The late 60s and early 70s counterculture products, worshipped by some, have a particular horror for me. Most of it. Here and there you’ll find something smart that wasn’t ruined by clothing or sets or painful attempts to be With-It, but for the most part it just smells like a shag rug full of cigarette ash and bong water.

With that in mind, I present -

No, let’s back up. Forget everything I said!

Name the year, and the profession depicted below.

If you said very tail-end late 60s or early 70s, congrats. It's 1970. As for the professon, it's a screening room. So what are the possibilities?

Hey, looks lie a sportscaster. Maybe it's a network highlight-reel editing room?

Let's find another actor from the picture:

Uh -

Okay. Hey, I love Marty Feldman. We all loved Marty Feldman. And I love Shelley Berman! That's Shelley Berman!

What is Shelley Berman doing in a movie with Marty Feldman!

What!

Any more hints?

It's a really futuristic boardroom - cool! Is Marty in some wacky mix-up that sends him into space, or something?

I wish.

		It's . . . well, here's a hint. It's that most dreaded of things: the early 70s Sex Farce.

It was released in 1970, and smells like it. Feldman is always fun to watch, but I don’t know if there was a massive appetite for him to romp through a sex comedy. Perhaps he’s meant to be a stand-in for the audience: if that hatchet-nosed pop-eyed git can shag a bird what’s not the missus, maybe I can too.

There’s the usual pseudo-intellectual gloss put on the affair; hypocrisy is in the dock, you see, and if there’s one thing the era hated, it was hypocrisy. Why, you know these bluenoses are really the worst sinners of all!

More after the ad.

It wasn't hypocrisy they hated. They really hated the standards. What they wanted was license. They wanted to be able to follow random girls around and ogle and make advances, because everything's different now luv c'mon you're not old fashioned are you what do you mean you're just getting groceries they can wait c'mon give us a kiss then

You know what everyone should do, now that things are getting more swinging?

They should think - well, let the music explain.

Not everyone is so forward minded.

Since it's 1970, it has comic fantasy sex scenes and Pythonesque animation.

You know everyone involved wore velvet pants and ruffled shirts and smoked enormous amounts of weed. I'll give them credit for this: the bad B movies of the era had a certain wit that the old programmers never did. The production values were usually interesting, because they often had up-and-comers helping out, trying new things. And of course they had some great actors. Feldman's always fun.

But it's a sign of things to come: witless sex dross.

And now, our pallid Lance Substitute:

The suspense begins to gather:

. . . and promptly dissipates again.

That'll do; see you tomorrow! Unless you skipped ahead. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, as I said yesterday. Or is it today to you? SHAME!