Go for a Take
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1972 British film by Harry Booth

Go for a TakeDirected byHarry BoothScreenplay byAlan HackneyStory byHarry Booth

Alan HackneyProduced byRoy SimpsonStarringReg Varney

Norman Rossington

Sue Lloyd

Dennis Price

Julie EgeCinematographyMark McDonaldEdited byArchie LudskiMusic byGlen Mason

Production

company

a Century Films International production

Distributed byFox-Rank (UK)

Release dates

Running time

90 minutesCountryUnited KingdomLanguageEnglish

Go for a Take (U.S. title: Double Take) is a 1972 British comedy film starring Reg Varney and Norman Rossington, directed by Harry Booth.[1][2][3] The screenplay was by Alan Hackney.

Inept waiters Wilfred Stone and Jack Foster owe money to gangster bookie Generous Jim and lose all their remaining funds on a bad bet. They go on the run, accidentally ending up in a local film studio where they get mistaken for extras and soon become involved in a succession of comic misadventures.

Reg Varney as Wilfred Stone

Norman Rossington as Jack Foster

Sue Lloyd as Angel Montgomery

Dennis Price as Dracula, actor

Julie Ege as April

Patrick Newell as Generous Jim

David Lodge as Graham

Anouska Hempel as Suzi Eckmann

Aubrey Morris as director

Bill Fraser as TV studio doorman

Bob Todd as security man

Jack Haig as security man

Melvyn Hayes as ambulance man

John Clive as hotel waiter

Johnny Briggs as assistant director

John Levene as assistant director

David Prowse as actor

Penny Meredith as harem girl

Debbie Russ as Tiger (reprising her role from the TV series Here Come the Double Deckers)

Peter Stephens as director

The film was shot on location in central London and Slough,[4] and at Pinewood Studios (as "Starwood Studios") with sets designed by the art director Lionel Couch.

The film features the song "Let's Go to the Movies", by Glen Mason and Keith Miller.

The film was a box-office disappointment.[5]

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Beginning comparatively painlessly with a hectic car chase and one or two promising scenes at 'Starwood Studios', the latest Harry Booth comedy eventually settles down to a tedious mixture of masochism and drag, with most of the emphasis on the former. Reg Varney's cockney stoicism is not completely without charm, but the script's gags seem to consist almost entirely of a succession of violent incidents in which, for example, he has a periscope stuck up his behind or is crippled by an explosion. There is barely any attempt to generate humour from anything except pain, and even the occasional departures from this basic approach are mechanical and witless. Still, in the present state of the industry, one cannot help admiring the brazen wish-fulfilment in the film's portrayal of a thinly disguised well-known British studio, which appears to be shooting at least twelve features simultaneously."[6]

Leslie Halliwell called the film "Painful British farce".[7]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 1/5 stars, writing: "This British comedy has minimal laughs. Reg Varney and Norman Rossington are waiters on the run from debt collectors who take refuge in a film studio, a scenario which leads to some amazingly unfunny sequences . It's enough to make the Carry On films seem as witty as Oscar Wilde."[8]