I found this film on an obscure satellite channel and it does seem something of an unknown given it has fewer than 300 ratings on IMDb. This is a bit of a surprise given the stellar British cast and the writing team of Galton & Simpson who gave us Steptoe & Son and Hancock, starring Will Smith. Having viewed the film however, I am happy to let it resubmerge itself in the canal of mediocrity. It was really dull and apart from a game of ‘it’s that guy out of…’ it doesn’t have much to offer.
Part of that is down to the era in which it was made. Released in 1964 things hadn’t quite started swinging in the sixties yet, and the glory days of the 1970’s sex comedy starring Robin Asquith were still many years away. This one does try to be a bit cheeky and risqué but it gets bogged down in a moral maze and a selection of house coats that are anything but sexy.
Anyway our hero Hemel as played by Harry H. Corbett, is named solely for a weak joke about being born in Hemel Hemstead - this allowed for an obvious zinger about being born somewhere else with an even worse name and this weak gag meant he was stuck with the unlikely moniker for the rest of the film.
Hemel works the canals, slowly transporting goods up and down the country, with his cleverly named cousin Ronnie, played by Ronnie Barker. Where do they get their ideas?! There is a prescient scene at the start where the man at the docks says that the industry is winding down and that a young man like Hemel (Corbett was 39 at the time and looks 50) should get out now. This advice falls on deaf ears as Hemel has a power of shagging to do. Or ‘get some dinners’ as they coyly put it.
He has a girl at every lock and sends postcards ahead to them heralding his visits. All the girls think they are the one and are desperate for the oily rag and bone, er, canal man to marry them. Ronnie is not so lucky and bemoans that he always gets the ugly ones. Mirrors were not in common use until 1965. Hemel’s first date goes wrong when the ‘beautiful girl’ he plans on meeting is in fact an ancient looking bar maid with a massive bouffant. Hemel gets his dinner but when she finds out about his other girls she chases him up the canal as his boat put-puts along at 2 m.p.h.
The long dull stretches of sailing up the canals and navigating locks are made even more dull with their encounters with Eric Sykes who plays an annoying man in a cabin cruiser. He plays the part well; that is to say he is really annoying in every scene he is in.
The film slowly meanders to the main action which involves Hemel getting a girl and Ronnie taking care of her over protective Dad down the pub. After they leave we learn the girl is pregnant and the Dad starts a siege at the lock. Soon the entire occupancy of The garret Club has shown up and our likely lads are nearing the lock on their return journey. Will Hemel come clean and start a new life away from his boats? Or will the new wife add to her general humiliation and set sail with him?
This film started OK but it spluttered to a halt as soon as Eric Sykes hoved into view, and never got back into gear again. The values of the film were all over the shop - I guessed the men were supposed to like Hemel and envy his free and easy life style. As it was he just came across as an unlikeable creep. Barker was poor too as the illiterate cousin who needs the captions on his girlie mags read out to him. His part was wafer thin and you can see why he started to write his own stuff.
The saving grace of the film was in the bit parts with people like Derek Nimmo, Richard Briers, Arthur off ’On the Buses’ and Mr Barraclough all showing up in a variety of stereotype roles.
The pacing of the film was awful with lots of scenes running well beyond their sell by date. The siege at the lock went on for so long that one of the characters had to go for a crap half way through!
At nearly two hours there was probably enough here for a decent one hour TV episode - adverts included. It was a bit of an oddity with a sex crazed deviant having to work against 60’s censorship and ankle length skirts, and failing miserably to offer any titillation whatsoever.
THE Tagline : Don’t touch this with a ten foot bargee pole. 45%
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