Ooh... You Are Awful (1974)
Directed by Cliff Owen

Film Review

Ooh... You Are Awful is quite possibly the only film in which Dick Emery appeared which made full use of his comedic talents.  By now one of the most popular comic performers in Britain, Emery was able to draw massive audiences with his television series The Dick Emery Show (which ran for almost twenty years without changing its format) and his repertoire of comic grotesques was known to just about everyone in the land.  What a treat then to find Emery in his many guises in a full-length feature film, which not only finds a place for doddering oldster Lampwick and man-eating spinster Hettie but also Emery's most famous creation, busty blonde Mandy, whose memorable catchphrase (which somehow manages to bring erotic overtones to the word 'Are') gave the film it's appropriate title.

Cliff Owen directs the film with his customary penchant for knockabout comedy, having first directed Emery in The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) and then Morecambe and Wise - another great British comedy act - in That Riviera Touch (1966).  Owen also directed the first film outing for television's most famous rag-and-bone men, Steptoe and Son (1972).  Ooh... You Are Awful may be a shameless showcase for Dick Emery but it somehow manages to knit its comedy situations together within the framework of a gangster thriller spoof, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and Mike Hodges' Get Carter being two likely influences.

Several actors familiar to British television audiences at the time - Ronald Fraser, Derren Nesbitt, Pat Coombs, William Franklyn and Steve Plytas - do their utmost to prevent this from being a one-man show and provide some relief from the repetitive plot, most of which involves Emery looking for girls with tattoos located in their nether regions (where else?).  Emery's brand of comedy, consisting mostly of harmless innuendo and affectionate mockery of frustrated spinsters, effeminate homosexuals and prurient vicars with buck teeth, now appears somewhat dated and slightly suspect, but the comedian's inoffensive personality and fiendish talent for mimicry are still a winning combination.  Ooh... You Are Awful isn't so much a comedy classic as a saucy picture postcard from the 1970s.

Film Synopsis

Charlie Tully and Reggie Peek are a pair of confidence tricksters whose latest scam, to con an Italian businessman Vittorio Ferruchi into believing his son will marry into the British royal family, looks set to earn them half a million pounds.  Before the enterprising duo can escape to Switzerland with their ill-gotten gains, Charlie is arrested when he attempts to sell a dog that isn't his to a gullible pair of tourists.  Released from prison, Charlie meets up with Reggie, not knowing that gangland boss Sid Sabbath is after his blood.  Before Reggie can pass on to Charlie the number of the Swiss bank account where he deposited the loot, he is murdered by one of Sabbath's henchmen.  Charlie then discovers that his partner had the account number tattooed onto the bottoms of four of his girlfriends.  As he sets about finding the four young women Charlie is threatened not only by his old enemy Sid Sabbath, but also by hired assassins working for the pathologically vindictive Ferruchi...