I’ve always had a soft spot for 1968’s ‘Salt & Pepper’, in which Sammy Davis Junior and Peter Lawford played ‘Charles Salt’ and ‘Christopher Pepper’, trendy London nightclub owners caught up in an espionage plot.

Two years later, the dynamic duo were back, only this time the results were nowhere near as successful.

The Salt and Pepper club has been closed down by the police, and they have to pay £500 each or face prison. Pepper asks his snooty rich twin brother, Lord Sydney ( also Lawford ), for the money. The lord agrees provided that both men leave the country for good. After a heated row, Pepper decides to get his own back by impersonating his twin in order to secure a free meal in a posh restaurant. Returning to Lord Sydney’s apartment, however, he finds him dead, shot by an African blow-pipe. The sneaky Pepper decides to go on play acting, and make the world think that Christopher Pepper is now dead. The killers are still out there, however, and want back the diamonds Lord Sydney stole from them…

So we have moved away from the world of espionage and into the realm of crime, making the film an altogether different affair, lacking the wild action sequences of the first. Replacing Richard Donner in the director’s chair is none other than Jerry Lewis. We get an idea of what a Lewis and Martin film might have looked like had one been made in the late ’60’s. Davis Junior, in particular, behaves like Jerry, especially in the scene where he prowls around Pepperworth Castle to the accompaniment of the theme to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, released two years earlier. Another funny moment is when Tombs ( Sydney Arnold ) the elderly butler lumbers into Pepper’s dining room. By the time he reaches them with the food Salt and Pepper have acquired five o’clock shadow.

Like a lot of Lewis’ movies, there is an unfortunate tendency towards sentimentality and self-indulgence. Salt’s grieving for his friend brings the comedy to a screeching halt, and his impersonation of ‘The Chocolate Dandy’ should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Michael Bates’ incompetent ‘Inspector Crabbe’ was supposed to reappear ( he is in Michael Avallone’s novelisation ). Instead we get Leslie Sands as ‘Inspector Glock’, who’s nowhere near as amusing. The book also suggests that the movie was written originally for a much bigger budget; there is a funny scene where Salt and Pepper wreak havoc in an aeroplane. It is not in the finished film.

As was the case with ‘Salt & Pepper’, the British supporting cast are first rate, in particular Allan Cuthbertson, Dudley Sutton, Anthony Nicholls, Moultrie Kelsall, Peter Reeves, Bill Maynard ( as a Bondian villain with a shaved head ), and Glyn Owen. The music was by Les Reed, co-composer of many Tom Jones hits. Check out Pepper’s groovy lounge; you need sunglasses just to admire the decor.

Things To Look Out For: a cameo by Christopher Lee as ‘Count Dracula’ and Peter Cushing as ‘Baron Frankenstein’!