Eskimo Nell has a rather bemusing reputation as the One Good Film in the plethora of bad British sexploitation comedies that were splattered onto UK cinema screens during the 1970s. Disappointingly, Nell isn't much better than the awful Confessions and even worse Adventures films, and the lurking shade of the hopeless Adventures producer Stanley A Long looms over this film, providing his usual trademark missed comic opportunities, poorly handled slapstick and crass humour which ultimately infect the piece.
Michael Armstrong, who wrote and directed that masterpiece of 60s exploitation cinema Mark of the Devil, writes and stars here as a film school graduate (apparently based on Michael Winner) who finds himself rejected by the big American studios and forced to work with the sharks and sleazeballs of the British independent scene. He meets con-merchant producer Benny U. Murdoch (an unfunny Roy Kinnear) who persuades him to come in on a scheme to produce a screen version of the famous bawdy ballad Eskimo Nell. The fly in the ointment is that Murdoch has three backers, all of who wish to see their own lovers and penchants on screen in the final product.
The twists and turns of the plot are okay, but what comes off the screen is mostly a series of missed opportunities. Too often, the script thinks that simply having someone say "I want to see big tits!" is the epitome of witty satire. The critique is never sophisticated nor incisive. One plus point is that although the portrait of the gay film producer Vernon Peabody and his drag queen toyboy Johnny is stereotypical, it is good to see at least one British 70s sex-pic which acknowledges that not every man in the world is heterosexual.
Johnny and the cowboy drag film-within-a-film as well as Christopher Biggins done up in a romper suit for a family version raise the most laughs. There's a clunking car chase near the end (director Martin Campbell has a long way to go to Casino Royale) and some amusement is provided by having the hardcore version shown to the Queen at the royal command performance. But even this isn't exploited as much as it might be - a shot of the Queen staring at (or even getting off on) the on-screen sex would have been genuinely subversive.
Ultimately, the film doesn't satirise what is the most glaring assumption in the British film industry, then as now: why chinless public school wonders like Armstrong's character and his mates think it's their god-given right to be filmmakers in the first place; if you are going to satirise the British film industry, begin with class.
Michael Armstrong, who wrote and directed that masterpiece of 60s exploitation cinema Mark of the Devil, writes and stars here as a film school graduate (apparently based on Michael Winner) who finds himself rejected by the big American studios and forced to work with the sharks and sleazeballs of the British independent scene. He meets con-merchant producer Benny U. Murdoch (an unfunny Roy Kinnear) who persuades him to come in on a scheme to produce a screen version of the famous bawdy ballad Eskimo Nell. The fly in the ointment is that Murdoch has three backers, all of who wish to see their own lovers and penchants on screen in the final product.
The twists and turns of the plot are okay, but what comes off the screen is mostly a series of missed opportunities. Too often, the script thinks that simply having someone say "I want to see big tits!" is the epitome of witty satire. The critique is never sophisticated nor incisive. One plus point is that although the portrait of the gay film producer Vernon Peabody and his drag queen toyboy Johnny is stereotypical, it is good to see at least one British 70s sex-pic which acknowledges that not every man in the world is heterosexual.
Johnny and the cowboy drag film-within-a-film as well as Christopher Biggins done up in a romper suit for a family version raise the most laughs. There's a clunking car chase near the end (director Martin Campbell has a long way to go to Casino Royale) and some amusement is provided by having the hardcore version shown to the Queen at the royal command performance. But even this isn't exploited as much as it might be - a shot of the Queen staring at (or even getting off on) the on-screen sex would have been genuinely subversive.
Ultimately, the film doesn't satirise what is the most glaring assumption in the British film industry, then as now: why chinless public school wonders like Armstrong's character and his mates think it's their god-given right to be filmmakers in the first place; if you are going to satirise the British film industry, begin with class.