Salt and Pepper (film)

Salt and Pepper (also known as Salt & Pepper) is a 1968 British comedy film directed by Richard Donner and starring Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Michael Bates, Ilona Rodgers and John Le Mesurier.

Plot
Chris Pepper (Lawford) and Charlie Salt (Davis) own a nightclub in Swinging London, operating under the suspicious eye of the intrepid Inspector Crabbe.

One night, Pepper finds an Asian girl on the floor of the club. Assuming she's drunk or high, he makes a date with her and thinks she responds. It turns out the girl is dying, and her death sets off a chain of events that puts the unlucky Salt and Pepper onto a plot to overthrow the British government, with the girl's dying words the key.

Cast

 * Sammy Davis Jr. as Charles Salt
 * Peter Lawford as Christopher Pepper
 * Michael Bates as Inspector Crabbe
 * Ilona Rodgers as Marianne Renaud
 * John Le Mesurier as Colonel Woodstock
 * Graham Stark as Sergeant Walters
 * Ernest Clark as Colonel Balsom
 * Jeanne Roland as Mai Ling
 * Robert Dorning as Club Secretary
 * Robertson Hare as Dove
 * Geoffrey Lumsden as Foreign Secretary
 * William Mervyn as Prime Minister
 * Llewellyn Rees as 'Fake' Prime Minister
 * Mark Singleton as 'Fake' Home Secretary
 * Michael Trubshawe as 'Fake' First Lord
 * Francesca Tu as Tsai Chan
 * Oliver MacGreevy as Rack
 * Peter Hutchins as Straw
 * Jeremy Lloyd as Lord Ponsonby
 * Ivor Dean as Police Commissioner
 * Beth Rogan as Greta
 * Calvin Lockhart as Jones
 * Nicholas Smith as Constable

Production
It was shot at Shepperton Studios and on location in London and at Elvetham Hall in Hampshire. The film's sets were designed by the art director Don Mingaye. It was followed by a 1970 sequel One More Time directed by Jerry Lewis.

Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Directed with vaguely swinging trimmings in the Clive Donner manner by yet another recruit from television, this is a Carry On in all but name and cast, in which Sammy Davis does one indifferent number and, along with Peter Lawford, dispenses much bonhomie to remarkably little effect amid stock characters and situations. Both the pseudo-Bond action and the slapstick comedy are excruciatingly ill-timed; any even tolerably witty joke is repeated several times over; and the studio-built Soho looks studio-built."

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Sinatra clan members, Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford came to Britain to make this amiable, though strictly routine, comedy crime caper. They play Soho club-owners involved in a series of murders that turn out to be part of an international conspiracy. The attempt to jump on the "Swinging London" bandwagon, pathetic at the time, now has high camp value and some of the lines are still funny. Although loathed by the press and eventually released as a second-feature, it produced a sequel (One More Time) in 1970."

British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Infuriating throwaway star vehicle set in the dregs of swinging London. The sequel, One More Time (1970), was quite unnecessary"

Novelization
Popular Library published a paperback novelization by Alex Austin of Michael Pertwee's screenplay.