Written by and starring a veritable who's who of '70s British comedy, one might reasonably expect The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins to be a laugh riot from start to finish; nothing could be further from the truth. Of the seven skits on offer, five are embarrassingly unfunny and one is downright depressing. Only an absurd black-and-white spoof of silent movies succeeds in tickling the ribs, with plenty of walnut-based humour.
Being a product of the '70s, the film is unashamedly un-PC, with dolly birds in hot-pants aplenty, innuendo, and even a moment involving blackface (which is funny for all the wrong reasons). Things kick off with a tasty blonde bit of crumpet stripping off for the camera, supposedly because the girl is a friend of the director (who is presented as a horribly dated cartoon character courtesy of animator Bob Godfrey, best known for cartoon dog and cat, Roobarb and Custard). The animated film-maker then introduces the first of the seven stories...
Avarice stars TV gameshow legend Bruce Forsyth as chauffeur for a greedy businessman who demands that his driver retrieve a 50p coin that has fallen down a drain. Much of the humour is derived from Forsyth falling over in the sewer, which gives some idea of the level of sophistication at play. Didn't he do well? Well, no, actually.
The second story is even worse. Envy sees Harry Secombe as a henpecked husband ordered by his wife to buy her dream home (owned by Geoffrey Bayldon and June Whitfield), whatever it takes. The 'hilarity' includes Secombe having not one, but two, buckets of water thrown over him - it's that clever!
Up next is Gluttony, written by Barry Cryer and Graham Chapman, and starring Leslie 'Ding dong!' Phlllips as an advertising executive promoting a slimming biscuit, but who cannot help but tuck into junk food whenever he can. This is tedious stuff, only worth watching for sexy Julie Ege as vice president of the biscuit company, who, for some strange reason, has the hots for Phillips.
Number four is Lust: Harry H. Corbett plays a 38-year-old single man desperate to pull himself a bird. Rather than go to a club or pub, he hangs around a tube station and eyes up the talent, eventually settling for a girl who has been stood up by her date. While she is in a phone booth, wondering what to do, Harry pops into the next booth and rings her, chatting her up and asking if she would like to meet up. What happens next is not only not funny, but actually rather heart-rending. Corbett puts in a solid performance, but a side-splitter this is not.
Pride features Ian Carmichael and Alfie Bass as two stubborn drivers who meet halfway down a narrow country lane. With neither man willing to back up, the scene is set for laughs galore, but none arrive. What do arrive are an AA man and an RAC man, who add to the confusion, until a bobby turns up to settle the argument. Written by Galton and Simpson (Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe and Son), but with little of their magic in evidence.
The sixth chapter is the best. A silent movie (complete with caption cards) written by and starring Spike Milligan, Sloth is sublime lunacy, featuring a cast of characters who will do anything to save themselves from effort, from a man who would rather wait for a tree to fall than walk around it, to Ronnie Barker sat down at a bus queue, asking the woman in front to help him open his walnut. This is nutty nonsense in more ways than one, and extremely funny.
It's a return to dreadful form for the final story, Wrath. Two old men on a park bench decide that they've had enough of the grouchy park keeper (played by Stephen Lewis, Blakey from On The Buses) and plot to kill him. Like a live-action Roadrunner/Wile. E. Coyote cartoon, none of their schemes go as planned, the pair eventually blowing themselves up in a public convenience (along with the park keeper, who continues to torment them in hell). It's a chuckle-free way to end what is a mostly disappointing movie, especially considering the talent involved.
