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For Men Only
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| Year: |
1967
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Director: |
Pete Walker
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| Stars: |
David Kernan, Andrea Allan, Derek Aylward, Tom Gill, Neville Whiting, Mae Bacon, Glyn Worsnip, Joan Ingham, John Cabazon, Apple Brook, Gladys Dawson, Monika Dietrich, Britt Hampshire, Jill Field, Monica Hahn, Donna Reading, Valerie Stanton, Jackie Poole
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Trash |
| Rating: |
  3 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Freddie Horne (David Kernan) is a journalist for the fashion magazine Women's Vogue, where he has the opportunity to attend various catwalk shows to write them up for his editor. However, it looks as if his fun mingling with lovely ladies is about to come to an end, as he is going to be transferred to another publication, for the new owners of the publishers he works for have a more puritan bent than what he has appreciated up till now. To complicate matters, his posh fiancée Rosalie (Andrea Allan) wants him to spend the time he is meant to be at an interview with his new boss with her parents - can he juggle those two commitments, or will it end in tears?
If it does, they certainly won't be tears of laughter in this decidedly tepid sex comedy featuring no sex, for director Pete Walker couldn't get away with that in 1967. Compare this to what was happening in the movie industry just two or three years later and the difference was striking; sure, there had been British versions of the nudist camp movies that were so bland damn few censors could find a reason to ban them, but this wasn't one of those, and any nudity here was reserved for extremely long shots of girls in the distance, or that old favourite of the era, the topless girl with her back to the camera so you don't actually see anything and it's all left to your fevered imagination.
That said, everyone has to start somewhere, and for Pete Walker this was his first foray into the world of feature film direction. He had already mixed with advertising and so-called nudie cuties, one or two reels of sauciness for the private collectors' market, but this was an attempt to get into more respectable cinemas with a distinct lack of respectability that would fast become his stock in trade. Walker always said he was happy to be making films as long as he could create mischief with them, and he would undoubtedly do so once the seventies dawned with his line of curiously contemporary British horrors, making him one of the few auteurs to hail from there in that particular genre.
Back in the mid-to-late sixties, on the other hand, he was simply looking to make a fast buck, and assembling a bunch of nubile young women in bikinis was the best way to do that - this didn't even merit an X certificate such was its coyness. It did feature a Walker trait in its nascent form, however, the pricking of pomposity, especially that of the authorities', so we see Freddie's new boss giving a priggish talk to the Women's Institute about morality, then quickly find out he may publish these morally improving journals, but he really makes his fortune with his men's magazines, and neither the world of religious tenets nor pornography know he has a foot in both camps. Not much of a joke, then, but at barely under three quarters of an hour (or slightly longer in the rougher American version) it wasn't much of a movie. With not one element to arrest the sensibilities now, aside from an iffy gay stereotype maybe, the appeal was limited at best, unless you wanted to see attractively coloured imagery of sixties Britain. Music by Harry South.
Aka: I Like Birds
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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