Adventures of a Private Eye

Plot

When private eye Judd Blake goes away he leaves his novice assistant Bob West to look after the business. Suspecting beautiful client Laura Sutton is being blackmailed, Bob goes after the villain – with hilarious results.

Critical reception

Monthly Film Bulletin said " 'I've seen all the sex films, you know', says the suburban housewife who abandons her apron for black leather and subsequently quotes titles both real and spurious – Last Tango in Paris, Deep Throat, Nuns in Rubber. Had she been watching British films, however, she would doubtless still be properly dressed, for film-makers here prefer to avoid all direct contact with explicit sex. Adventures of a Private Eye is highly symptomatic: we see nothing of the heroine's compromising photographs, though the director grants us unrevealing glimpses of the British Rail station at West Byfleet and ITV's crime hound Shaw Taylor. Instead, the audience is titillated by unimaginative lashings of 'saucy' humour, delivered by a well-tried cast. It must be said, however, that this specimen is slightly above par for the genre. Newcomer Christopher Neil is lively and natural, while the script's incoherent lurchings and botched attempts at parody at least provide a kind of entertainment."

Marjorie Bilbow wrote in Screen International: "All very bright and breezy, with enough attractive nudes to keep Dad happy without making Mum feel challenged by the nubile perfections of adolescence. The sex comedy element keeps safely within the British boundaries of the all-talk womaniser who is the seduced rather than the seducer. The comedy crime is enlivened with dialogue ranging from the mildly amusing to the very funny sketches that introduce Irene Handl and Fred Emney – both of whom know how to milk the most out of every word – and Adrienne Posta's nice send-up of Liza Minnelli. The plot, for all its incoherence and zig-zagging to get in all the familiar faces, has more rhyme and reason than most sex comedies but winds down to a weak ending and a limply desperate postscript. Good fun, but only the nudes and the heaving buttocks which so discreetly suggest copulation date the film as a product of today. We even meet our oldest friend the plain girl who becomes attractive when she takes her specs off."

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 1/5 stars, writing: "Following on from the surprisingly profitable Adventures of a Taxi Driver, this smutty romp sticks to the same formula. Christopher Neil, in the title role, strips at regular intervals to satisfy a blackmailer's demand that he sleep with every pretty girl he meets. Comic stalwarts aside, this is really no more than soft-core pulp."