Yet, while the film is entertaining enough and quite funny at times, it never takes off and this is no doubt because this is the sixties and Forbes decided to interpret Stevenson’s novel not only as a satire about the British establishment – with digs at the army, the police, the empire, the class system and so on – but also a farce that takes aim at British morés, particularly those that relate to sexual repression.
While there is satire in Stevenson’s novel – Stevenson, the conservative, displays considerable snobbery for the working classes and their burgeoning class consciousness – there is little of the simpering sexual innuendo of the film and Forbes adds nothing to the story by putting it there, other than suggesting we are watching a more upscale Carry On romp.
Stevenson’s novel was well received at the time, with Rudyard Kipling saying that while reading the novel, he ‘laughed over it dementedly. That man [Stevenson] has only one lung but he makes you laugh with all your whole inside’; though the film was a flop on release, Michale Caine explaining this by suggesting: ‘The film shows us [British] exactly as the world sees us – as eccentric, charming and polite – but the British knew better that they were none of these things, and it embarrassed us.’
