Ooh... You Are Awful

Dick Emery plays all of his most loved characters in this film. The plot revolves around Emery and his recently deceased former partner in crime. Eight women have tattoos on their bums which Emery has to find. It is actually a very clever and original plot. It would be ideal for a remake by Austin Powers. I have a feeling it could have been funnier though; probably by NOT including all of Emery's TV characters. Sometimes they appear in a very unnatural way.

Charlie Tully and Reggie Peek are confidence tricksters who pull off a big score when they con a rich Italian family out of half a million pounds by pretending to arrange a meeting with the Royal family. At the airport, Charlie can't resist conning a couple of tourists out of £200 but gets caught in the act. While Reggie flees the country with the cash, Charlie gets six months. Reggie puts the money in a Swiss account but, before he can tell Charlie the details, he is killed. Charlie finds that Reggie has tattooed clues on the asses of four girls he slept with in the past few months - and sets off to find them.

With the thinnest of plots (but the most complicated set up) this film allows Emery to wheel out the characters he was famous for in an uniquely British `romp' with heavy smut and innuendo. Needless to say it isn't very clever or funny and it probably requires you to be a fan of Emery's (and even then.). The story is not important but it is way too elaborate for a series of impressions and jokes revolving around girls' *rses! The fact that Charlie has several groups of criminals after him is too complicated considering it is only used to set up a few gags with Charlie's unofficial minders.

I have never been a big fan of Emery - he was before my time and his brand of impressions and innuendo have been done better by others; if you were looking back for an example you likely wouldn't look to him. He does have some talent but the material isn't very sharp and I just wasn't laughing. Ronald Fraser is amusing even if his tattoos looks like a child has put them on with a felt tip pen and the rest of the cast just mug around. I know this film is over 30 years old and body shapes have changed (in terms of what is the media's ideal) but, for a film that focuses on women's bums, it would have been nice if more than 1 of the four actually had a cute one!

Overall this is a very unfunny film that will only appeal to fans of Emery and even then I wonder how good they would think this is. The plot is convoluted for such a silly film and the majority of the supposed laughs are drawn from smut and innuendo that didn't make me laugh.

If you are a fan of Dick Emery then this will appeal to you. I was 10 when this film first came out so it was the normal thing on television to see the kind of jokes and cheeky innuendo that was typical of the 70's.

And of course we get to see a lot of bums as Charlie(Emery) looks for tattoos on the girls bums that added together give him a swiss bank account where his partner in crime stashed the cash after they conned an Italian by getting him to pay up front for a supposed wedding to Princess Ann!

The best joke has to be where he told Pat Combes what happened to his partners ashes.. I wont say , watch the film..I think it was a classic for Emery fans, maybe now, the jokes appear a bit dated, but I love it.

Similar jokes alongside the Carry On films..but this has a proper story..

March 2022

The Uk version is called "ooh you are awful" rather than the title thats on imdb.

A British comedy starring Dick Emery as a con man and on the whole its very likeable, good but not great.

The main interest for me about this now is the fact that there was a film made in Hong Kong called "aces go places" or "mad mission" depending on the version you are watching, that uses this as its template, that is superior to this film and features lots of James Bond gadgets as well as the comedy and action. Aces go places was very successful and in fact was followed by 4 sequels, i think those 5 films are all great.

As for OOh you are awful, yes i like it but as i said its not the best.

7.5 out of 10.

Almost every UK comedy show seemed to get a filmed version back in the early 1970s, and Dick Emery's sketch show was no exception. OOH...YOU ARE AWFUL is a film which brings the comedian's own unique brand of smut to the big screen, complete with all the saucy innuendo and cross-dressing you could hope for.

In fact, this turns out to be a rather disappointing little film, and insipid with it. The problem is that there's far too much of the complicated plotting, and very little in the actual way of laughs. The story is about a hidden fortune and the continuing attempts to retrieve it, but the problem is that a particular woman must be found with a particular tattoo on her bottom. I'm sure that's similar to a storyline in a spaghetti western I saw, and just as silly.

The acting in this film is pretty routine, with only a couple of familiar faces like that of Ronald Fraser, Pat Coombs, and the ever-nasty Derren Nesbitt enlivening the screen. Watch out for Pete Walker's muse, Sheila Keith, in her cameo as a magistrate. As with all early '70s British comedies, there's a bevy of beautiful female faces, attempts at sniggering humour, and a deep sense of time and place, but overall it's not much cop.