Jane and the Lost City (1987)

"Do you mean... the Empire should rally to the flag?"

Blimey. This film is… a bit of an oddity. I borrowed the DVD from a mate after being told that it starred both Sam Jones, star of Flash Gordon, and Jasper Carrott. Any film starring that combination just has to be seen. And it is in fact rather amusing. But I'm somewhat bewildered at how a film like this ever came to be made!

The Jane in question is the star of an old comic strip from the Daily Mirror which ran during the Second World War and was exceedingly popular with the average Tommy, mainly because Jane's gimmick was that she kept accidentally losing her clothes. Yes, I know- political correctness gone mad. One wonders what Laura Mulvey would make of this film. So, naturally, there's an element of soft porn.

Except… there's not that much of it. Yes, Jane is reduced to her underwear about half a dozen times, but that's about it. This is essentially an H. Rider Haggard spoof in the style of 'Allo 'Allo, with a bunch of Brits (and Sam Jones) competing with some comedy Nazis to find a lost city in the middle of Africa which has loads of diamonds.

The script is by one Mervyn Haisman, known to us Doctor Who fans as, among other things, the co-scriptwriter of The Web of Fear- that is, the one who isn't well known for espousing silly conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail. That isn't the only Doctor Who connection, either: the programme's current production designer, Michael Pickwoad, was also production designer on this.

The film is essentially a farce, and a rather amusing one, with a few spoofs from other films. I never thought I'd see a version of the shower scene from Psycho involving Jasper Carrott as the baddie, but I just have. And there's a bit of a Casablanca spoof at the end. It also has more mildly racist, colonial era, African clichés and stereotypes than I could even keep track of; the first five minutes alone feature pith helmets, spear-wielding natives, a dying man whose last words are of a lost city, and a vast chasm to be crossed by swinging on a vine. This lost city (which is not named) was not, of course, built by Africans, heaven forbid. Still, at least the city's queen is an African, not a white woman as per She. Even if she did go to Roedean and Oxford.

It's all very Boys' Own, and there's an obvious Indiana Jones influence. There's a bit where they travel by map, which is a bit funny if you happen to have recently seen The Muppets at the cinema. I won't make any great claims, but this very silly film is rather fun if you can get hold of it.