“I don’t know what’s happened to all of us - have we gone raving mad?”

There’s a trope that (at the time of writing) is still doing the rounds amongst a certain type of nostalgia-obsessed comedian, that “every town used to have its weirdo”. The guy (always male, they were) with the bottle-bottom glasses, bad combover and predilection for bright blue zip-up anoraks and black Clarks loafers. You know the one, the fella down the road who you and your friends were always told not to go near. Charlie Says. Puppies. A never-ending supply of sweets. Etc. Ooh, does anyone remember Spangles? Ithankyew.

Back in the 1970s you couldn’t move for them, apparently. No-one (not even the extremely vocal Charlie the cat) told us what these oddballs would do to us if they DID manage to entice us into their semi-detached lair, but the suggestion was that it wouldn’t be pleasant. Probably not worth getting a new puppy for, anyway.

Of course, yer local weirdo has to be a bit more careful these days. Gone are those innocent times when sporting such a look would prompt little more than a careful steering-away by mum during a shopping trip, and possibly the worst that would happen was an outright ban of any fraternisation (as in our own Tales From The Crypt). These days any combover-and-powerful-spectacles combination would likely be greeted by a social media meltdown and accompanying Straw Dogs re-enactment.

(Straw Dogs being very much a case in point of the reactive approach favoured in those times)

And so, we come to Revenge, which purports to explore the “what-ifs” in the aftermath of a child murder.

What if you believed the murderer of your child had avoided jail?

What if you weren’t very good at kidnapping people?

What if you were even worse at killing them?

What if you’d got the wrong local weirdo?

What if… hmmm, here’s an idea… what if I decided to show the local weirdo what a “real woman” is by stripping and raping my step-mum in front of him? (clearly a winner this one, I’m surprised no-one else has thought of it)

And most importantly:

What if as a distinctly un-glamorous middle-aged publican, you’d somehow managed to snag a young Joan Collins as your trophy wife?

All these what-ifs will be sort-of answered during Revenge’s preposterously entertaining 90 minutes, as the Radford family embark on a truly baffling series of fuck-ups in the wake of the loss of their youngest child.

We start in the aftermath of the child murder – at the funeral, in fact, as stepmum Carol (Collins) berates herself for the child’s death and dad Jim (James Booth) does what every dad did in the 1970s and bottles everything up, deciding the best approach to the whole thing is to go straight back to work. In his case, as the landlord of the local pub.

But it’s not long before their world is turned upside-down again. Fellow grieving parent Harry (Ray Barrett) pops round to tell them that Seely, the man accused of the double-murder of their children has been released due to lack of evidence. Not the last time in this film the police won’t bother to tell the family what’s happening in the legal system, which seems unlikely, even for the early 70s.

And so, this prompts the entire family (bar one exception) to go full Batman and take the law into their own hands. They follow Seely (Kenneth Griffith) around town as he immediately begins to indulge in what can only be described as extremely suspicious activity (visiting the scene of the crimes, hanging around schools, etc - in fact, it’s almost a surprise the writers don’t add in an impromptu visit to a puppy breeders and the bulk-buying of a load of forged Alton Towers tickets). The buying of sweets from a corner shop in particular is treated with particular significance. No Spangles, though.

Jim and Harry decide they’ve seen enough (“I’ve seen enough”) but that if they’re going to abduct Seely and get him to admit the crime, it needs to be planned very carefully… so they decide to do it tomorrow.

Their first attempt at a kidnap is foiled by broken-down car (the careful planning worked, then) and extremely angry dog, but they chase down their quarry and get him into the car on the second attempt. Unfortunately, they’re in a much less quiet part of town this time and the scuffle is witnessed. The plan (such as it is) is to get the suspect into the beer cellar of Jim’s pub and beat a confession out of him.

Once in the cellar, things take a turn for the hysterical with everyone queueing up to take a pop at their mute victim before Jim goes over the top and strangles him. So now they have a body to get rid of, but it’s opening time and Jim is needed upstairs (the idea of closing the pub due to a family tragedy clearly not part of their brilliant plan).

Anyway, it turns out that not only are they shit at kidnapping, but their medical skills leave a lot to be desired too – because Seely isn’t dead after all.

Which leads to much unintended comedy. It’s worth mentioning at this point (if you weren’t aware) that this film is the product of the same producer who brought us the Carry On films, and despite its deadly serious intent it is funnier than most of them.

With a child murderer (or is he?) trapped in the place where all the beer and crisps are kept and with only a flimsy trapdoor between him and the customers, Jim remains fixated on keeping the pub running (“Jim – you can’t!” Carol tells him, which seems harsh, he has just lost his child after all). Harry thinks they should finish the job with a handy mallet, but won’t do it himself for some reason. The external beer delivery trapdoor – and gateway to freedom for the suspect - is fully secured by the placing of a crate of beer over it. Jim seems to feel the need to voice his frustrations to the man he believes killed his daughter at every opportunity, including the immortal: “Why should I give you water? Why should I give you anything? Why don’t you die? Just die!” followed immediately by the giving of water, for some reason.

Everyone decides it would be a good idea to leave the now-youngest daughter (the only one unaware of what’s going on) alone in the pub with a suspected child murderer. And no-one has given any thought to what to do when the beer delivery arrives.

Yes, it’s that kind of film.

The next plan is an absolute doozy. They’re going to take Seely home and then fix his house to blow up with him in it. Which, it being part of a terrace would, one assumes, also kill several innocent neighbours. Surprisingly, this doesn’t work either and back at the pub, tensions ramp up to an unbelievable level. The police are closing in, and having a paedophile locked in your cellar turns out to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Cue Joan Collins running around in her underwear.

And, in case you didn’t suspect this might happen from the above, the suspect’s actual guilt is called into question – with Jim, his family now irreconcilably fractured and with a banging headache after being hit with an ashtray, suddenly feeling more than a tad guilty about his actions. Before what is, to be fair, a spectacular WTF ending.

The appeal of Revenge (also known by the vaguely Japanese sounding title “Inn Of The Frightened People”) is, as you might have guessed, very much in the eye of the beholder. If you’re looking for an intelligent critique of the dangers of vigilantism, you’d be better looking somewhere else. This is, after all, courtesy of the producer who brought you Carry On At Your Convenience. And indeed Carry On Abroad, with which it shares the same location. But if you want a baffling excursion back into the brown and orange world of 1971, where you can practically smell the stale beer and cigarette smoke, then this is the film for you.