The film of Joe Orton's great West End play gathers together an almost perfect cast which it then scuppers by making fundamental mistakes with Orton's material. Beryl Reid is definitive as ageing nymphomaniac Kath, and in the midst of the Gothic over-egging of Orton's pudding she pulls out moments of not just grotesquery and hilarity but also pathos; Harry Andrews is strong as her chicken hawk gay brother Ed; and Alan Webb is a fine old gargoyle as the Dada. Peter McEnery has some good moments as Sloane, occasionally hitting the requisite sense of sociopathic narcissism but really he is too old for the part (Orton wanted an actor who was 17 - "someone you'd like to f**k silly") - and a lot of the time far too obvious; he should be at least trying to convince Ed of his innocence.
It is the trappings of Ed's lifestyle which most betray Orton's material. Ed in the play is an outwardly respectable small-town burgher whose appearance of Puritan propriety masks a predatory ruthlessness and desire for kinky, dominating sex. In the film, Ed drives around in a pink car! Orton's character would never do this, as it rather gives the game away and, what's worse, throws away Orton's withering analysis of petty bourgeois hypocrisy.
The ending of the film is very cheap, with Orton's subtle trade-off of sexual favours to cover up the father's murder ("it's been a pleasant morning") being turned into an absurd and ugly mock-marriage ceremony over the Dada's corpse, replete with some toe-curlingly on-the-nose dialogue.
Orton's humour makes no sense if the characters are not at least attempting a degree of propriety. His Austen-like sense of social satire is here buried under inappropriate Gothic trappings, no doubt influenced by grand guignol turns like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Reid's previous hit film version of The Killing of Sister George. Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a misfire, all in all, although worth catching for the great performances and what's left of Orton's sparkling dialogue. Perhaps the best moment of the film is the one in which his name on the opening credits is super-imposed over a grave-stone, as this film does indeed conspire to bury him.
It is the trappings of Ed's lifestyle which most betray Orton's material. Ed in the play is an outwardly respectable small-town burgher whose appearance of Puritan propriety masks a predatory ruthlessness and desire for kinky, dominating sex. In the film, Ed drives around in a pink car! Orton's character would never do this, as it rather gives the game away and, what's worse, throws away Orton's withering analysis of petty bourgeois hypocrisy.
The ending of the film is very cheap, with Orton's subtle trade-off of sexual favours to cover up the father's murder ("it's been a pleasant morning") being turned into an absurd and ugly mock-marriage ceremony over the Dada's corpse, replete with some toe-curlingly on-the-nose dialogue.
Orton's humour makes no sense if the characters are not at least attempting a degree of propriety. His Austen-like sense of social satire is here buried under inappropriate Gothic trappings, no doubt influenced by grand guignol turns like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Reid's previous hit film version of The Killing of Sister George. Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a misfire, all in all, although worth catching for the great performances and what's left of Orton's sparkling dialogue. Perhaps the best moment of the film is the one in which his name on the opening credits is super-imposed over a grave-stone, as this film does indeed conspire to bury him.