What went wrong with this would be satire of a newly commissioned Guards officer who soon finds the routine and social life tiresome and meaningless and is seduced into aiding a group of bourgeois revolutionaries? Well, apart from a rotten title, neither the script, adapted from director Andrew Sinclair's decade old novel, nor the direction are sharp enough and Richard Warwick's Bumbo is just too bland, making it difficult to care that much about him. And the feeble mockery of the establishment, in the form the Guards and their regimental rituals falls flat. There are compensations though, starting with Joanna Lumley as rich fun radical Suzie. Looking absolutely stunning, being particularly memorable in red mock snakeskin trousers, she gives a confident vivacious performance throughout, and the movies' prompt disappearance must have been a setback to her. I'm not sure how she'd regard it today though. Incidentally, at around the same time she made a sitcom with the wonderful title 'It's Awfully Bad For Your Eyes Darling' written by Jilly Cooper. Does it still exist? I presume John Bird was supposed to be an American; anyway he's quite funny, not always intentionally so. Better performances come from Donald Pickering as Bumbo's supercilious superior officer and Don McKillop and Derek Newark as the R.S.M. and C.S.M. respectively. There's a quite witty ditty 'Red is London' sung over the opening credits by Joan Hart, and a glimpse of the Chelsea crowd at Stamford Bridge in the 69-70 season, as well as footage of the Grosvenor Square rioters in 1968, now in some quarters, mocked and derided themselves.
The bottom line is, botched as it may be, this is quite watchable, and I'm sure some will love it, particularly if they're fans of Joanna Lumley and 'swinging sixties' movies. I've seen worse films, and in an era where double features were still the norm, its prompt withdrawal remains a mystery.