Entertaining Mr Sloane ***½ (1970, Beryl Reid, Harry Andrews, Peter McEnery, Alan Webb) – Classic Movie Review 2970

The provocative 1970 British gothic black comedy film Entertaining Mr Sloane brings Joe Orton’s wonderfully entertaining stage play to the screen with incisive performances but its wit slightly blunted.

Director Douglas Hickox’s provocative 1970 British gothic black comedy film Entertaining Mr Sloane brings Joe Orton’s wonderfully entertaining stage play to the screen alas with its wit slightly blunted, but fortunately not the power of the incisive performances.

Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews star as the grotesque, aging English nymphomaniac suburbanite Kath (Reid) and her roué bachelor brother Ed (Andrews). They are the main motors of the plot as the mad competitors for the sexual services and eventually the hand in marriage of their handsome but nasty libidinous young lodger Mr Sloane (Peter McEnery).

While busy manipulating Kath and her brother, Sloane is recognised by their grubby old father Kemp ‘Dadda’ (Alan Webb) as the murderer of Kemp’s former employer. So Sloane bumps off Kemp.

Reid and Andrews give treasurable performances in the main roles, brilliantly sustaining the inevitably talky piece on screen. Hickox’s rather uncinematic and unimaginative direction and Clive Exton’s somewhat hesitant screenplay adaptation for the stage-to-screen transfer are the slight minuses.

But it’s still a very funny, outrageous entertainment, desperately callous and pretty shocking even now. It shows what a good job they have made of it, if you just imagine that it could have turned out like the awful film of a similar kind of play of the era, Staircase (1969).

Naturally, it is grown-up entertainment for adults, of course.

Orton’s Loot was also filmed in 1970 and his life explored in the book and the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears.

Studio Canal releases a new restoration of Entertaining Mr Sloane and Loot on 28 August 2017.

English playwright Joe Orton’s three-act play Entertaining Mr Sloane was written in 1963 and first produced in London at the New Arts Theatre on 6 May 1964, transferring to the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End on 29 June 1964 with financial support from Terence Rattigan. It was directed by Patrick Dromgoole and starred Madge Ryan as Kath, Dudley Sutton as Sloane, Charles Lamb as Kemp, and Peter Vaughan as Ed. The original Broadway production opened at New York’s Lyceum Theatre on 12 October 1965 and ran only 13 performances. It starred Sheila Hancock as Kath, Dudley Sutton as Sloane, Lee Montague as Ed, and George Turner as Kemp.

Andrews’s car is a Pontiac Parisienne formerly owned by Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and sprayed pink for the film.

The film was shot at Intertel Studios in Wembley and on location at Brockley, at East Dulwich, south London, and at the lodge in Camberwell Old Cemetery in Honor Oak.

The crew asked to use a house at Marmora Road opposite the cemetery in the film for dressing rooms. But Reid allegedly saw it as ‘lowering herself’ and a caravan had to be hired for her and parked in the street outside.

The theme song is sung by Georgie Fame, released as the B-side of his 1970 single ‘Somebody Stole My Thunder’.

The Royal World Premiere was attended by Princess Margaret on 1 April 1970 at the Carlton Cinema in London.

Harry Andrews died at the age of 77 on 6 March 1989, at his home in Salehurst, leaving behind his long-term friend and romantic partner, actor Basil Hoskins.

Peter McEnery (born 21 February 1940) was also notably featured in the 1961 film Victim, as Barrett, a young working-class gay man who is blackmailed after he and a barrister (Dirk Bogarde) are photographed in an intimate embrace. On the other hand, McEnery gave Hayley Mills her first grown-up screen kiss in the 1964 film The Moon-Spinners.

http://derekwinnert.com/loot-%c2%bd-1970-richard-attenborough-hywel-bennett-roy-holder-lee-remick-milo-oshea-dick-emery-classic-movie-review-2971/

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2970

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com