Soft Beds, Hard Battles (1974)

<p>The first half of the 1970s was not a particularly fruitful period for Peter Sellers, at least in terms of critical and commercial success. He made a slew of films which failed to take off or, in some cases, weren&#39;t even released. Some of his worst films date from this period, chiefly the execrable <em>Where Does It Hurt?</em>, which we previously covered on Goon Pod with <strong>Paul Litchfield</strong> and <strong>Jeremy Limb</strong>.</p><p><br></p><p>Those two return this week to tackle Sellers&#39; 1974 wartime &#39;comedy&#39; <em>Soft Beds, Hard Battles</em>, in which he takes on six roles – an elderly French General, a gung-ho British Major, a sinister Gestapo officer, a Japanese Prince, the President of France and, er, Adolf Hitler.</p><p><br></p><p>While not as bad as <em>Where Does It Hurt?</em> (few things are), <em>SBHB</em> is a bit of a slog, an attempt by the Boulting Brothers to cash in on the then-vogue for sex comedies without fully committing, while weighing the film down with ill-judged set-pieces such as a group of German officers farting, belching and dying.</p><p><br></p><p>It was during the production that Sellers embarked upon a six-week romance with Liza Minnelli, which was front-page news and rather got in the way of filming. An unhappy affair all round, the Boultings ended up losing a lot of money, the film was generally panned and didn&#39;t do much business at the box office.</p><p><br></p><p>Join Jeremy, Paul and Tyler as they try to make sense of it all!</p><p><br></p>