Every Home Should Have One (1970, Marty Feldman, Judy Cornwell, Shelley Berman, Hy Hazell, Julie Ege, Patrick Cargill, Jack Watson, Penelope Keith, Dinsdale Landen, Moray Watson) – Classic Movie Review 12,299

Director Jim Clark’s leeringly smutty 1970 British comedy Every Home Should Have One [Think Dirty] stars the unique, irreplaceable Marty Feldman, and wastes the talents of some much subtler comedic actors (Shelley Berman, Judy Cornwell, Patrick Cargill, Jack Watson, Penelope Keith, Dinsdale Landen, Moray Watson, Frances de la Tour).

Feldman plays Teddy, a naïve but dedicated advertising man, enjoys a happy marriage to Liz (Cornwell) and admires the local swinging vicar Mellish (Landen) until the latter launches a clean-up TV campaign from the pulpit. At work, Teddy’s ineptitude is mistaken for genius by his boss Chandler (Moray Watson), who puts him in charge of the campaign to find a new sexy image for McLaughlin’s Frozen Porridge.

The contrived and forced plot, based on a story by Milton Schulman and Herbert Kretzmer, is used as an excuse to dredge up tired old jokes about advertising and television. The screenplay by talented writers Marty Feldman, Barry Took and Denis Norden can’t spark it up. It lacks wit and fun as well as sparkle. On its side is its welcome idea of ridiculing Mary Whitehouse infamous anti-sex campaign.

It was one of the most popular movies in 1970 at the British box office.

It was released in the US as Think Dirty.

It is the last film of vivacious Brit star Hy Hazell, who died accidentally aged 50 on 10 May 1970 by choking to death while eating a steak at a friend’s house with a very high alcohol level in her blood. She was enjoying a Sunday break when there was no performance of her stage role in Fiddler on the Roof in London’s West End.

The film was made at Shepperton Studios in England.

The titles and animated sequences are by Richard Williams.

The theme song ‘Every Home Should Have One’ is written by John Cameron, Caryl Brahms, and Ned Sherrin, arranged by Alan Tew, produced by Jackie Rand, and sung by Millicent Martin. It was released as a single.

The cast are Marty Feldman as Teddy Brown, Judy Cornwell as Liz Brown, Garry Miller as their son Richard Brown, Shelley Berman as Nat Kaplan, Hy Hazell as Mrs Kaplan, Julie Ege as Inga Giltenburg, Penelope Keith as Lotte von Gelbstein, Moray Watson as Chandler, Jack Watson as McLaughlin, Mark Elwes as Rokes, Harold Innocent as Jimpson, Dinsdale Landen as the Reverend Geoffrey Mellish, John McKelvey as Colonel Belper, Charles Lewsen as Arthur Soames, Maggie Jones as Hetty Soames, Frances de la Tour as Maude Crape, Patrick Cargill as Wallace Trufitt MP, Patience Collier as Mrs Monty Levin, Annabel Leventon as Chandler’s secretary, Sarah Badel as Joanna Snow, John Wells as Tolworth, Michael Bates as Magistrate, Dave Dee as Wednesday Play Star, and Judy Huxtable as Frankenstein Heroine, Roland Curram, David Hutcheson, Maggie Jones, Ellis Dale, Vicki Hodge, and Erika Bergman.

Film Editor Jim Clark directed only two other features, Rentadick (1972) and Madhouse (1974). He won an Oscar and a BAFTA Award for Best Film Editing for The Killing Fields (1984). He died on 25 February 2016, aged 84.

He received a second BAFTA Award and was Oscar nominated for Best Film Editing for The Mission (1986), and edited The Grass Is Greener (1960), The Innocents (1961), Charade (1963), Marathon Man (1976), The Jackal (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Vera Drake (2004).

Marty Feldman also appeared The Bed Sitting Room and Young Frankenstein. He died in 1982 of a heart attack while filming Yellowbeard in Mexico City, aged 48.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,299

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