A Touch of the Sun

An ambitious but fascinatingly shambolic attempt at a big screen vehicle for Frankie Howerd (that morphs into a rehash of 'The Happiest Days of Your Lives') that simply ensured that he henceforth concentrated on cabaret and TV.

The sleazy North Country financial backers played by Alfie Bass (who is hardly inside the door before he promptly propositions receptionist Dorothy Bromley with the smooth chat up line "Give us a kiss love!!") and Reginald Beckwith (who gets so drunk he propositions a dragged-up Howerd) demonstrated over sixty years before the Harvey Weinstein scandal that this sort of thing had been going on since the days of Herod.

Our boy Frankie comes into a sizeable amount of money as a hotel receptionist. After spending some of his money living it up in France, he decides to come back to London and buy up his old hotel. However, he needs some fincial backers who will only invest if the hotel is successful. Only problem is they have no guests, so the staff play the role of guests while still doing their jobs.

The film spends too much time with Frankie in France experiencing a series of contrived annoyances that eventually leads to his decision to come back to England.

This means there is little time to develop and run with the farce element of the film. The plots tries to be frenzied and amusingly chaotic, but it never really makes it. Everything runs far too smoothly. With no edge of the seat potential errors that could bring the entire ruse crashing down.

The film doesn't explore any comic potential such as regular faces being recognised as both staff and guest or people needing to be in two places at the same time. No quick changes no split-second timing.

As a result, the film trundles along at a pace with nothing really happening.

A forgetable film that is not worth remembering.

I found it a grim experience to sit through this joyless & humourless second feature B film. It looks and feels like that this film was made on the cheap. Even the holiday scenes in the South of France, which could have offered glamour and romance, were dull and uninspiring. After only half an hour, I realised that I would have to grit me teeth as I found the dialogue puerile and Frankie Howerd's voice and facial expressions particularly tedious. The storyline is weak and totally unconvincing. Characters came in and out of the story without rhyme or reason. Dennis Price, a wonderful character actor, is wasted in this film, as he has too little time on the screen. The film was meant to be a showcase for Frankie Howerd, cast as a hall porter, but it sadly revealed that although he was a great stand up comedian, acting was his 'Achilles Heel.' The fact that Howerd dominates most of the scenes is unfortunate as I became quickly irritated at his one note and lack lustre performance. After watching this film, it was clear that Frankie Howerd was out of his depth as a comedy film star.

Despite somewhat low vote averages, this classic Frankie Howerd film is one of the better 1950s British farces. Howerd, playing a hotel concierge, inherits a sum of money, and decides to use it for a holiday in the south of France. All manner of hilarious debacles follow, leading Howerd to the conclusion that he was better off in the first place.

Among some of the better character parts are performed by Ruby Murray, one of Ireland's greatest pop singers of the 1950s, Dennis Price (The Pure Hell of St Trinians), Alfie Bass (Are You Being Served?), and John Vere (Hancock's Half Hour). Alfred Shaughnessy's script is sharp and witty, and most of the humor holds to the present.

Frankie Howerd can only play one character, the one we see all the time. He was OK in this but his performance would not have had casting directors rushing to sign him up for other films. The plot was OK, the inherited £10,000 being about £312,000 in 2023, that's inflation for you. Farces were all the rage at one time, in films and on stage, but they are just about dead now. All of Frankie's stand up routines were written by Eric Sykes but he is not alone in being a successful stand-up comedian only due to the writing skills of others. It's worth watching for curiosity and historical value only.