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Confessions of a Sex Maniac
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| Year: |
1974
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Director: |
Alan Birkinshaw
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| Stars: |
Roger Lloyd-Pack, Vicki Hodge, Derek Royle, Stephanie Marrian, Louise Rush, Candy Baker, Ava Cadell, Cheryl Gilham, Carole Hayman, Jeanette Marsden, John Aston, Bobby Sparrow, Zoe Hendry, Monika Ringwald, Glenda Allen, Audrey Frank, Jo Peters
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Sex, Trash |
| Rating: |
  3 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
After a day spent wandering through the idyllic British countryside, architect Henry Milligan (Roger Lloyd-Pack) and his girlfriend Susan (Stephanie Marrian) go back to his flat and one thing leads to another. However, in the middle of their lovemaking, he accidentally calls her Val, the name of his previous girlfriend, and she stops immediately, slaps him, gathers her clothes and leaves, not wishing to see him again and definitely not listening to his lame excuses. But Henry will have more pressing concerns at work, because his boss, Sir Bernard (Derek Royle), has an urgent project for him...
Do you want to see Trigger from Only Fools and Horses naked? Of course you do - oh, no, wait a minute, you don't want to see that at all, do you? In which case you'd be better off avoiding Confessions of a Sex Maniac, one of those British sex comedies of the nineteen-seventies that did so well back then, and are so frowned upon now, quite often by those that participated in them never mind those who go back to watch them. Lloyd-Pack, like so many actors and actresses who got their start in less than proud circumstances, proved himself a talented man after this - he invented the Cybermen, after all - but crucially he didn't prove it during this.
In fact, it very hard to see what the director ever saw in him as he lugubriously mopes his way through the flimsy plot, leading to the conclusion that he was the sole actor available willing to take his clothes off for the camera. He didn't actually play a sex maniac, well, not any more than the other leading men in this type of thing did, but he does get preoccupied with the sexual side of his work, and besides, this was precisely the kind of title to get bums on seats in this decade. As long as the audience knew it was supposed to be funny, then that defused any tension, except that humour was not really the strong suit here.
This was not a part of the Robin Askwith Confessions series, which at least had a few genuine laughs, and led that franchise to add a stamp of authenticity to their credits of the "accept no substitutes" variety. Certainly while Lloyd-Pack could be very funny given the right material, that was not what he was offered here as the storyline concentrated on Henry finding the perfect breast. Why does he need to conduct this investigation? Because he has a job to do, designing a brand new leisure centre and for some bizarre reason after the deadline had been looming for some time he hits upon the bright idea of making the building look like a complete tit, which not so coincidentally is how the leading man looks.
Any excuse for the starlets to get their kit off, naturally, which was the reasoning behind the not-so-amusing central set-up. Henry holds auditions for willing young ladies to doff their tops so he can get a measurement, all the better to work out how his structure should look, although if he could simply make it up out of his own imagination then perhaps he wouldn't come across like such a sex pest. Predictably he ends up bedding a few of these women, but we can see the one who is right for him is the office secretary played by Vicki Hodge (there's only three of them who apparently work there, so it wouldn't be Sir Bernard), yet it takes the whole of the much longer seeming than it should film for him to realise. With not one decent gag in spite of a ridiculous premise, when Henry does settle on a breast you might be wondering if he was actually designing a bungalow. It really is boring. Music by John Shakespeare and Derek Warne.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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