Mother and daughter, Rachel Kempson and Lynn Redgrave, play mother and daughter in Virgin Soldiers, a tale about a group of young British soldiers in Malaysia doing their national service at the time of the Communist rebellion there. The Virgin Soldiers are seen through the eyes of Hywel Bennett who narrates the film.

His crowd are not World War II veterans, they grew up during the war and the blitz and are doing the national service in the hopes they'll never have to do any real fighting. In fact going into battle with this lot worries the hell out of the veteran British army people, the career soldiers such as Nigel Patrick the sergeant major of the regiment who Kempson is married to.

But in addition to worrying about the quality of his troops, Patrick is worried about his daughter's aloofness from the opposite sex. Her frigid behavior has him concerned so much so he commands her to attend a regimental dance.

She meets Bennett there, but their inexperience in these matters lead to a disaster. Never mind both of them get over the hump so to speak with another sergeant Nigel Davenport for her and the best whore in Singapore Juicy Lucy played by Tsai Chin.

In the meantime the Communist guerrillas have come out of the back country and are making some real war on the British. The troops get battle tested and of course some don't make it. Check out the death of Christopher Timothy, a really tragic occurrence, a needless death of an untrained man in a bad situation.

In the year of Stonewall in the USA, the British cinema acknowledged the presence of gay people in their armed services. Gregory Phillips and Wayne Sleep find each other, in fact we know about them within the first 10 minutes of the film. Funny thing is that it doesn't particularly bother their fellow king and country volunteers and the brass know they have to make due with what they have and can't worry about whom they kanoodle with.

Virgin Soldiers is a good film, remarkably funny and sad at the same time. You're not sure how you should feel and I can tell you that you will feel both at the same time.

I had assumed that The Virgin Soldiers would be a light-hearted, bawdy slice of British sexploitation in the vein of the Carry On, Confessions and 'Adventures of…' series, but it turned out to be a far more realistic affair, and actually proved all the better for it. The film stars Hywel Bennett as Brigg, a young conscript in the National Service, stationed in Singapore during the early 1950s. Working as a clerk, Brigg hopes that the only action he will see is with the local ladies and a sergeant's daughter, Phillipa (Lynn Redgrave),but he finds himself in mortal danger when he and his fellow conscripts see active duty against rioters and bandits.

While there are some mildly funny and a few sexy moments to be had, the film works best as a touching coming of age drama and a poignant anti-war film: as Brigg counts down the days to his return to good old Blighty, he makes the transition from untainted youth to worldly-wise young man, experiencing camaraderie, love (of sorts),fear, and even death, forced to kill or be killed. Bennett is brilliant in his role, displaying just the right amount of wide-eyed innocence, and he is given able support from a raft of familiar British faces, including Nigel Davenport as Sgt. Driscoll, Christopher Timothy (All Creatures Great and Small) as Cpl. Brook, Geoffrey Hughes (Coronation Street) as Lantry, Jack Shepherd (Wycliffe) as Sergeant Wellbeloved, and Wayne Sleep as Villiers, the toughest soldier in the platoon (nah, just kidding).

I remember first seeing this as a ten year old in the mid 1970s and being very confused , you see I was under the impression that this was going to be a war film , but was disappointed there wasn`t much fighting in it . I was also utterly confused by the tone of the film as there was bits that I took to be funny but didn`t make me laugh

I did see THE VIRGIN SOLDIERS a couple of more times when I was much older and understood it better , this is a black comedy , a very black one about the exploits of private Briggs a young soldier doing his national service out in Malaya during the state of emergency in the early 1950s and I guess it`s a fairly good indication of what life was like for a great number of young lads inducted into the British army at the time . If the film has a problem being viewed today it`s down to the fact that it`s difficult not to judge it against Vietnam war films like PLATOON ( Both films feature a plot between two sergeants who hate one another ) and FULL METAL JACKET ( Another black comedy dealing with a conflict in the far east ) , but THE VIRGIN SOLDIERS should be judged on its own merits . I found it as an adult both funny and scathing