Wilt

1989
15
1h 32m

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

1.2K

YOUR RATING

An unlucky lecturer's wife goes missing and he's accused of her murder.

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Comedy Crime

An unlucky lecturer's wife goes missing and he's accused of her murder.An unlucky lecturer's wife goes missing and he's accused of her murder.An unlucky lecturer's wife goes missing and he's accused of her murder.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

1.2K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Wilt was the first in a loose series of satirical novels featuring the character Henry Wilt written by Tom Sharpe; the others in the series were The Wilt Alternative, Wilt On High, Wilt in Nowhere and the Wilt Inheritance.

Goofs
In the restaurant scene towards the beginning of the movie, when The Wilts are having dinner, the waitress comes in and asks if anyone has a 'Y' registration Cavalier and Henry gets up, however, later shots of the same car show it to be an 'X' registration car.

Quotes
[Henry bursts into the church, to find the vicar trying to strangle Eva]
Henry Wilt: Now you listen here, if anyone's going to murder my wife, it's going to be me!

Alternate versions
A near identical version exists for TV broadcast that replaces all the strong profanity (such as the F word) with milder swear words such as 'bloody'. Closer examination shows that these scenes do not appear dubbed indicating that during filming some scenes were specially filmed again using the milder language. This version was broadcast on ITV in the UK in the 1990s and as this film was co-financed by an ITV network (LWT) this would appear to indicate that these changes were planned well in advance with television screenings in mind.

Connections
Referenced in The James Whale Radio Show: Entertainment? (1991)

Soundtracks
Love Hurts
Written by Felice Bryant and Boudleaux Bryant
Performed by Leo Sayer
Produced by Anne Dudley and Ted Hayton for Buffalo Music Ltd.
Published by Acuff-Rose Opryland Music Ltd.

User reviews12

Review

Featured review

8/10

The Swaffham Chainsaw Massacre

Attempts to launch TV comedians on the big screen are usually about as appetising as cold sago, but this adaptation of Tom Sharpe's novel generally manages to buck that trend.

Gryff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith both play characters who have professionally reached an impasse: Jones plays a grade 2 humanities lecturer whose been reduced to teaching Liberal Studies to football hooligans at the University of Mid Anglia, while Smith plays a frustrated detective who yearns to nail Jones as the Swaffham Stranger.

Like countless British comedies of yore the film affords the pleasure of plenty of familiar faces (including a strikingly young and slim Roger Allam), although the four-letter words are rather out of place (and I don't recall Charles Hawtrey ever sharing the screen with an inflatable doll).