Development The original script for the film was called
Rentasleuth and was written by
Graham Chapman and
John Cleese, both of
Monty Python, who developed it for producer
David Frost. Chapman and Cleese were looking for a director and sought
Charles Crichton, whose movies Cleese greatly admired, even admitting to stealing the end for
Rentasleuth from
The Lavender Hill Mob. Cleese says Crichton was of great assistance helping them with the script: His expertise was breathtaking to us guys. He would leave us in the evening, and by the time he saw us in the morning, he'd push a piece of paper toward us and say 1 had a few thoughts last night, but I don't think they're any good.' And you realized he'd solved the problem, put in two jokes, and taken out half a page. He was just that expert on a level that Gray and I had never encountered before. We just loved him. The cast was to be
Ronnie Barker,
Ronnie Corbett,
Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and
Marty Feldman (in the role of ‘Owltruss’). In April 1971 it was announced Cleese would star in the film, to be called
Rentasleuth. Frost failed to secure finance, so he sold the script to producer Ned Sherrin. Sherrin wrote in his memoirs that "Frost had paid richly for the script. With little prospect of getting together the money to film it, he was anxious to offload it. The prospect of a screenplay by Cleese and Chapman tailored to the Python team, whom we understood were keen to be in it, was exciting." (Sherrin wrote "I got the impression from Graham that he indulged occasionally in a film project and this might be his annual treat. He also confessed ruefully that his other pet projects had rarely been winners.") Jim Clark wrote in his memoirs that Sherrin offered him the script to direct when Clark was working on
X Y & Zee (1972). Clark said he did not "remember the original script" but "in any case I wasn’t going to flounce out of this since I was keen to return to directing and found most of the revamped film amusing. It was a reasonably cheap film." The script was retitled on the first day of shooting to
Rentadick which Clark felt was a terrible title. It sounded like a gay porno movie."
Shooting Filming took six weeks mostly at place at a country house near Elstree Studios. Clark was influenced by the Will Hay comedy
Ask a Policeman (1939). He wrote "Unfortunately I didn’t have the trio of comics, Hay, Marriott, and Moffat, to work with. But despite the many problems and my almost total inability to pull it off, I enjoyed directing the film and did not think it too bad."
Cleese and Chapman remove names After watching a screening of the movie, Chapman and Cleese instigated action to have their names removed from the finished print. Chapman wrote "Otherwise we would have felt like accessories to the theft of our own valuables. I am convinced that the original script could still be filmed: the connection between it and the one Mr Sherrin had produced would be unnoticeable." This left
Rentadick with very peculiar on-screen acknowledgements; the only writing credit is given to Fortune and Wells, who are explicitly credited only with "additional dialogue". Chapman referred to Fortune and Wells in his memoirs as "Jim Viles and Kurt Loggerhead". ==Reception==