The basic plot is a very old story indeed. An innocent young girl from the country goes to the big city (in this case London) in search of fame and fortune and doesn’t find exactly what she hoped to find. In this movie she’s accompanied by a young man who also has dreams of making his fortune in London. These were old old clichés even in1970 but this movie adds some really intriguing spins. This is a movie that consistently avoids going in the direction you expect.
We start off in a typical small English village. The young man is butcher’s apprentice Joe (Robin Askwith). His fantasy is to work in a fancy car dealership in London, selling sports cars. The young woman is Carol (Janet Lynn). She pumps petrol in the local garage. She dreams of fame and glamour.
Joe is not exactly her boyfriend. They’re friends and maybe there’s some romantic attraction but it hasn’t gone very far. That all changes on the train to London when Carol seduces Joe.
Joe finds that you don’t just walk into a job in an exclusive luxury car dealership. You need to have the right qualifications. Mostly you need to have gone to the right school and you need the right upper-class accent.
Carol has more luck. She has real prospects of landing a modelling job. In the meantime they’re flat broke. Carol and Joe are rather pragmatic. The easiest way to get some quick cash would be for Carol to turn a few tricks. Which she does. She doesn’t particularly like doing it but she doesn’t really mind it and at least they now have money for food.
Various opportunities open up for Carol. She gets modelling work, including nude modelling. She appears in a hardcore sex film (with Joe as her co-star). She becomes a highly paid call girl. The money is now rolling in.
Of course you know what’s going to happen. It’s all going to turn into a nightmare for Carol and she’ll end up in the pit of degradation and despair. But that’s not what happens. I won’t tell you exactly what does happen but it’s an example of Walker’s determination in this film to avoid the obvious.
Around 1970 film censorship in Britain was finally starting to loosen up just a little but it was still necessary to tread very carefully. As a result this movie is fairly tame. There’s a small amount of nudity (including a brief flash of frontal nudity). There are some fairly non-graphic simulated sex scenes. Compared to British movies made just a year or two later it qualifies as very tame.
In the late 60s there were a number of British films that form a sub-genre we could call sexploitation misery. They’re like the incredibly depressing British kitchen sink dramas of the early to mid 60s with the addition of a very small amount of nudity but with the same message of utter despair. Their message is that having sex only leads to unhappiness so you might as well just throw yourself in front of a bus now and get it over with. Her Private Hell (1968) and Permissive (1970) are excellent examples. Cool It, Carol! definitely does not belong in that sub-genre. It’s not in the least judgmental and it’s not interested in guilt or misery.
It also does not fit into the classic early to mid 70s British sex comedy genre. It does have some very funny moments but it’s not the broad humour we associate with British sex comedies. There is no slapstick. Cool It, Carol! is a million miles away in feel from Confessions of a Window Cleaner. This is subtler more sophisticated humour.
If you only know Robin Askwith from the Confessions movies you’re in for a shock. He is very funny at times here but it’s a semi-comic performance with some moments that require serious acting, which he handles with surprising skill.
Janet Lynn is terrific. She avoids all the acting clichés you expect given the basic plot outline. She plays Carol as a girl totally lacking in self-pity. She is not a tragic character. Sometimes bad things happen to her but she shrugs her shoulders and moves on.
This movie is a succession of surprises. I’m not talking about clever plot twists but rather surprises in terms of the characters. There’s not a single character in the movie who is merely a stock character type or a mere stereotype. Characters are introduced and we think they’re going to be stereotypical but they turn out not to be.
There is for example the guy who makes the hardcore movies in which Carol appears, and the pimp whom they encounter. We assume they’re going to be the sleazy villains of the piece, corrupting Carol, but they aren’t really. They don’t use blackmail or threats to induce her to do anything (at no time in the entire movie is Carol forced to do anything). They offer her certain amounts of money and they pay her. They might seem a bit sleazy but they deal fairly with her. That’s not what you expect in this genre.
The two main characters are exceptionally interesting. They’re innocent by big city standards, but they’re not babes in the wood. Carol isn’t an innocent virgin. Right from the start she has a totally relaxed attitude towards sex. It just isn’t that big a deal for her. She doesn’t feel degraded or exploited being a prostitute or doing a hardcore film. It’s just sex. Joe acts as her pimp but he doesn’t exploit her. They’re not madly in love with each other but they are fond of each other. They are not corrupted by anything that happens to them. They started out as nice young kids and they remain nice young kids.
This was an incredibly radical approach for a British sex film to take in 1970. It’s almost as if sex is just a normal part of life rather than being wrong and dirty.
The first thing you notice about the 88 Films Blu-Ray transfer is that it’s slightly grainy. Whoever was responsible for the restoration had enough sense to realise that the grain is supposed to be there. It adds to the atmosphere. The Blu-Ray is packed with extras. Cool It, Carol! is very highly recommended.
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