I Watch Films: Up The Chastity Belt

Up The Chastity Belt

British comedian Frankie Howerd takes on the middle ages. Howerd takes on the role of Lurkalot, a serf of mysterious origins brought up by a pig, who makes money by selling both love potions and chastity belts. His lord, Sir Coward De Custard, is in dispute with Sir Braggart De Bombast, who wants to marry Sir Coward’s daughter and take his lands.

After several convoluted comedy set pieces Coward runs away on crusade, with Lurkalot having to go after him, only to discover that the “Crusades” are more of a holiday in the sun, run out of a pub/drug den/brothel owned by Saladin. Lurkalot tries to get Richard The Lionheart to come back and sort things out; this doesn’t go well but as Lurkalot mysteriously resembles Lionheart he tries to impersonate him. Eventually he falls in with a queer-coded Robin Hood (he is invited to his “camp” and so on and so forth) and they have a flamboyantly gay final battle.

Some bits have not aged too well, others are rather silly. Some are pretty good – Sir Braggart gets in a locksmith to open a chastity belt (sigh) and he spends half the film trying to open his tool box. Everyone is quite horny, which drives quite a bit of the plot – and surprisingly there is a quite solid plot to hang the jokes on. If you have some affection for Howerd’s brand of mugging and commentary to camera then you might well enjoy it.

Watch This: Some 1970s historical themed comic farce
Don’t Watch This: There’s no history and half the punchlines are “people are horny”