Review for All Neat in Black Stockings

You’ve got to love Network for the way they throw themselves into each and every release, often tracking down the best available prints, transferring them with precision and care and then ladling in a whole host of related extras so that you really do feel like you’re buying the whole tamale. Even a relatively slight release like ‘All Neat in Black Stockings’ gets the treatment with a second as-shot full-frame version of the film made available for the first time ever.


For me the only disappointment was the film itself. Coming after ‘Alfie’, ‘Poor Cow’ and ‘Up The Junction’ (this was released in 1969) this kitchen-sink portrayal of the supposed working man’s attitude to ‘birds’ feels a bit tiresome, not to say deeply offensive. It’s not even delivered with a Carry-On like wink, acknowledging the ludicrousness of an unattractive window-cleaner seemingly able to jump into bed with whatever girl he fancies. Even when that girl is as gorgeous as a young Susan George, just a year on from her shock performance as underage girlfriend of a grisled Charles Bronson in ‘Twinky’. But I’m getting ahead of things as usual.


The film kicks off with some archetypal ribald comedy with a cheeky window cleaner leering through the windows at a flirtatious nurse. Victor Henry does a surprisingly good turn, despite his northern accent, and might have made a reasonable comedic actor had it not been for his untimely death following a coma after a lamp-post fell on top of him. But unfortunately for him, and us, the film lurches from this false beginning into a bizarre kitchen-sink drama, schizophrenically veering from Carry On to Kitchen-Sink in a single-bound.


Living in a squalid flat somewhere in a low-rent London suburb, he shares his ‘birds’ with Dwyer (Jack Shepherd) in a distasteful and somewhat hateful display of misogyny. What’s especially weird is the way these ‘birds’ throw themselves at these two unattractive louts. Still, this is the movies so anything can happen I guess.


Then we see a soppy side. Ginger’s sister is pregnant and her cheating, drinking husband (bearded Harry Towb) is giving her a hard time. Having promised an elderly hospital resident that he’d look after his pets it turns out that the old guy lives in a crumbling mansion set behind a couple of bill board posters – more than enough room to move his sister in. There’s a monty-pythonesque interlude with a ‘dead parrot’ that throws us temporarily back out of kitchen-sink drama into zany humour but in the main this is heavy stuff.


He also falls head-over-heels in love with Susan George who he sees as much more than one his standard conquests. He even buys her soft toys though she falls for his questionable charms virtually from the off. One of the film’s better scenes is his awkward introduction to her Mother.


When it transpires that Susan George’s character is pregnant (and by Shepherd who hadn’t got the message about this one being special) he charms the pants off her mother in a weird, Freudian act of revenge.


In conclusion we’re left figuring that life in all its gritty glory is just an unspeakable mess. But maybe that was the point. It doesn’t make for very satisfying viewing though. Which may explain why the film has all but slipped into obscurity.


Despite that, until this release, following a mid-nineties airing on TCM, bootleg copies have been trading for silly money on auction sites.


It’s a good transfer and even better is the chance to see the original 4:3 as shot un-graded original – annoying for the Director who probably shot this with black strips to indicate the eventual crop and never really intended that version to be seen, unless aired on TV and preferable to a pan and scan.  Nice to have both I suppose but I elected for the theatrical version, still a fresh and careful transfer.


All in all, a slightly disappointing period piece, lifted from its intrinsic mystery by the presence of a young Susan George. Once again, Network have done a splendid job in mastering and for those who long needed this in their collection, then now is your chance.