Entertaining Mr Sloane (1970)
Directed by Douglas Hickox

Film Review

Judged on its own merits, the original film version of Entertaining Mr Sloane is something of a guilty pleasure - an amiably warped, often highly amusing sex comedy that succeeds on the quality of its script and the near-perfect comic rapport of the three lead actors.  As a pukka adaptation of one of the most scandalous stage plays of the 1960s, however, it falls somewhat short of what one may hope for.  When it was first performed, at the New Arts Theatre in London, in 1964, Joe Orton's debut stage play was met with a barrage of criticism from a section of the press who were outraged at the play's temerity to thrust such disgusting subjects as homosexuality and nymphomania (to say nothing of the idea of sharing a sexual partner) on an unsuspecting theatre audience.  Fortunately, the play also had plenty of supporters, the most prominent being the distinguished playwright Terence Rattigan, who liked it so much that he invested £3000 in the play when it transferred to the West End and went on to become a moderate success.   The dramatist Harold Pinter was another notable fan of the play, and he apparently drew on it for his subsequent (no less controversial) work The Homecoming.  Sloane's bristling notoriety immediately established Joe Orton as a playwright of considerable promise, although he would pen only two further stage plays - Loot and What the Butler Saw - (along with a handful of shorter plays for radio and television) before he was brutally murdered by his long-term friend and lover Kenneth Halliwell in August 1967.  (For an account of Orton's life we recommend John Lahr's excellent biography and the film it inspired, Prick Up Your Ears (1987)).

Joe Orton originally envisaged Entertaining Mr Sloane as a mischievous farce dealing with one of his principal concerns - the seedy reality that festers quietly beneath the curtain of propriety in contemporary British society.  Homosexuality was a subject that had never been presented so brazenly on the London stage, and whilst he was mindful to pass himself off as a divorced heterosexual at the time, Orton was in fact actively gay and had been in a secret homosexual relationship with Halliwell since 1951, not long after they met at RADA.  The reason why the subject was still so controversial, even at the height of the so-called 'Swinging Sixties', and why Orton was so reticent about disclosing his own sexual orientation to the public, was down to one of the cruellest injustices of the age - the homosexual act between men was a criminal offence, punishable with a life sentence in prison as late at the mid-1950s.  It wasn't until July 1967 - just two weeks before Orton's death, that homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, and it is this grim fact that underscores Orton's daring and bravado in including this immense social taboo in each of his three great plays.  What made Orton's handling of homosexuality so bold and innovative was his absolute insistence that all of the gay or bisexual characters in his plays be played as outwardly 'normal' men, avoiding the familiar crass stereotypical representations of gays (as mincing queens and flashy poseurs) that had become the accepted norm for this category of individual.  Joe Orton was trailblazing the gay liberation movement with his kinder, more authentic depiction of homosexual men, and it was with Entertaining Mr Sloane that he played a significant part in the normalisation and acceptance of gays in the UK.

With Madge Ryan, Dudley Sutton and Peter Vaughan (the originators of the roles of Kath, Sloane and Ed respectively) unavailable for the film adaptation,  another promising trio - Beryl Reid, Peter McEnery and Harry Andrews - were chosen in their stead, and they do a fairly decent job of reconstituting the distinctly seedy ménage-à-trois that Orton had conceived for the stage.  Reid enjoyed playing the part of Kath so much (it was a role that allowed her to play to her comic strengths) that she eagerly reprised it alongside Malcolm McDowell and Ronald Fraser in Roger Croucher's 1975 revival, originally performed as part of the Joe Orton Festival at the Royal Court Theatre in London.  Reid's pathetic man-hungry frump may lack the predatory vampiric qualities of Madge Ryan's original stage portrayal, but it has a subtle malevolence of its own which becomes increasingly apparent as the story builds to its shockingly outré climax.  Despite his slightly overdone brummy accent (a not-so-subtle nod to Orton's East Midlands working class origins) Peter McEnery makes a suitably venal Sloane, not quite the passively manipulative wolf-in-lamb's clothing that Orton had originally intended, but still a subtly chilling portrayal of the opportunistic psychopath hidden in the body of a seductive Adonis.  Harry Andrews as Ed is the cast member who is best-served by Clive Exton's judiciously cut-down version of Orton's original script and consequently delivers the most well-rounded and credible performance, Ed's closet homosexuality revealing itself with a barbed poignancy that is not nearly as apparent in the stage play.  This emerges in the film's most memorable sequence in which the picture cuts repeatedly between between Ed's attentive gaze (growing increasingly lustful)  and a lingering close-up of exposed male flesh as Sloane lies languorously, practically stark naked, on his bed (looking like the crucified Christ in one intensely erotic shot).  The homoerotic charge is extraordinarily potent in this scene and, like a mouth-watering hors d'oeuvre, prepares us for the banquet of lubricious fun to come in later scenes of the film, culminating in Sloane's final submission to his fate when he is caught in a classic Orton double bind to become a timeshare rent boy (a preferable life sentence to the only alternative - imprisonment for the vicious murder of Kath's elderly father).

The film was ably directed by Douglas Hickox, who had previously found considerable success as a director of television commercials.  Entertaining Mr Sloane was the first film Hickox made for his newly founded production company Canterbury Films.  His subsequent successes include such diverse offerings as Theatre of Blood (1973), Brannigan (1975), Sky Riders (1976) and Zulu Dawn (1979).  Sloane also has the distinction of being the first of Joe Orton's plays to make it onto the big screen (it had been adapted for UK television in 1968, with Sheila Hancock, Edward Woodward and Clive Francis in the lead roles).  It was followed a few months later by Silvio Narizzano's somewhat botched adaptation of Loot, the play that won Orton the Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year in 1966.

Assisted by Clive Exton's well-honed script (which sticks rigorously close to Orton's play, losing only a few lines of significance), Hickox departs from the claustrophobic feel of the original play and includes exterior sequences that gently pep up the flow of the narrative and add to the film's visual appeal - although the inclusion of a ghastly pink Pontiac convertible is an unwanted touch of camp that Orton would have utterly loathed if he had seen the film.  An ironically upbeat musical interlude halfway through the film, a song interpreted by Georgie Fame, adds to the sugary sixties charm of the piece, without detracting from the simmering malevolence that gradually takes over in the film's second half, as a recognisably  Ortonesque mix of murderous mayhem and sexual depravity propel the narrative to a suitably sick ending in which the three main characters each gets what he deserves (including an impromptu gay marriage).  For the Orton purists, this shamelessly camped-up, sitcom-style re-interpretation of an infamous stage classic may not quite live up to expectations, but as a piece of late-sixties kitsch it has plenty to delight a nostalgically minded spectator.  It's as good an entry into the deliriously madcap world of Joe Orton as any.

Film Synopsis

As she passes through the graveyard that adjoins her house in the suburbs, Kath, a middle-aged single woman, encounters a devilishly handsome young man named Sloane.  On hearing that the attractive youngster is having problems with his present landlady Kath invites him to live with her at her home, which she shares with her cantankerous, virtually blind father, Kemp.  No sooner has Sloane taken up residence in Kath's house than he becomes an object of interest for Kath's brother Ed, a successful businessman with a bright pink convertible.  Warning Sloane against Kath's lustful intentions for him, Ed persuades him to work for him as his chauffeur, a job that comes with a fetching all-leather uniform.  It has yet to be revealed that Kath is already pregnant, as a result of Sloane's willingness to be seduced by her.  The one person who does not succumb to the interloper's youthful charms is Kemp, who recognises him as the villain who murdered his former employer.  To keep this a secret, Sloane has no choice but to kill Kemp, but in doing so he ends up being blackmailed by both Kath and Ed into a sexual contract from which there is no escape.