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MovieMail's Review
Containing the juicy bedroom farce Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? and My Wife's Lodger, this second release in the BFI's Adelphi collection will be irresistible to British B-movie fans, says Julian Upton.
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary and My Wife’s Lodger feature very early performances from Diana Dors, and she stands out now as the best thing in both, poised and peroxide at 21 and demonstrating a comic versatility that wasn’t to re-emerge until her glam days were well behind her.
In the former, a frenetic bedroom farce adapted by a pre-Carry On Talbot Rothwell, she holds her own among a troupe of accomplished performers (Bonar Colleano, David Tomlinson, Sid James) as the trampy ex-wife of a US serviceman, who returns to London with a new spouse only to find he might still be married to the old one. In My Wife’s Lodger, she steals her scenes as the headstrong teenage daughter of demobbed Willie Higginbotham (lugubrious music hall turn Dominic Roche), who comes back ‘oop north’ after six years’ service to find himself cuckolded in his own house by Roger the Lodger (an impressively sleazy Leslie Dwyer). A treat for Dors fans (she even gives us a song), this double bill will also delight fervid collectors of long-forgotten British B-movies.
Fully illustrated booklet with detailed film notes and original promotional materials.
Film Description
This second release of the BFI’s pioneering Adelphi Collection brings two films directed by Maurice Elvey, Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (1953) and My Wife's Lodger (1952).
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? is a juicy, fast-moving bedroom farce featuring a sizzling performance from a young Diana Dors. American Army pilot Laurie Vining (Bonar Colleano) - on leave in London for his honeymoon - is hoping for a little rest and recreation. But his idyllic bliss is shattered abruptly when his stunning ex, Candy - saucily played with mischievous relish by Dors – unexpectedly arrives at his hotel, insisting that they're still man and wife. Under pressure to think quick and act fast, he enlists the assistance of his gum-chewing, wisecracking co-pilot Hank Hanlon (Sid James) and nervous, girl-shy lawyer Frank Betterton (David Tomlinson). But his troubles have only just begun...
My Wife’s Lodger (1952) finds hapless soldier, Willie Higginbotham (Dominic Roche) return home after six years hoping for a hero’s welcome only to find that his home has become a boarding-house and Roger the Lodger (Leslie Dwyer) has got his arms around his wife and his feet under the table, while Willie’s ditzy daughter Eunice (Diana Dors) only wants to sing, dance and jitterbug!
