Come Back Peter (1969 film)
{{Short description|1969 British film by Donovan Winter}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox film
| name = Come Back Peter
| image = Come Back Peter.jpg
| caption = Film poster
| director = Donovan Winter
| producer = Donovan Winter
| writer = Donovan Winter
| starring = Christopher Matthews
| music =
| cinematography = Gus Coma
Ian D. Struthers
| editing = Donovan Winter
| studio = Donwin Productions
| distributor = Richard Schulman Entertainments
| released = {{Film date|1969}}
| runtime = 65 minutes
| language = English
| country = United Kingdom
| budget =
}}
Come Back Peter is a 1969 British sex comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Donovan Winter and starring Christopher Matthews.{{Cite web |title=Come Back Peter |url=https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/150006342 |access-date=28 October 2023 |website=British Film Institute Collections Search}} It was reissued in the UK with additional footage in 1976 under the title Some Like It Sexy.Simon Sheridan, Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, Titan Books, 2011, p. 63-64.{{Cite web|url=https://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=6300|title=Some Like It Sexy|first=Graeme|last=Clark|website=thespinningimage.co.uk|access-date=10 December 2024}}
Plot
Peter, a young Londoner, drives around town in a sports car delivering wrapped gifts to various women, with whom he has sexual encounters: a foreign au pair, a model, a high-class lady, incestuous twins, a blues singer, a cannabis-smoking hippie, and a girl next door from The Salvation Army. At the end of the film, Peter is revealed to be a butcher's delivery boy having sexual fantasies while driving his van. The butcher scolds Peter for daydreaming on the job.
Cast
{{Cast listing|
- Christopher Matthews as Peter
- Erika Bergmann as Lisa (the au pair)
- Penny Riley as Sue (the model)
- Yolande Turner as Mrs Beaufort-Smith
- Madeline Smith as Mrs Beaufort-Smith's daughter
- Valerie St. Helene as Cleo (the singer)
- Annabel Leventon as Creampuff (the hippie)
- Nicola Pagett as Jenny (the salvationist)
- Madeleine and Mary Collinson as the twins
}}
Critical response
Kine Weekly wrote: "The film is brightly dressed in the modern manner and the general unreal atmosphere of the plot is explained by the fantasy revelation at the end. The young man's adventures are with a variety of young women, but the sex is, of necessity, somewhat repetitious and the direction includes some annoyingly distracting technical gimmicks."{{Cite journal |date=6 February 1971 |title=Come Back Peter |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2600876304 |journal=Kine Weekly |volume=644 |issue=3304 |pages=22 |via=ProQuest}}
In The Monthly Film Bulletin Nigel Andrews wrote: "A charmless and flashy film which attempts to combine customary sex fare with evocations of Swinging London and a colourful cross-section of modern womanhood. But for all Donovan Winter's attempts to vary the menu, the appetite is soon cloyed by the monotony of the presentation. Each encounter is punctuated with a symbolic shot of a butcher cutting up meat; the dialogue is card-indexed according to social type ("Turn me on! Freak me out, man!" croons the hippie); and Christopher Matthews' change of wardrobe for each bird fails to alleviate the vulgar tedium of his adventures."{{Cite journal |date=1 January 1939 |title=Come Back Peter |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1305827503 |journal=The Monthly Film Bulletin |volume=19 |issue=216 |pages=109 |via=ProQuest}}
Variety said: "The picture which, at least, is short, really adds up to very little but may have a basic appeal to "swingers" and young Lotharios will roving eyes for birds."{{Cite journal |date=17 February 1971 |title=Come Back Peter |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1505762593 |journal=Variety |volume=242 |issue=1 |pages=18 |via=ProQuest}}
The film was negatively received by Derek Malcolm of The Guardian and Nina Hibbin of the Morning Star.{{Cite magazine|magazine=The Monthly Film Bulletin|title=Eight Critics on the Month's Films|date=March 1971|volume=38|number=446|publisher=British Film Institute}}
References
{{Reflist}}