White Cargo (1973) User Reviews

Forgotten cult comedy with a future megastar

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 15 October 2015]

WHITE CARGO is, if you will, a scuzzy, British comedy version of THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, with a then-unknown David Jason taking on the role of the cowardly guy who dreams himself to be a superhero. Before long, what do you know, he's found himself involved in a plot involving spies and a criminal gang, and he has to beat the odds to get the ladies and win the day.

Made during the scuzzy early 1970s and scripted by the almost-legendary David McGillivray (FRIGHTMARE), this is an oddly tame entry into the British sex comedy genre that turns out to have no sex and very little nudity in it. Don't get me wrong, there are some lovely ladies present here - including the tragic Imogen Hassall, in a central role - but not much is actually done with them, apart from using them as window dressing.

The quality of WHITE CARGO is pretty low, but the presence of Jason lifts it from obscurity and he can be relied on to give a good performance at the very least. There's also a nice role for Dave Prowse (HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN), who starts out as a strip club bouncer but gets a more substantial role later on. Inevitably, WHITE CARGO is dated and largely unfunny, but as a snapshot of its era it works a treat.

You've gotta start somewhere!

[d-shilling-1 · 3/10 · 7 April 2021]

A terrible movie, it really is but it's funny to think it stars probably Britain's biggest sitcom star and movies most notorious villain!

White Cargo

[Prismark10 · 3/10 · 19 April 2024]

Director Ray Selfe was better known for saucy comedies. This movie was originally meant to be a vehicle for The Goodies.

They wisely bailed out, especially as they wrote their own material and were known more comedy aimed at kids.

With a young David Jason. This is an inept comedy, badly written with a little sauciness.

Albert (David Jason) is a civil servant who fantasises that he is a superspy. He ends up in a strip club and stumbles into a scheme where white women are sold as sex slaves to arabs.

At times the movie looks like a series of long sketches with fantasy sequences. It is cheaply made and not that funny.

The only note of interest is the casting of David Jason and Dave Prowse.

In response to Egham 1

[p-halley · 31 March 2010]

Imogen Hassall died in 1980. The film is a typical account of early 70's British 'comedy' in the same genre or style as Rentadick (Richard Beckinsale) and Tiffany Jones (Ray Brooks). I enjoy these films foremost because of the era they were made in, i.e. not the plot/acting abilities or other normal qualities sought after in a film.The surrounding scenery and buildings/cars act as a filmed portrait of 'how Britain looked then'-quite a lot more uncluttered and somewhat simpler way of life. I also enjoy seeing well known household names in the beginnings of their careers.To me these odd movies are equally as watchable, if not more so than the popular hit movies/t.v series which will be repeated for ever more. Another odd film like these is The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as we know it (John Cleese/Arthur Lowe). What these offbeat films do is show the viewer a somewhat different side to an actor that you may think you already know well, from their well-known creations.

Could still be tolerated at the right time

[grunsel · 2/10 · 11 March 2005]

Forget the plot, this film has one purpose only now and that is as a record of just how lovely Imogen Hassell was. The film itself is not an exception in being tedious or embarrassing, in-fact its part of the norm of early 1970s British Comedy Films. The common factor in all these films is, it appears that the director is out to lunch or maybe even gone home all together? The result is you have various egos struggling to steal the scenes with puerile skits and maybe even adding their two pence worth to the script? That is not say it is not watchable, it is at a certain time of day and is still a reminder of perhaps more innocent times?, and therefore something you can sit and watch with all the family,while your having an argument about something else.

Frighteningly bad British comedy

[SnoopyStyle · 2/10 · 16 February 2015]

Albert Toddey (David Jason) is a homely lonely guy. He goes to a strip club and rescues Stella from a thug. Or did he? She takes him home and tells him that girls have been disappearing. Two men comes and snatches away the girl while Albert is in the other room. He finds a note with Arabic writing. He continues to search for the missing stripper while his daydreams keep getting into the way. There are two bumbling immigration agents investigating Albert and the disappearances. The girls are being sold into white slavery to the middle east.

This is frighteningly bad. It's suppose to be a comedy to somebody but I couldn't tell you who that audience would be. I guess this was the state of British comedy at the time. Imogen Hassall is the only compelling personality in this. David Jason is playing too dumb and too pathetic. None of it struck me as being funny. I was interested in seeing the girls get rescued which kept me watching until the end. But I wasn't happy about it. It's a short movie and I couldn't wait for it to end after an hour. The last section is one bad slapstick after another. I made it to the end and I'm giving that a 2.

Can it get any worse?

[egham1 · 2/10 · 4 April 2006]

There was one reason, and one reason only, that I watched this film (in 2006) and that was because David Jason, everyone's favourite British TV sit-com star, was in it. He must cringe every time this film is mentioned! The plot is awful, the acting is awful and the sets (such as they are)are low budget. I have given this 2 because there are one or two genuinely funny moments but the overall score should be minus one! I'm sure that (in 1973) the attractive ladies (with attractive bosoms!) would have a stimulating effect but nowadays, nope! Imogen Hassall, a lovely lady who decorated many a cinema screen, must also look at this with horror. Having said all this, I'm sure David and Imogen were laughing all the way to the bank! Don't bother to watch it.

David Jason's steely-haired, erstwhile Bond cuts quite a diminutive dash!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 7/10 · 1 October 2021]

This unrepentantly ribald, pratfall-laden 70s farce is curiously under-documented, and in the rare occasions it is discussed, the film is summarily dismissed as though an especially ill tempered Tom Cat! Which is somewhat surprising, as this rather jocular, low-rent Walter Mitty-esque fable has a deliciously whimsical performance from future national treasure David Jason as the daydreaming drip Albert Toddey, whose frequently lurid flights of fancy usually take the suave form of his sexy, nattily attired,super Stoic, super spy alter ego, adored by women, greatly feared by all mortal men, but in his dour, day-to-day reality, this diminutive dolt, while yearning for adventure inadvertently finds himself in the heady midst of a ludicrously far-fetched, back of a match-book plot of cartoonishly cackling villainy, and their rather unsophisticated flesh-peddling racket. 'White Cargo' is undeniably silly, and for the most part, it is entirely intentional, David Jason's steely-haired, erstwhile Bond cuts quite a dash, and his fluency with physical comedy has a keen, Buster Keaton vibrancy, and the estimable comedian is vigorously supported by brawny cult hero David Prowse, and fellow 'The Saint' alumnus, the no less statuesque Imogen Hassell is a buxom joy to behold! While frequent Pete Walker collaborator David McGillvray's episodic script sometimes lacks finesse, it nonetheless keeps things moving along with noisome alacrity, and the pleasingly sprightly score by David 'Shatter' Lindup is certainly a jaunty enough affair. While 'White Cargo' is, perhaps, a little over burdened with mediocrity it still proves to be more fun than some might have led you to believe.

Albert's Follies

[gavcrimson · 8 June 2002]

SPOILERS INCLUDED

Albert (Jason- who also narrates) escapes his dreary life as a civil servant in 1970's suburbia by daydreaming. Mostly he imagines himself as a suave, dapper dressed super agent, although we also see him as a schoolboy discovering ‘girls weren't just boys with longer hair and prettier legs'. By the looks of things he's not had much luck since. Albert finds himself in Soho, among a typically rowdy crowd at a strip-club. Whereas the majority of the audience's eyes are on the obvious, Albert spots a stripper (Imogen Hassall) being given a hard time offstage and is soon back to daydreaming again. In his fantasy world he's a superman, charging the stage, beating the bad guys and saving the stripper-in-distress. In realty, his actions cause him to be mistaken for a bottom feeler, flung around like a rag doll, and kicked out of the club along with Hassall's stripper (at the time Hassall was thanking her lucky stars she'd just missed out on being cast in Zeta One, but further typecasting in limiting bimbo roles would later take their toll with tragic consequences).

It transpires that the club is a front for a White Slave ring- with the strippers destined to be sold on to an Oil Sheik when they wear out their welcome in old Soho. Not long after Hassall has shared this information with Albert she ends up kidnapped and he ends up in a pink dress. Two bowler hat wearing civil servants (in fact special branch officers), prove less than useful in Albert's subsequent quest to find the missing stripper, which leads him to Supervillian Mr Fox and his cronies which include the odd couple of Dave Prowse and Sue Bond. Prowse before he was the Green Cross Code Man or Frankenstein's Monster from Hell is the archetypical strongman cum heavy, made to look a real Goliath against the diminutive Albert. While as Prowse's floozy girlfriend Bond knowingly exploits the buxom blonde looks which would keep her in exploitation film and sit-com work for most of the Seventies.

Albert imagines himself leading a one man siege on Fox's grange, smashing the white slave ring and rescuing the strippers who've been chained up horror film style in the cellar. But the real world again proves to be less fanciful as Albert's invasion on the abode only leaves him without his freedom and his trousers. He, Hassall, Bond (whose fallen out of favour with Prowse) and the rest of the strippers end up in the back of a van on their way to the Middle East. ‘I had two lines in Pull ‘em Down Gently tomorrow' protests Bond ‘my first major movie'. Only in the final act of slapstick- set at a shipping yard- does bumbling Albert finally get to save the day in reality.

Judging by a 1991 article by White Cargo's co-writer David McGillivray (whose name is spelt wrong in the credits) the making of this tame comedy- shot as ‘Albert's Follies'- was more of a comedy of errors than that which befalls its hero. The comedy trio who the film was written for jumped ship, the actors playing the civil servants started writing bigger parts for themselves, a foreign backer wanted sex scenes, and distributor Border Films chopped roughly thirty minutes from the running time in order to slot the film onto the B side of a sexploitation double-bill.

What's up on screen never lets you forget its second feature origins, but remains pleasant enough. Competent action scenes, Jason's immediately likeable everyman hero and cheap paperback themes like White slavery and Soho strippers, all see the film through it's drastically reduced (62 minute) running time. Whether the sexploitation audience who the film was marketed at- presented with a sex film without sex, and a film about strippers in which nobody removes clothing- were as generous or forgiving is another matter. A last ditch attempt to up the ‘AA' certificate, by shooting an 11th hour nude scene with Sue Bond came to nought after her boyfriend objected. To quote her Secrets of Sex character ‘not for all the coffee in China' could Sue go topless for this gig and the best poor Ray Selfe got was a shot of her bare back. The same year she did lose her top and simulated sex with Father Christmas in the epic length ‘O Lucky Man!' Although in all fairness Lindsay Anderson probably paid better.

Never released on video, White Cargo is regularity dusted down by late night television on account of its very young looking, pre-fame leading man.

Mister Fantastic

[richardchatten · 6/10 · 10 June 2022]

Sir David is unlikely to thank if you mention this reminder of his wilderness years between 'Do Not Adjust Your Set' and his guest role in 'Porridge', but this silly little farce provides him with a showy part in an actual movie. It also provides a poignant reminder of the lovely but ill-fated Imogen Hassell; it's one major liability being the dreadful music.