Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977) - film review

Timmy Lea and his brother-in-law Sidney Noggett appear to have finally found their metier as entertainment officers at Funfrall holiday camp.  But their easy life is scuppered when the camp is taken over by a new manager, Mr Whitemonk, a former prison officer who intends to instil some discipline into his staff whilst livening things up for the campers.   Timmy gets into his new boss’s good books by suggesting the camp should stage a beauty contest.  Unfortunately, the contestants think they can improve their chances of winning by making Timmy an offer he can’t refuse...

The Confessions films had well and truly run out of steam by the time they got to this, the fourth and final instalment in the series.  It’s a close thing but this mindless mix of tedious slapstick and tacky erotica just manages to beat Carry on Emmannuelle to the position of worst British film comedy ever - it even succeeds in making the pretty dire Holiday on the Buses (1973) look respectable.  Plans to make a further two Confessions films were permanently shelved when interest in low budget sex comedies of this ilk took a sudden nosedive in the late 1970s - thank God.

What contributes to this being one of unfunniest comedies of all time is its reliance on gags that have overt racial and homophobic overtones.  It’s incredible to think that these jokes were ever funny; in our more enlightened times, they are more likely to turn your stomach than make you laugh.  As for the theme song, which is spiritedly rendered by The Wurzels (of I am a Cider Drinker fame), this merely sounds like a rejected anthem for the British National Party, a bovver boy translation of Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.  No doubt about it, Confessions from a Holiday Camp marks the absolute nadir of British cinema and it deserves to be buried in an unmarked grave, preferably on some lifeless world  in the far-flung reaches of the galaxy.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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