The Naked Truth (1957) Terry-Thomas & Peter Sellers

The Naked Truth (1957) Terry-Thomas & Peter Sellers

IMDb rating: 6.9
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050749
SAMPLE file included

The Naked Truth is a 1957 British film comedy starring Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers and Dennis Price. Peggy Mount, Shirley Eaton and Joan Sims also appear. It was produced and directed by Mario Zampi and written by Michael Pertwee.

Plot

Nigel Dennis (Dennis Price) is a blackmailer who threatens to publish embarrassing secrets in his magazine The Naked Truth. After attempting to blackmail a famous scientist (who commits suicide), and an MP (who suffers a heart attack in parliament, and probably succumbs), his latest targets are Lord Henry Mayley (Terry-Thomas), television host Sonny MacGregor (Peter Sellers), writer Flora Ransom (Peggy Mount), and model Melissa Right (Shirley Eaton).

Several of them decide independently that murder would be a better solution than paying. However, it is Mayley who by sheer bad luck nearly ends up the victim of both MacGregor's and Ransom's schemes. The four eventually join forces and try again. That attempt also fails, but Dennis is then arrested for an earlier crime.

When Dennis threatens to reveal all at his trial, Mayley comes up with a scheme to break him out of prison and send him to South America, with the help of hundreds of Dennis's other victims. They phone in numerous fake calls for help, distracting the London police, while Mayley, MacGregor, and MacGregor's reluctant assistant Porter (Kenneth Griffith), disguised as policemen, whisk Dennis away.

Knocking Dennis unconscious periodically, they finally end up in the cabin of a blimp on the way to a rendezvous with an outbound ship. To their dismay, when he comes to, Dennis refuses to go along with their plan, as he in fact never wanted to reveal any of their secrets in court. He was, in fact, winning the trial anyway. He reveals the evidence was his copies of "The Naked Truth" which were destroyed by the plotters earlier, unintentionally freeing Dennis of all charges. Unaware of where he is, and happy to have outsmarted his opponents again, he then steps out for some air and plummets to the ocean below. When MacGregor celebrates by shooting his pistol, it punctures the blimp, which comically shoots away into the distance.

Review

Celebrities hate them, politicians fear them and athletes despise them - the tabloids! Starring comic genius Peter Sellers, this "hilarious satire" (The Film Daily) proves that victims of slander can get their sweet revenge. Full of "high levity" (Cue), The Naked Truth is nothing short of an "attack on the funny bone" (Variety)! The publisher of The Naked Truth (Dennis Price) has been blackmailing prominent Londoners by threatening to print shocking stories about them. Actor Sonny MacGregor (Sellers), a prime target, figures the only way to stop him is to kill him! A master of disguises, Sonny repeatedly attempts to stop the poison press. But it looks like he'll need help from a band of unlikely assassins - those also scandalised on the rag's front page!

In 1957's The Naked Truth, Terry-Thomas plays a peer of the realm being blackmailed in the company of Peter Sellers, Peggy Mount, and Shirley Eaton by a gutter-press journalist, Dennis Price ("Don't try to appeal to my better nature, because I haven't one"). One fascinating element in this picture is the portrayal of those relationships that could be only suggested in a period of tighter censorship, such as Peter Sellers's TV personality and Kenneth Griffith as his dresser, whose gay relationship is only faintly etched in here. More overt is the characterisation of a masculine-looking authoress, known only by her initials, but sporting Agatha Christie's hairdo. The moments of slapstick are brought off to a tee, as when the larger-than-life Peggy Mount attempts a suicide drop from her window to be saved by an awning on a shop front. --Adrian Edwards

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tags: British, comedy, crime, 50s