Really Surprised!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Fantastic!

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

There is no mistaking which decade this film was made in.It is clearly London and the swinging sixties.Mind you it is difficult to believe that this was 50 years ago and got an X certificate.Nowdays more like PG.The film has a very catchy title number which has stayed with me all the years since I first saw the film.The film is one of the portmanteau type,covering the adventures of 5 merchant seamen on leave.Some stories better than others.Bernard Lee in a rather different part,played partly for comic effect is quite good.The sailor going to the clip joint is quite interesting as it features one of the last performances of former boxer \Freddie \mills before he died in unexplained circumstances.The love story with the Australian sailor and the one with the electrician who spends the night alone in a room with a girl he has picked up and sleeps in a chair,are less satisfactory.This film captures London's Dockland in its last throes before it was transformed into offices and homes.In one instance they refer to a bomb site and this is nearly 20 years after the end of the war.

If ever a DVD should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act this is it. To actually be released under the banner of 'The Best Of British' defies logic as it is mind blowingly awful from start to finish. There are few saving graces apart from a chance to revisit a London now long gone in the mists of time and see the blossoming beauty of the lovely Francesca Annis who shares her screen time mainly with the likable Colin Campbell. Bernard Lee has the best line after turning the tables on the smarmy Derek Bond and Erika Remberg's failed blackmail attempt, but the appearance of Nigel Green who spent the whole of his role drinking and stereotyping a drunken Irishman seemed utterly pointless. To have David Lodge as a lothario was another case of miscasting and I spent a lot of the time watching the film to see if Inigo Jackson was wearing a syrup or as they say in the States, a rug. I know times change and one shouldn't be too harsh on a film made nearly 50 years ago, but this was probably a film just as boring in 1964 as it is today. The less said about the Heather Sears role as a kind of forerunner hippy the better; her scenes seemed to go on forever and anyone who watched this on a Saturday night out would have wished they's spent a Saturday night in rather than going to see this codswallop. This was also the last film appearance of Freddie Mills who died a year later in mysterious circumstances. Rumours that his demise came after a disgruntled patron had seen this film were apparently unfounded.

The British films of the swinging sixties are typified for their crashing through the art barriers and doing things that had never been done before. Sometimes it came off; sometimes - well, all too often, to be exact - it didn't. Compare this with the "straight films" of the 1950s. Between these two phases of British cinema, there were a "special years" transitory phase: the straightness of the past was laid side by side with the oncoming weirdness of the swinging sixties. This is such a film.The film follows the adventures of some merchant seamen on a London night out, before they return to their ship in the morning. There are some memorable scenes in this film. These include the "boyfriend" who is in a meditative trance, the know-all sailor getting his comeuppance, when he gets ripped off in a clip joint, and Bernard Lee voluntarily writing a cheque for ten pounds after a failed blackmail attempt. All this, and The Searchers playing in a pub, too.It is a typical British B movie of the period, and is quite watchable.

Although strictly a 'quota quickie', this British picture is lively and passably entertaining in it's episodic telling of the adventures of five sailor's spending a night in London. The two youngest go looking for girls but only find prostitutes ( discussed in a surprisingly frank manner) although photogenic Francesca Annis and naive Colin Campbell do find common ground. David Lodge heads for bed with floozy Margaret Nolan ( a popular glamor model of the time--she was also in 'Goldfinger') for a saucily comic diversion. Bernard Lee takes the acting honors as a quiet, mature gentleman who is almost caught in a badger game. Add to this an appearance by Merseybeat group, The Searchers, and you do have a fairly peppy Saturday Night Out!