Wilt (film)

"Wilt" is a movie adaptation by LWT of the Tom Sharpe novel of the same name, released in 1989. The story follows the comic misadventures of the eponymous Henry Wilt as he is accused of the murder of his wife when she suddenly goes missing after a party at a friends house where they have a very public argument.

The movie was directed by Michael Tuchner, and Andrew Marshall and David Renwick were credited as screenplay writers. In North America it was released under the title "The Misadventures of Mr. Wilt".

Plot

Henry Wilt is a community studies teacher at a poorly funded college where most of the pupils seem to be fairly apathetic to learning. Eva Wilt, his wife, is interested in the spiritual aspects of martial arts, Transcendental Meditation and similar pursuits and her disdain for his interest in reading, combines with his general frustration at work, including being turned down for a promotion again, and leads him to occasionally fantasize about killing her. Her friends friends, Sally and Hugh, only excerbate his alienation from her world by talking disparagingly about teaching as a profession and his car.

While he is walking home and speaking out one of his fantasies he crosses paths with a botched sting operation by the incompetent Inspector Flint whose wire has fallen off while trying to bust a drug dealer. When they get involved in a struggle Wilt intervenes and unknowingly helps the drug dealer to get away, thinking that he is witnessing a mugging.

Soon after a construction worker at the school sees a woman's body in a hole being filled with concrete. Meanwhile Henry Wilt has had to get a lift into work as apparently he had an accident in his car last night. Inspector Flint arrives at the school as they start work on digging out the body. Some papers are found at the hole where the body was seen, and a brief search identifies the writer of those papers as Henry Wilt, and the evidence against him mounts as he makes a phone call to his home from the police station and pretends the answerphone is his wife while Inspector Flint is present.

During the interview Wilt initially claims that he and his wife had an argument, and she disappeared and he has no idea where she is. Inspector Flint superficially accepts this explanation and tells him he can go, only to be confronted at the door by an old woman who claims to have seen him repeatedly stab a woman to death. Returning to the interview again, Wilt starts to go into more detail about the night of the party.

We learn that at the party he and his wife were arguing as normal, and that Sally has sexual interest in his wife. While arguing with Sally he manages to knock himself unconscious opening a door that turns out to be a cupboard. He wakes up shortly after naked and tied to blow up sex doll. His wife walks in on him trying to burst the doll by writhing around, followed by him appearing at a balcony above the disco in front of almost everyone at the party, which his wife also witnesses. After this she will not return home with him, unsurprisingly.

On the way home Wilt finds that the doll has been put on the back seat of his car, distracted by its reappearance he crashes into a telephone box. Losing his temper he pulls the doll out of the car and tries to burst it by stabbing it repeatedly, but fails. He is spotted doing this by the same old lady that identifies him later at the police station. Wilt then heads to the school and dumps the doll down the same hole where the corpse was found.

Back in the present Inspector Flint follows the lead to Sally and Hughs mansion to find that they have also disappeared, and they also find a knotted stocking at the scene, which apparently is the signature of the notorious Swatham Strangler. He also takes Wilt down to the morgue where they claim to have found his wife's body, although it actually turns out to be another sex doll. We also learn that Flint is only on such an important case because Inspector Farmelow is on holiday, and that it is generally agreed that this is a chance for Flint to gain a promotion.

The next day they are preparing to bring up the body, much to Wilt's amusement, which unfortunately for the college coincides with the visit of a group of Japanese businessmen that are being courted to sponsor the college. The concrete encased body is lifted out but slips free and is dropped onto the bonnet of a police car, freeing the blow up doll exactly as Wilt has been saying to the police much to Inspector Flint's chagrin. Undaunted Flint determines that the whole doll incident is just an attempt by Wilt to cover up the actual murders of his wife, Sally and Hugh and continues the investigation regardless.

After many hours of interrogation Wilt changes his story and starts telling Flint of his return to the mansion later the night of the party. He claims to have attacked them with a chainsaw, and then gone to the meat factory where many of the students work to dispose of the bodies. Flint launches a search using massive amounts of manpower to find the evidence of this, before his superior points out that when he made this confession Wilt signed it 'Sweeney Todd'. Following this Wilt is released, although his wife and her friends are still missing.

Eva meanwhile has been stuck on a boat in the middle of a lake with Sally and Hugh, where Hugh finally tells her that it was Sally that arranged the whole fiasco with the doll with the intention of splitting her from her husband so that she would go on the trip and give Sally chance to pursue her interest in Eva. Eva immediately leaves the boat using a small inflatable dinghy, and finds her way to a vicarage where she calls Wilt to get him to pick her up. She meets the vicar who has apparently only recently moved to this location from Swatham, and happens to have a knotted stocking in his top pocket.

Wilt hitchhikes his way to the village where his wife is just in time to find the vicar about to strangle her in the cemetery. Unfortunately as he tries to intervene Inspector Flint, who has followed him from his house, confronts him with a shotgun. Wilt hits him with the shovel he has been given by Flint to 'dig up his wife's body' and heads into the church where his wife has fled followed by the vicar. After Eva manages to temporarily fight off the vicar using her martial arts knowledge Flint arrives, ignoring the vicar, to arrest Wilt for the murder of Sally and Hugh, who happen to arrive at that moment in the Church. Failing that he tries to arrest him for the murder of Eva Wilt, who of course is present as well. Finally cracking up he arrests himself, reading himself his rights.

To add insult to injury the fleeing vicar has been knocked out by a golf ball by Inspector Farmelow as he tried to escape. The story finishes with Henry Wilt meeting Flint in his wife's new martial arts class where it transpires that Flint has had to leave the force and join a private security firm who insist on him coming to the class as a refresher course. Conversely the Japanese investors in the college were impressed with the way Wilt has dealt with the adversity thrown at him, and had him promoted.

Cast

External links

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* [http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=110273 Film 4] review