A one-joke wonder, this student-made (at Oxford Polytechnic) short film to promote condom use is the sort of junk British audiences have long since learned to sit through awaiting the feature.
When visiting London in the '70s I was always amazed at the 20 or 30 minutes of "Pearl & Dean" or other such hackwork short subjects shown as program filler at the movies. Of course there was the rare Peter Sellers or Spike Milligan classic short in the mix, but most of it was drivel, often mere advertising. Little did I know that my local Chelsea (NYC that is, not jolly old England) cineplex 20 years later would be boring me to tears with local adverts and endlessly asinine shorts about Coca-Cola or joining the Marines.
Here we have a couple in bed about to do the nasty (no nudity shown please, we're British), when a narrator lectures them about the dangers of unwanted pregnancy.
Uh-oh, our boy hops out of the sack, quickly dresses and in "comical" speeded-up footage heads to the nearest Chemists to buy some rubbers. Title of course refers to the potential embarrassment in asking a female employee to fetch one (like she's never heard it before?), and all's well that ends well.
Dumb film's tag line exemplifies the level of non-wit here: "There's no need to make an abortion of it". Yuck-yuck.
Jon Astley is one of the students (alongside Graham Jones) who made this junk. His claim to fame is being the son of composer Edwin Astley and brother-in-law of Pete Townshend, latter fact which allowed him to featherbed his way onto the crew of some movies by The Who. Another show biz success story.
When visiting London in the '70s I was always amazed at the 20 or 30 minutes of "Pearl & Dean" or other such hackwork short subjects shown as program filler at the movies. Of course there was the rare Peter Sellers or Spike Milligan classic short in the mix, but most of it was drivel, often mere advertising. Little did I know that my local Chelsea (NYC that is, not jolly old England) cineplex 20 years later would be boring me to tears with local adverts and endlessly asinine shorts about Coca-Cola or joining the Marines.
Here we have a couple in bed about to do the nasty (no nudity shown please, we're British), when a narrator lectures them about the dangers of unwanted pregnancy.
Uh-oh, our boy hops out of the sack, quickly dresses and in "comical" speeded-up footage heads to the nearest Chemists to buy some rubbers. Title of course refers to the potential embarrassment in asking a female employee to fetch one (like she's never heard it before?), and all's well that ends well.
Dumb film's tag line exemplifies the level of non-wit here: "There's no need to make an abortion of it". Yuck-yuck.
Jon Astley is one of the students (alongside Graham Jones) who made this junk. His claim to fame is being the son of composer Edwin Astley and brother-in-law of Pete Townshend, latter fact which allowed him to featherbed his way onto the crew of some movies by The Who. Another show biz success story.
