A Promise of Bed

Shot in less than three weeks for just £8,500. Despite the presence of Victor Spinetti and a remarkably youthful-looking John Bird and an onscreen caption introducing the film as "A Trilogy of Comedy", Derek Ford's debut British feature is throughout more melancholy than funny. (Most of the men are lonely, and Spinetti is discovered about to commit suicide at the start of his episode). Ford and his brother Donald were well-connected socially, hence the presence of some actresses with respectable c.v.s already behind them like Alexandra Bastedo and Valerie Leon; and their use of a millionaire's home in the Chevreuse Valley, just south of Paris, in which unfolds a bizarre fantasy in Day-Glo colours resembling the work of a heterosexual Kenneth Anger embellished with psychedelic musical effects.

Of the women the late Vanda Hudson - already washed up and making her final film appearance - registers most strongly in a tale reminiscent of Colette in which she initiates virginal young photographer Dennis Waterman after he confesses that there's no film in his camera. Of all the females on show the ripe Ms Hudson displays the most flesh, but like the other women in the film mostly she cavorts in a series of provocative outfits for Waterman's delectation rather than actually does a striptease.