Up Pompeii (4½ Stars)

Up Pompeii!
Up Pompeii!
I never seem to get it all
Up Pompeii!

Pompeii, salute,
Naughty, naughty,
Up Pompeii.

Look at the way it is today,
It's getting out of hand,
There's no decorum
In the forum.
Depravity's surrounding me,
I don't know where to turn,
But give me time
And I'll soon learn.

Oh, "Lurcio!"
Always "Lurcio!"
Hang on a tick
While I touch up the prologue.

Up Pompeii!
Up Pompeii!
I'm always out to get it all
Up Pompeii!

Pompeii, salute,
Naughty, naughty,
Up Pompeii.

There's an awful lot
Who have gone to pot
And got an itch to roam,
You should see 'em
in the Colosseum.
And they're quite at home
In the Hippodrome,
You can choose who you prefer,
'cos Ben Him looks like Ben Hur.

Oh, Skulatio
Led Gelatio,
It may sound tame
With a Latin name,
But oh!

Up Pompeii!
Up Pompeii!
Why don't you come and get it all
Up Pompeii!

Pompeii, salute,
Naughty, naughty,
Up Pompeii.

---

This is a feature film based on the TV series with the same name that ran for 14 episodes from 1969 to 1970. Some of the actors have been changed in the film, but the main character is still Frankie Howerd as the slave Lurcio. It was one of the pinnacles of British comedy in the early 1970's. For many years some of the episodes were considered to have been lost, but after finding tapes stored in Canadian television studios the series is now complete.

The episodes followed the misadventures of the lowly slave Lurcio in the Roman city of Pompeii. While his master, the aged Senator Ludicrus Sextus, has beautiful women throwing themselves at him, poor Lurcio is always frustrated. Week after week he's promised something, but he never gets it. The show's theme song, which I've posted above, hints at this. Another recurring theme is that the viewer is teased with the promise of bare breasts, but they're never seen.

These two themes are missing in the film. Lurcio has a fellow slave, Scrubba, who is always offering herself to him, but he doesn't want her because she's too common.

Would you have turned her down? To me she's just as good looking as any noble woman of Rome. A slave like Lurcio should be happy with whatever he can get.

The other theme of withheld female breasts is missing, because it was possible to show nudity in the film that wasn't permissible on television in the early 1970's. Or was it? "The Adventures of Don Quick" was another comedy series in 1970, and it showed brief glimpses of nudity.

In this farcical film Lurcio is caught up in a plot to assassinate the Emperor Nero when he visits Pompeii. Lurcio bumps into a soldier at the market, and they both drop everything they're carrying. Lurcio accidentally takes the soldier's scroll, and the soldier takes Lurcio's cucumber. The scroll contains a list of the conspirators who want to kill Nero. Lurcio doesn't know what's on the scroll, because he can't read. He gives the scroll to his master, because he thinks it's the speech he wants to deliver in the forum.

Julie Ege plays Nero's wife Voluptua. She's a beautiful woman who deserves to be put on a pedestal, but she wasn't allowed to speak in the film. Her Norwegian accent was considered to be too strong to be understood, so her voice was dubbed.

The film also stars Madeline Smith as Erotica, the virginal daughter of Ludicrus and Ammonia. We get a brief glimpse of her bare breasts. Very brief. I might have given the film a full five star rating if we'd seen more of her. She was one of the most beautiful British actresses of the 1970's.

This is a hilarious film that lives up to the quality of the TV series. I strongly recommend it to anyone who loves vintage British comedy.