DANNY LA RUE has a secret weapon to win the war in his first film!
Danny La Rue stars in this 1970s drag comedy as Fred Wimbush, a Shakespearean actor who is drafted into WWII and is appearing in a camp show in France when the Nazis advance. Unless he continues in his female costume, Fred is certain to be shot as a spy. The risque gags and double entendres fly as he attempts to make his escape in the company of a troupe of Girl Guides.
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La Rue was the UK's pre-eminent drag artist of the era and this was his only movie. This is a farce set in France in the early days of World War 2, as Germany invades and soldier La Rue, a third-rate music hall performer before being drafted, finds himself separated from his unit, in full female attire. He finds refuge in a girl's school (with only 5 pupils!) headed by mannish Bowers and her assistant de la Tour, channelling Joyce Grenfell, and keeps up his disguise. Plenty of double entendres and light-hearted banter about rape, but not a trace of wit. La Rue makes a hideous woman, although every man here lusts after him. Percival is an RAF officer and Marks the local Kommandant but add little. The girls have to pose as whores to get past the Nazis, before an action escape scene that momentarily lifts the mood.
Hmmm. Unfortunately, here, Danny La Rue just never convinces at the Shakespearian actor "Fred Wimbush" in the first place and so for me this quickly descends into an hybrid of "La Grande Vadrouille" (1966) and a "Carry On" film - and not a very funny one, either. He and his troupe are out entertaining the troops when they falls into Nazi hands. Thinking "Fred" is a woman, they let her go - only for her to focus her efforts on rescuing her squad and making it to safety. The stereotypes run rampant here - the stiff upper lip (and pretty brainless) airmen exemplified by Lance Percival's "Smallpiece" and Alfred Marks' incompetent "Gen Brincker" hardly portrays the enemy as a dangerous and lethal foe, either. Of course it's a comedy and there isn't meant to be any menace, but the joke recycles itself and the direction smacks more of a Norman Wisdom film - only without the fun. That said - it is not tacky or bawdy, La Rue takes a professional approach to this performance and had the writing delivered him a better, less puerile, script then it might have been more entertaining. It isn't really fair to judge this fifty years on - tastes have evolved and changed, and this is all now relatively old hat compared to what was being made at the time, but I still struggled with the concept. Watch and see for yourself...
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