Not Tonight Darling (1971)

Even among British sex films Not Tonight Darling is fairly obscure, although, in recent years it has gained a wider audience thanks to semi-regular late night screenings on Talking Pictures TV.  Part of its problem is that doesn't fit neatly into any particular category of sex movie  it certainly isn't a sex comedy in the vein of the Confessions films and their imitators, nor is it a sex thriller, like Lindsay Shonteff's Night After Night After Night and it isn't masquerading as 'ripped from the headlines' social commentary like Derek Ford's Groupie Girl.  It does, however, contain elements of all of theses sub genres, but never quite makes them gel into anything coherent or distinctive.  Nevertheless, the film is, quite possibly, one of the seediest movies I've ever seen.  Which is most certainly not a negative thing.  Rather, it is the one distinctive feature of Not Tonight Darling that it so perfectly captures the underlying seediness of early 1970s British suburban life.  It packs a lot of seediness into its running time, ranging from voyeurism to blackmail for sex rackets.  Luan Peters stars as an unfeasibly glamourous-looking suburban housewife, trapped in a daily routine of drudgery centred around meeting the needs of her solicitor husband and young son, who is tempted into infidelity with a smarmy sales rep.

Which sounds pretty conventional as far as this sort of movie goes, but it is the context in which the plot unfolds which makes it interesting.  Peters is, as the film opens, unknowingly being spied on by a creepy looking guy hiding in her garden, watching her through her bathroom window with a pair of binoculars.  We quickly learn that the voyeur is actually the clerk in her local corner grocery store, who regularly fantasises about her doing her shopping in her underwear.   The sales rep, who is visiting the shop on business and is clearly well aware of the clerk's sleazy activities, bets the clerk that he can bed Peters.  Played by Vincent Ball, a quickly fading star of British B-movies (he later ended up, for a while, in the legendary Australian soap opera The Sullivans), the sales rep, complete with his mid-range car and smarmy chat up lines is clearly an experienced sexual predator, specialising in preying on bored housewives.  His seduction techniques involve allowing Peters to glimpse a world of glamour and fulfilment (in the form of watching Thunderclap Newman rehearse and taking her to a rented furnished flat) beyond her daily domestic drudgery.

With her dullard of a husband rejecting her attempts to introduce him to more adventurous, midweek, sex, (he's clearly an only-on-bank-holidays- missionary-position-with-the-lights-off man), she unsurprisingly falls for Ball's dubious charms at the rented flat.  Little does she realise, though, that salesman Alex has captured the deed on film.  Worse is to come as he uses the film to blackmail her into accompanying him to some of those seventies swingers parties - which he also secretly films and sells on the side to porno distributors.  Peters husband, meanwhile, fins himself being taken to a porno cinema by a client he has just successfully defended.  After sitting thorough several live acts involving some very bored-looking strippers, the main  feature finally arrives.  Guess what?  That's right, it's that swinger's party film featuring his wife!  Somewhat disconcertingly, after this catalogue of sleaze and seediness, the film culminates with Ball's female victims empowering themselves by tearing of his clothes and chasing him out of town, Benny Hill-style.

One of only two films directed by Anthony B Sloman, Not Tonight Darling is actually much better than you'd expect.  His direction effectively captures the drudgery of Peters' daily routines, where buying toothpaste is a highlight of the day.  His choice of locations is excellent, from the flower patterned bedspreads of Peters' house to Ball's sad seduction pad, not to mention the corner shop turned mini-mart, perfectly capture seventies suburbia.  They are scenes I recall vividly from my childhood - a drab environment that leaves no room for imagination, non-conformity or ambition.  Anything approximating these has to be subverted into furtive activities like voyeurism.  Luan Peters gives one the best performances of her career, effectively portraying an intelligent and glamourous woman forced into a life of convention and conformity, (it does remain a mystery, however, as to how her character ever ended up marrying a drip like her husband).  Ball is suitably creeu yet plausible as the sales rep while the other male characters are either infantile (like her husband) or  sleazy and infantile (like the shop assistant).  If you are looking for some raunchy sex action, you'll be disappointed, though.  Even by early seventies standards, there isn't that much nudity and no explicit sex scenes.  While it's no classic, Not Tonight Darling is a surprisingly decent movie and well worth watching, if nothing else for its gleeful portrayal of the seedy reality of how all those sex fantasies from the readers' letters pages of men' magazines would have played out in suburban seventies Britain.