Alex Coppel is best known for his marvellous screenplay to 'Captain's Paradise' and his 'contribution' to 'Vertigo'. By all accounts he wrote a play called 'Chip, chip, chip.' One wonders where it was staged, if at all and who was in it!
He and Denis Norden have adapted it for this film directed by someone named Rod Amateau, an ex-stunt double most of whose directorial work was confined to the wonderful world of television.
Professor Alex Bolt is shocked to discover that the penis on the eighteen foot statue done of him by his renowned sculptress wife which is about to go on public display is decidedly not his own. He then embarks on an odyssey to discover whose amazing appendage it is and consequently behaves like a perfect dick, if you'll pardon the pun.
The actual premiss of the film is amusing and it begins rather well but alas quickly degenerates into an infantile, puerile and embarassing mess with the occasional funny line.
The outraged husband is played by David Niven who didn't make a decent film post 1963. Cinema goers tend only to remember the good ones which is just as well but as always he is saved by his immense charm. Robert Vaughn convinces as a slimy, opportunistic politician and as the sculptress Virna Lisi's smoky voice makes this viewer go weak at the knees. John Cleese is his customary forced, one-dimensional self. Ann Bell is haughty but naughty as Niven's assistant.
A fellow reviewer has very astutely noted a possible connection between this plot and the infamous Argyll divorce case of the early 1960's. The identity of the 'headless man' in the incriminating polaroid has never been truly established. It certainly wasn't Niven but by an amazing coincidence he had slept with the future 'Dirty Duchess' of Argyll when she was just fifteen which resulted in a secretly and speedily aborted pregnancy and they remained good friends until his death. Messrs. Coppel and Norden may or may not have drawn inspiration from the high society scandal but if they did the irony would certainly not have been lost on Mr. Niven.
The ultimate absurdity is when Niven's character discovers that the offending part has been copied from Michelangelo's 'David'. Although one of the greatest works of Renaissance sculpture, its genitalia is, in my humble opinion, nothing to write home about!
All-in-all a rather silly film that comes up short!
