Racy old Dennis Waterman movie resurfaces

A COPY of a racy Irish film starring former Minder star Denis Waterman, which was banned here and worldwide in the late Sixties because of its sexual content, has resurfaced and is back in Ireland.

The film – I Can’t – I Can’t – also starred Irish-born Fifties matinee idol Tessa Wyatt, the brother of broadcaster Gay Byrne, Eddie, and Fair City star Jim Bartley.

Made in 1968, the film was banned here shortly after its Irish premiere at the Cork Film Festival in 1969.

But thanks to the efforts of Declan McLaughlin and John O’Leary of the Limerick Film Archive, the only known copy of the film still in existence is now back where it was made.

The opening blurb – “When her mother dies during a miscarriage, a bride refuses to let her husband consummate their marriage” – marked the film out as a classic B-movie.

“It was a bit risque in its day but harmless by today’s standards,” said Mr McLaughlin.

The only known surviving print of the movie, a 16mm reel, was recently located in America by a film collector who accidentally came upon it in a farmhouse barn.

Curious about its origins, the collector placed an advertisement in a film memorabilia magazine, which was seen by McLaughlin and who managed to persuade the collector to hand it over to the Limerick Film Archive.

“It was trash of the late Sixties; a tale of a good Irish Catholic girl getting involved with an English guy,” he said. “Various people had been searching for the film for more than 25 years.”

“I don’t think Lee Dunne, who wrote the script, even had a copy. It was released in Ireland under a different name – Wedding Night – but no one ever got to see it, because it was banned.”

The film tells the story of innocent convent girl Mattie, who falls for and marries a worldly-wise Cockney who works in an advertising firm.

The marriage soon flounders, however, when Mattie can’t consummate the marriage with her new husband Joe O’Reilly. In frustration he embarks upon an ill-fated affair which pushes her over the edge.

The film climaxes in a manner which killed off forever of any prospect of an American audience – with Mattie ending up in a mental asylum.

It was filmed at Ardmore Studios in Bray, Co Wicklow, and other locations in and around Dublin. Other classics shot in Ireland in that era included The Siege of Sydney Streetand Rooney, about a loveable Dublin dustbin man.

However, I Can’t – I Can’t was slightly different in that it was a social consciousness film about contraception and the Catholic Church’s attitude towards women who took it.

It also contained numerous sex scenes. Many have dubbed the movie Waterman’s forgotten porn movie.

The Limerick Film Archive, based in the Belltable Arts Centre, is home to one of the largest film archives in the country.

Run entirely on a voluntary basis, the archive is currently trying to raise funds in order to acquire an historically important collection of Irish films from a private collector in the North who otherwise intends to sell them abroad.