "countess of cleavage" Imogen Hassall, the story of a dating agency service is still very innocent stuff. It was followed by Carry On Girls, based around a Miss World-style beauty contest. Next in the series was Carry On Dick, with more risque humour and Sid James and Barbara Windsor's on- and off-screen lovemaking.[4]
The Confessions series consisted of four sex comedy films released during the 1970s starring Robin Askwith. The films in the Confessions series—Confessions of a Window Cleaner, Confessions of a Driving Instructor, Confessions of a Pop Performer, and Confessions from a Holiday Camp—concern the erotic adventures of Timothy Lea and are based on the novels of Christopher Wood, writing as Timothy Lea.
Soon came Adventures of..., directed by Stanley Long, including Adventures of a Taxi Driver, starring sitcom star Barry Evans. Long began his career as a photographer before producing striptease shorts (or "glamour home movies", as they were sometimes known), for the 8 mm market. Beginning in the late fifties, Long's feature film career would span the entire history of the British sex film, and as such exemplifies its differing trends and attitudes. His work ranges from coy nudist films (Nudist Memories 1959), to moralizing documentary (The Wife Swappers, 1969) to a more relaxed attitude to permissive material (Naughty, 1971) to out and out comedies at the end of the 1970s. He did not like sex scenes and was dismissive of pornography, saying it didn't turn him on and he turned his back when such scenes were being filmed.[5]
British sex comedy films became mainstream with the release in 1976 of Carry On England, starring Judy Geeson, Patrick Mower, and Diane Langton, in which an experimental mixed-sex anti-aircraft battery in wartime is enjoying making love not war! However, the arrival of the new Captain S. Melly brings an end to their cosy life and causes terror in the ranks....
In Carry On Emmannuelle, the beautiful Emmannuelle Prevert just cannot get her own husband into bed. A spoof of Emmanuelle, the film revolves around the eponymous heroine (Suzanne Danielle) and her unsuccessful attempts to make love to her husband, Emile (Kenneth Williams), a French ambassador. Emile grants Emmannuelle permission to sleep with anyone she likes, and her promiscuity turns her into a celebrity and a frequent talk show guest. Meanwhile, Theodore Valentine is besotted by her and wants them to get married. But Emmannuelle is obsessed with arousing her husband's sexual desire at almost any cost. This was the last of the original Carry Ons and the spirit of the carry on is only just visible. Avoid unless you can not help it.
The redoubtable producer/director Kenneth F. Rowles made a copycat cash-in with his The Ups and Downs of a Handyman[6] His next movie, Take an Easy Ride, purports to be a public information film warning of the dangers of hitchhiking but is actually sexploitation film showing young girls being sexually assaulted and murdered (although Rowles says he had to add those scenes on request of the movie's distributor).[7]
Films like Dreams of Thirteen, The Younger the Better, Geilermanns Töchter - Wenn Mädchen mündig werden, and Come Play With Me played in Soho and elsewhere, but with the arrival of the Margaret Thatcher government in 1979 the Eady Levy was abolished, killing off the genre.
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