Let’s Get Laid * (1978, Robin Askwith, Fiona Richmond, Anthony Steel, Linda Hayden) – Classic Movie Review 10,392

‘Gordon Laid is getting stuck in some very tight places.’

Director James Kenelm Clarke’s tame and tawdry 1978 British sex comedy film Let’s Get Laid stars Robin Askwith, Fiona Richmond, Anthony Steel and Linda Hayden, who do their best with the material offered, an odd mix of sex scenes and comedy plot, neither very strong, both very Seventies British.

Michael Robson’s screenplay is very loosely based on the play by Sam Cree, which ran at the Windmill Theatre, Soho, London, in 1974, starring Richmond, John Inman and Jack Haig, and was apparently set on a chicken farm.

Askwith plays Gordon Laid, who is demobbed after the Second World War and returns to London to find himself suspected of a murder in Wapping and getting mixed up in an international espionage plot, after he meets Maxine Lupercal (Richmond), who belongs to a travelling troupe of actors, one of whom he closely resembles.

It is the second of two movies that Steel (following Clarke’s 1977 Hardcore) made with the glamour model and actress Richmond, formerly the girlfriend of the British strip-club owner and publisher Paul Raymond. She recalled: ‘We had fabulous times touring the world looking for acts for the Raymond Revuebar. He was one of the last great showmen. Everyone today is just so much more boring.’

For many years, the Raymond Revuebar (1958–2004), Soho theatre and strip club, ‘The World Centre of Erotic Entertainment’, was the only venue in London that offered full-frontal, on-stage nudity. Even when homosexual acts between men were illegal, the Revuebar also incorporated a Sunday night show aimed at a gay audience.

The cast are Fiona Richmond as Maxine Lupercal, Robin Askwith as Gordon Laid / Jimsy Deveroo, Anthony Steel as Moncrieff Dovecraft, Linda Hayden as Gloria, Roland Curram as Rupert Dorchester, Graham Stark as Inspector Nugent, Patrick Holt as The Commissioner, Tony Haygarth as Sgt. Costello, John Clive as Piers Horrabin, James Marcus as Rusper, Murray Salem as Heavy, Ted Burnett as Heavy, Richard Manuel as Fenton Umfreville, Charles Pemberton as PC Baxter, Shaun Curry as Greenleaf, Fanny Carby as Lady in Phone Booth, Peter Cartwright as Film Director, David Sterne as Sgt. Millicent, Anna Chen as Oriental Girl, Lisa Taylor as Eleanor, Jayne Lester as Young Tart, Donna Scarf as A.T.S. Girl, Claire Russell as Marti, Tony Hughes as Goddard Ronaldshay, Zuleika Robson as Thelma, Shelagh Dey as Helen, Ron Eagleton as Wilbur, Frank Ellis as Mortician, Elise Relnah as Old Lady, Daryl Fahey as Couturier, Clive Moss as Corporal, Val Mitchell as Stage Chorus, Jane Winchester as Stage Chorus, Adrian Le Peltier as Stage Chorus, and Mike Charles as Stage Chorus.

Linda Hayden appeared opposite her then-boyfriend Robin Askwith in the popular sex comedies Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974), Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977) and in Let’s Get Laid (1978) as well as in the stage farce Who Goes Bare.

Hayden and Richmond also appeared together in Clarke’s 1976 one-time video nasty Exposé, aka Trauma.

The Windmill Theatre features in the 1949 thriller Murder at the Windmill.

Askwith recalled: ‘Great script by Michael Robson but unfortunately the film’s backer Paul Raymond wanted more sex – so unbeknown to me I’m suddenly doing a lot of shagging – only it’s not me!! You know my bum and that is not mine! Robson went on to pen The 39 Steps. And Graham Stark (as Inspector Nugent) when hunting down my character Gordon Laid had the memorable line: ‘Right… let’s get Laid’.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,392

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