[1] Francis wanted the opportunity to direct a film over which he had complete creative control, instead of working on assignment from a studio (as was the case with his previous directorial efforts).
[citation needed] The script was based on a two-act play by Maisie Mosco titled Happy Family, which was adapted into a novella by screenwriter Brian Comport as Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly.
Those who refuse are "sent to the Angels" – a euphemism for being ritualistically murdered in scenarios built around playground games, which Sonny routinely records on a 16mm movie camera so that the family can enjoy the resultant snuff film.
The prostitute – rechristened "New Friend" – is outfitted in schoolboy clothes and subjected to an indeterminate period of torment "playing the game," during which he is repeatedly presented with his client's body as a reminder that the family has incriminating information about him.
Overhearing their conversation, New Friend retrieves Nanny's acid tipped needles and lying smiling on Mumsy's bed, hides them under the pillow.
Trying to come up with ideas, Francis and Comport attended the production of an off west end play titled The Happy Family, written by Maisie Mosco, then a radio playwright for the BBC.
Both men thought that the play – which was overtly sexual and dealt explicitly with incest, lesbianism, and sadomasochism – was "terrible," but agreed that it was an excellent tipping-off point for a story that would take place at Oakley Court.
[4] Little of the play's story would survive into Comport's script, beyond the names of the principal characters and the basic premise of an isolated family engaging in a deadly role-playing game.
Howard Trevor, who played Sonny, had only a single screen credit on an episode of the anthology series ITV Playhouse; Girly would prove to be his only film.
Media watchdogs latched onto a scene in the opening minutes of the film in which Girly suggestively sucks Sonny's finger after accepting a piece of candy from him.
The scene was the result of Comport's having toyed with the idea of carrying over incest themes from the play, in which Sonny and Girly are explicitly engaged in a sexual relationship.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: Although always agreeable to look at, with Freddie Francis and his camera prowling as elegantly as usual, this is a distinct disappointment in what might have been a happy return to the territory of The Psychopath [1966] and Torture Garden [1967].
After that it is simply a matter of waiting for the horrors, and it comes as no surprise when a nice game of "Oranges and Lemons" ends, on the appropriate verse, with the unhappy playmate being beheaded.
The latter half picks up somewhat though, with Sonny stalking a condemned playmate through the garden, camera in hand (shades of Peeping Tom [1960]) to record the face of terror; and Ursula Howells, murmuring "Oh, Girly!"
[7]Variety said: Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly is an offbeat, low-key horror melodrama – a macabre combo of Disney and Hammer films, in which a lady, her maid and two kids kidnap and murder unsuspecting males.
Freddie Francis, onetime cameraman and in recent years a horror buff fave for his direction of British shockers, does an excellent job in making the most of his unusual, if distended, premise.
David Muir's excellent, soft-focus lensing maximizes the mood, superbly established physically by Maggie Pinhorn's art direction and set dressing by Dimity Collins.