Blue Moon Over Soho (1977)

D. Jack Gold
Colour


I always want to like this film more. The three times now that I’ve seen it, I’ve always wished I could find a way to take this film more to my heart. After all, what’s not to like? We have David Hemmings (already distinctly portly after his sixties prime) running a pornography empire in Soho, and after he tries to help a young girl, finding himself being investigated by uptight cop, Albert Finney. Elsewhere we have Patrick MacNee (John Steed of all people) as a strip-show obsessed English gentleman, and Helen Mirren as a tabloid journalist who has more than a little interest in the seedier side of life. I look at that mixture, and say what’s not to love? Surely this should be one of my favourite films. Why then isn’t it?


The flaw can be described in two words “Robin Askwith”.


Not that Mr Askwith actually appears in this film – he’d be well and truly out of place in this esteemed cast – but ‘Blue Moon Over Soho’, for its all lofty and hard-hitting pretensions, bends a little too far towards the Robin Askwith school of British cinema. Askwith, for those of you lucky enough not to know (I almost feel like I’m robbing you of some of your innocence here) was the star of a series of sex comedies in the 1970s, all with the prefix “Confessions”. So we had ‘Confessions of a Driving Instructor’, ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner’, ‘Confessions of a Neurosurgeon with a Focus on Peripheral Nerves’ (okay, one of those titles I may have made up). The films are a low grade spicy stew of Jack the Lads, bum & tits, a nice bit of crumpet and phwooaaarrr!!! If you’ve never seen a ‘Confessions’ film, but have seen a latter day ‘Carry On’ film then you’ll know pretty much what I’m talking about.


So the problem with ‘Blue Moon Over Soho’ is that it says it wants to hit hard but what it really wants to do is titillate. This tale of one man’s crumbling porn empire and the righteous cop out to get him, becomes an excuse for bouncing boobs and bums, of suspender clad thighs and attractive birds who just want it and want it now. There is no pubic hair, there is nothing that could be classed as penetration, but there is a school boy smuttiness that never lets up. The tone is established in the opening shot of a busty schoolgirl – who, if we’re honest here, must be at least thirty – slowly removing her gymslip. Of course this being Britain in the 1970s, there is a lot more cellulite and round bottoms than one would get if this film was made in California, but it’s still aiming to arouse rather than anger.


Of course the performances are great. If I had to watch an actor’s face as he gazes impassive at the exploitation of a young girl, then David Hemmings would be in my top ten. And he does some of his best work as a man who has his dormant conscience well and truly pricked. Finney is great as the driven and slightly mad copper, Macnee is deeply, but touchingly, weird as the dapper old pervert and Mirren does as much as she can in an underwritten role (and is, of course, given a topless scene). But one gets the impression that the film around them isn’t the one they signed up for, and the film that made it to the screen cries out for the reassuring presence of Robin Askwith.


‘Confessions of a Righteously Genteel Porn Baron’.