The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins – 1971 | 107 mins | Comedy | Colour

Plot Synopsis

A sorry collection of seven burlesque sketches spoofing the Seven Deadly Sins: Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Sloth and Wrath. A follow-up the mildly entertaining Simon Simon (1970), director Graham Stark once again recruits a band of famous friends from television to appear in comic cameos but the result is a laboriously scripted series of sketches that fail to raise a smile.

The first sin is Avarice, and the sketch follows harassed chauffeur Bruce Forsyth, with the assistance of engineer Bernard Bresslaw, searching through London’s sewers for his employers lost 50p. Things don’t improve with the second sketch Envy. Harry Seacombe tries incessantly to purchase the plush house of his pools-winning wife’s dreams but is continually rejected by owners Geoffrey Bayldon and June Whitefield. The third sketch, Gluttony, was scripted by noted writers Graham Chapman and Barry Cryer, but even the casting of Leslie Phillips can’t save this weak skit. The fourth sketch, Lust, was written by Stark and based on a Marty Feldman story. The bittersweet skit follows love-starved Cockney bachelor Harry H. Corbett heading ‘up west’ to get a girl.

The yarns finally improve with the concluding three. Pride, features Ian Carmichael and Alfie Bass in a Galton and Simpson penned episode illustrating class warfare when a Rolls-Royce and a clapped out Morris meet head on in a narrow country lane and both drivers refuse to give way. The penultimate story, Sloth, is a wacky homage to the silent film period written by Spike Milligan, and features a a series of unrelated gags that evoke memories of his Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film (1959). The final sketch, Wrath, is a blackly comic tale of elderly gents Ronald Fraser and Arthur Howard plotting to murder cantankerous park-keeper Stephen Lewis.