Displaying items by tag: Up the Chastity Belt movie

UP THE CHASTITY BELT

UK, 1972, 94 minutes, Colour.

Frankie Howerd, David Kernan, Nora Swinburne, Godfrey Winn, Bill Fraser, Anna Quayle, Graham Crowden, Anne Aston.

Directed by Bob Kellett.

Slapstick in the Middle Ages.

Frankie Howerd was a popular comedian on television and in cinema in the 1960s into the 1980s. His best known series was U[ Pompeii which led to a film of the same name, directed by Bob Kellett who also directed this film and a variation on the Up theme, World War I, Up The Front.

This film was much more lively than the other two Up pictures, the Middle Ages offering a greater variety for stories – medieval life amongst the aristocracy, amongst the poor, the crusades, Robin Hood…

Frankie Howerd actually has the opportunity to act as two characters here, twins, one, Richard the Lionheart, the other, Lurkalot, brought up amongst the pigs and acting as a servant in the Castle of the Sir Coardy Custard (later to be challenged by Sir de Bombast). And, various names accordingly.

It also offers Frankie Howerd the opportunity to take on a number of impersonations throughout the film including participating in a joust, disguising himself as a female, wandering from Europe to the Middle East, discovering that the Crusaders were being hosted by Saladdin who was creating a harem for them. (Some of the jokes seem particularly sexist now, some racist.)

Of course, Frankie Howerd is continually talking to the audience, straight to camera, commenting on the film and its progress and what is suitable or not. There is a surprise at the end when the screenplay turns Robin Hood and his merry men, including Friar tuck, into a very gay troop.

For Howerd fans to enjoy – and a reminder of some of the trends in British comedy, especially at the end of the 1960s, becoming more open, explicit and permissive into the 1970s.