Directed by: Ralph Thomas
Stars: Leigh Lawson, Elke Sommer, Denholm Elliott
Language: English
Country: Uk | Imdb Info
Also known as : Percy’s Progress
Description: Percy Edward Anthony is famous throughout Britain as the recipient of the world’s first successful intimate transplant. Unfortunately, his unusual medical history has done nothing to make him modest. His constant pursuit of married women finally destroys his own marriage and leaves him facing the consequences of one affair too many.
To escape scandal and possible imprisonment, Percy takes refuge aboard a luxury yacht and spends an entire year at sea. Living almost exclusively on champagne, he remains completely unaware that civilization is facing a crisis far greater than his personal troubles.
A military aircraft has crashed into the ocean, releasing an experimental chemical known as PX-123 into the world’s water supply. The contamination produces one astonishing side effect: men everywhere suddenly lose their potency.
Percy, protected by his long absence at sea and his unconventional liquid diet, is the only known exception.
When he finally comes ashore and visits a local brothel, his apparently unique condition is quickly discovered. News spreads from the women at the house to the press, from the press to the British government, and from there to an increasingly desperate international community.
Percy returns home not as a fugitive, but as a national resource.
Government ministers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and foreign representatives all compete for control of the last functioning man on Earth. While medical teams search for an antidote to PX-123, officials begin developing a more immediate plan for preserving humanity.
The result is an international beauty contest designed to select a representative from each nation. The winners, presented as “Miss Conception” candidates, are expected to help Percy carry out the most exhausting patriotic duty ever assigned to one British citizen.
Percy initially enjoys his transformation from public embarrassment to global hero. But the endless ceremonies, political negotiations, medical examinations, and romantic demands soon make him question whether being the most wanted man alive is really an improvement over being alone at sea.
It’s Not the Size That Counts takes the single joke behind Percy and expands it into an international sex-comedy apocalypse. Environmental contamination, Cold War bureaucracy, beauty pageants, celebrity culture, and government planning are all reduced to setups for an endless procession of innuendo.
Legacy Note:
Released in Britain as Percy’s Progress, the film is the 1974 sequel to the commercially successful Percy. Leigh Lawson replaces Hywel Bennett as the title character, while Denholm Elliott returns as Sir Emmanuel Whitbread, the surgeon responsible for the operation that made Percy famous.
Director Ralph Thomas and producer Betty E. Box had collaborated on numerous British films over several decades, including entries in the long-running Doctor comedy series. Percy’s Progress became their final production together and the last film produced by Box.
The enormous supporting cast gives the film the atmosphere of a British celebrity revue. Elke Sommer, Judy Geeson, Julie Ege, Vincent Price, Milo O’Shea, Bernard Lee, Harry H. Corbett, Barry Humphries, and Madeline Smith appear throughout the increasingly elaborate global farce. Corbett’s prime minister is an unmistakable parody of Harold Wilson, while Humphries contributes another variation on his familiar television personas.
Filming in England and Cyprus gives the production a larger scale than its schoolboy premise might suggest. Yachts, government offices, Mediterranean locations, scientific laboratories, television broadcasts, and the international pageant turn Percy’s private predicament into a worldwide spectacle.
Critically dismissed and burdened with an extravagant running time, the film nevertheless remains a remarkable artifact from the final stretch of the traditional British sex-comedy boom. Its combination of ecological disaster, global panic, political parody, pop songs, and relentless innuendo could only have emerged from the permissive confusion of the early 1970s.
Crude, overextended, and packed with familiar faces, It’s Not the Size That Counts imagines the end of masculine confidence not as tragedy, but as an administrative emergency requiring champagne, beauty queens, and one exceptionally overworked Englishman.
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