Though preceded by a title card indicating that the makers of Naughty! merely wish to present the facts around their subject matter, pornography, there can be little doubt where their loyalties lie and that this disclaimer was a convenient defence with regard to the censors. Put otherwise, this is the British equivalent of the US White Coater, that type of porn film which was allowed because of claims to be educational or otherwise have redeeming social value.
One moment in the present day which is particularly interesting socio-culturally is when the filmmakers (complete with phallic, as penetrating, hand-held camera) enter into a ‘bookshop’ and encounter the angry manager, before his responsible attitude is explained (i.e. not for minors) and then, having won his trust, they are permitted into the back shop. There we can briefly but clearly see a magazine cover showing an erect penis and two women fixated upon it in a pornutopian way.
All the vox-pop interviews ostensibly caught unrehearsed are in favour of porn, while the remarks of luminaries such as Al Goldstein and John Lindsay are unchallenged by anyone from the anti-camp, nor by the filmmakers. The filmmakers could have likely sought out existing footage from those opposed to porn or even interviewed some of them. That they didn’t, to make a Mary Long (cf: Deep Purple) appear even more ridiculous is indicative of a degree of restraint which strengthens their position.
If the filmmakers have an enemy it is less those who are opposed to pornography on principle than those whose position is a hypocritical one of public virtue and private vice, most notably the Victorians and, by extension, their contemporary counterparts. On the Victorians the filmmakers provide some informative material on those ‘Other Victorians’, as Steven Marcus notably termed then, even if their reconstructions frequently fail to convince.
Regardless of this, these reconstructions at least have the advantage of being in a broadly common language and only a few generations back. Accordingly they contrast favourably with a digression into ancient Greece, on the role of the (female) prostitute in the society and the normalcy of (male) homosexuality.
What’s largely lacking here are discussions of how the term pornography was itself a Victorian-era construction from Greek, as the writings of or about prostitutes, and of how (male) homosexual relationships appear to have been strongly determined by age and class, in terms of who was doing what to whom, or in Goatse terms the giver and the receiver. In this regard, another issue is the predictable syllogism of gay = camp within this section. In fairness to Long, however, he did have another crack of the whip with 1974’s On the Game.
The subject matter tends to preclude analysis of the direction, acting and so on. On balance I would say the contributions of those before and behind the camera are satisfactory, given that the important thing was getting the film in the can and out to theatres as soon as possible rather than producing a masterpiece for all time.
Library music is used, including the famous Gonk cue later featured in Dawn of the Dead.
Showing posts with label British sexploitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British sexploitation. Show all posts
Monday, 4 March 2013
Monday, 18 February 2013
Erotic Inferno
When their father dies in a yachting accident Paul and Martin Barnard are summoned to the family’s mansion for a reading of the will. Also summoned is Adam, their father’s loyal chauffeur and procurer of women. Adam does not know that he is the dead man’s illegitimate son and, being two years older than Martin, the one whom primogeniture should favour. Martin and Paul thus determine to inveigle their way into their father’s mansion, locked up until the reading of the will is to take place, and destroy all evidence of their half-brother’s claims. In the meantime, Adam, Martin and Paul are each ensconced in the servant’s building, along with various women...
Whilst entitled Erotic Inferno this 1976 British sexploitation entry remains firmly (ooh, er!) on the legal side of softcore. This said, the plentiful sex scenes are effective in their suggestive way, in that you don’t see what’s going on, that being left to the imagination, but not much imagination is required.
Moreover, even if the version under review, sourced from a pre-cert VHS, purports to be uncut, the casting of Heather Deeley and Mary Maxted (i.e. Millington) suggests that the filmmakers could have prepared a harder version for foreign and/or clandestine domestic distribution.
Produced by Indian-British sexploitation mainstay Bachoo Sen, the film has various other intertextual connections: Writer Jonathan Gershfield, credited as Jon York, had earlier appeared on the James Kenelm Clarke directed Man Alive documentary Xploitation, about the British sex film. Xploitation had also featured Sen and Erotic Inferno’s director Trevor Wrenn, who had earlier collaborated with Jose Larraz.
Together, Clarke, with Expose, and Larraz, with Vampyres and Black Candles, emerge as the filmmakers closest to Wrenn, for the isolated setting; the propensity to use sex scenes as a means of advancing the narrative; and the prominence given sapphic activity.
There are some ambitious and indeed effective shots, as when Wrenn racks focus to capture Adam in the wing mirror of a Rolls Royce.
While all three of the male protagonists are equally unpleasant both in general and in their Neanderthal attitudes towards women a broad ranking of most to least obnoxious does emerge; if none undergoes a Damascean conversion there are thus perhaps enough hints to make their respective positions comprehensible.
KPM supply the music, very much your typical selection of library themes.
Overall, worth a look for the completist.
Whilst entitled Erotic Inferno this 1976 British sexploitation entry remains firmly (ooh, er!) on the legal side of softcore. This said, the plentiful sex scenes are effective in their suggestive way, in that you don’t see what’s going on, that being left to the imagination, but not much imagination is required.
Moreover, even if the version under review, sourced from a pre-cert VHS, purports to be uncut, the casting of Heather Deeley and Mary Maxted (i.e. Millington) suggests that the filmmakers could have prepared a harder version for foreign and/or clandestine domestic distribution.
Produced by Indian-British sexploitation mainstay Bachoo Sen, the film has various other intertextual connections: Writer Jonathan Gershfield, credited as Jon York, had earlier appeared on the James Kenelm Clarke directed Man Alive documentary Xploitation, about the British sex film. Xploitation had also featured Sen and Erotic Inferno’s director Trevor Wrenn, who had earlier collaborated with Jose Larraz.
Together, Clarke, with Expose, and Larraz, with Vampyres and Black Candles, emerge as the filmmakers closest to Wrenn, for the isolated setting; the propensity to use sex scenes as a means of advancing the narrative; and the prominence given sapphic activity.
There are some ambitious and indeed effective shots, as when Wrenn racks focus to capture Adam in the wing mirror of a Rolls Royce.
While all three of the male protagonists are equally unpleasant both in general and in their Neanderthal attitudes towards women a broad ranking of most to least obnoxious does emerge; if none undergoes a Damascean conversion there are thus perhaps enough hints to make their respective positions comprehensible.
KPM supply the music, very much your typical selection of library themes.
Overall, worth a look for the completist.
Monday, 29 October 2012
The Four Dimensions of Greta -- in 3D
The story begins in the West Germany, where Hans Weimer (Tristan Roger, later to appear in producer-director Pete Walker's The Flesh and Blood Show and another softcore sex film, the Spinal Tap-esque titled Sex Farm) is recruited to travel to London to investigate what has happened to au pair Greta (Leena Skoog).
Hans first makes contact with Mrs Marks, with whom Greta was originally living. He learns that Greta was unhappy with the poor treatment she had received at the hands of the Marks family, who regard au pairs as “a type of servant” and whom Greta left after only a week. Hans in turn considers Mrs Marks as a “sow”, a term that gains additional resonance given Hans's nationality and the implication of the Marks/Marx name and Golder's Green residence, in that she is coded as Jewish.
Hans then meets up with Sue, with whom he visits clubs and discotheques, and makes contact with another of Greta's acquiantances, Serena; Walker, making a Hitchcockian cameo as a waiter, gets a pie in the face.
Serena tells Hans that Greta was a nasty piece of work, who exploited her and her friend Kristina, before then leaving them to work at a Soho strip club with Cynthia. (The man enticing men into the club has a patter that likely intentionally references Paul Raymond's approach, of having nude models who move rather than stay static, this prompting a raid from the clearly corrupt police.)
Hans then learns about footballer Roger Maitland (Robin Askwith), who takes a more active role in determining what has happened to Greta...
This confusingly titled entry might be considered the Citizen Kane of the British sexploitation film. That's not referring to its quality, which is no better or worse than most comparable films within the genre and time period, as much as its structure. For it is one that sees the investigator protagonist visit a series of characters who reveal what they know about the missing Greta, A mentioning B, then B mentioning C etc. These flashbacks scenes are presented in black and white, green and red, and in 3D rather than in colour and 2D, with this coding being identified in the opening credits rather than being left for the spectator to figure out. The flashbacks also feature a lot of crude “comin' at ya” shots of things being thrust forward from the screen.
One important area where The Four Dimensions of Greta -- in 3D departs from Welles's film is in placing the diegetic investigator and the viewer on an equal footing. In Welles's film the investigator never learns what Kane's dying utterance, “Rosebud”, refers to. Here, by contrast, we and the investigator simultaneously learn what has happened to Greta.
Another area where the film's classical aspect is evident is how these flashbacks are discreet and largely non-contradictory. This contrasts with another key film exploring the flashback and its relation to truth, Rashomon. Akira Kurosawa's film presents the same incident from a variety of self-interested and subjective perspectives, none of which -- including the observer who was not a participant -- can be trusted to convey the truth.
Hans first makes contact with Mrs Marks, with whom Greta was originally living. He learns that Greta was unhappy with the poor treatment she had received at the hands of the Marks family, who regard au pairs as “a type of servant” and whom Greta left after only a week. Hans in turn considers Mrs Marks as a “sow”, a term that gains additional resonance given Hans's nationality and the implication of the Marks/Marx name and Golder's Green residence, in that she is coded as Jewish.
Hans then meets up with Sue, with whom he visits clubs and discotheques, and makes contact with another of Greta's acquiantances, Serena; Walker, making a Hitchcockian cameo as a waiter, gets a pie in the face.
Serena tells Hans that Greta was a nasty piece of work, who exploited her and her friend Kristina, before then leaving them to work at a Soho strip club with Cynthia. (The man enticing men into the club has a patter that likely intentionally references Paul Raymond's approach, of having nude models who move rather than stay static, this prompting a raid from the clearly corrupt police.)
Hans then learns about footballer Roger Maitland (Robin Askwith), who takes a more active role in determining what has happened to Greta...
This confusingly titled entry might be considered the Citizen Kane of the British sexploitation film. That's not referring to its quality, which is no better or worse than most comparable films within the genre and time period, as much as its structure. For it is one that sees the investigator protagonist visit a series of characters who reveal what they know about the missing Greta, A mentioning B, then B mentioning C etc. These flashbacks scenes are presented in black and white, green and red, and in 3D rather than in colour and 2D, with this coding being identified in the opening credits rather than being left for the spectator to figure out. The flashbacks also feature a lot of crude “comin' at ya” shots of things being thrust forward from the screen.
One important area where The Four Dimensions of Greta -- in 3D departs from Welles's film is in placing the diegetic investigator and the viewer on an equal footing. In Welles's film the investigator never learns what Kane's dying utterance, “Rosebud”, refers to. Here, by contrast, we and the investigator simultaneously learn what has happened to Greta.
Another area where the film's classical aspect is evident is how these flashbacks are discreet and largely non-contradictory. This contrasts with another key film exploring the flashback and its relation to truth, Rashomon. Akira Kurosawa's film presents the same incident from a variety of self-interested and subjective perspectives, none of which -- including the observer who was not a participant -- can be trusted to convey the truth.
Monday, 8 October 2012
Death Shock
After their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere – this seeming to entail a confusion between the urban Norwich and rural Norfolk – six horny young men and women, two heterosexual couples and one lesbian, flag down an old-fashioned car driven by a man wearing a dog collar.
The youngsters ask for a lift to the nearest petrol station, but the man tells them it is 12 miles away – too far out of his way. Fortunately there is a manor house, the Grange, about a mile away and the man/vicar agrees to drive them to it.
The owner of the Grange seems surprisingly welcoming and prepared (perhaps in the manner of Dracula’s servant Klove in Dracula Prince of Darkness, if we can accept promotional descriptions of the film as spoofing Hammer) and the group are encouraged to have a meal and stay the night. Said meal later turns out to have been laced with substantial quantities of aphrodisiac.
This affects the two heterosexual couples most strongly, insofar as one of the two lesbians professes to be ‘not in the mood’ when her partner goes to use a dildo on her – albeit with said partner then going to join one of the heterosexual couples for a threesome (“come and join us”).
Eventually it is revealed that the apparent vicar and the denizens of the Grange are Satanists and that the younger lesbian, the one not in the mood, is “a virgin of 16 summers” and thus the perfect material for an unholy rite; never mind that she looks, and indeed undoubtedly was, for legal reasons, older.
Death Shock is an example of the lowest common denominator of the British sex film in the late 1970s and early 1980s, others being Mary Millington’s Striptease Extravaganza and Queen of the Blues.
Anyone want to do an auteurist analysis of these guys? In time it will probably happen...
Running barely three quarters of an hour the majority of Death Shock’s running time is filled with unconvincing sex scenes, the kind where the filmmakers had to be careful about avoiding anything that could fall foul of the censors -- penetration, ejaculation, erect penises, spread vaginas etc.
Even at this length the film is padded out.
First there is an opening scene in which a young woman hears chanting, gets off her bike to investigate, discovers some cultists, and is then pursued (conveniently catching her skirt on a raised nail), caught and sacrificed.
Then, as the main characters drive on, there is a minute or two of long shots of their car while the inane dialogue is done in voice-off.
The writing is such that the name of the younger lesbian is not mentioned until the final scene – “where’s [Susan|Sarah]?” “He I am!” – hence my inability to remember the character’s name.
Of those involved three have names of note, at least within their specific generic area, namely Lindsay Honey/Steve Perry, Linzi Drew, and Bill Wright. Honey, better known as Ben Dover, and Wright, better known as Frank Thring, independently appeared in and directed hundreds of porn films during the 1990s and early 2000s. Drew’s fame was more immediate in terms of being a regular in certain “men’s magazines” (read softcore porn) of the time. She was/is Honey’s partner.
The direction is perfunctory, albeit with at least one moment of vague visual imagination when a mirrored shot pulls back to reveal the actual image.
Thankfully this never happened, unlike the Fantom Killer series
The most intriguing aspect of the film, for me, was how it again highlighted a major distinction between UK softcore and US/Continental European hardcore of the time: In the UK film was the ability of the male performers to not get an unwanted erection valued in a comparable way to the ability of those elsewhere to achieve a wanted one?
The youngsters ask for a lift to the nearest petrol station, but the man tells them it is 12 miles away – too far out of his way. Fortunately there is a manor house, the Grange, about a mile away and the man/vicar agrees to drive them to it.
The owner of the Grange seems surprisingly welcoming and prepared (perhaps in the manner of Dracula’s servant Klove in Dracula Prince of Darkness, if we can accept promotional descriptions of the film as spoofing Hammer) and the group are encouraged to have a meal and stay the night. Said meal later turns out to have been laced with substantial quantities of aphrodisiac.
This affects the two heterosexual couples most strongly, insofar as one of the two lesbians professes to be ‘not in the mood’ when her partner goes to use a dildo on her – albeit with said partner then going to join one of the heterosexual couples for a threesome (“come and join us”).
Eventually it is revealed that the apparent vicar and the denizens of the Grange are Satanists and that the younger lesbian, the one not in the mood, is “a virgin of 16 summers” and thus the perfect material for an unholy rite; never mind that she looks, and indeed undoubtedly was, for legal reasons, older.
Death Shock is an example of the lowest common denominator of the British sex film in the late 1970s and early 1980s, others being Mary Millington’s Striptease Extravaganza and Queen of the Blues.
Anyone want to do an auteurist analysis of these guys? In time it will probably happen...
Running barely three quarters of an hour the majority of Death Shock’s running time is filled with unconvincing sex scenes, the kind where the filmmakers had to be careful about avoiding anything that could fall foul of the censors -- penetration, ejaculation, erect penises, spread vaginas etc.
Even at this length the film is padded out.
First there is an opening scene in which a young woman hears chanting, gets off her bike to investigate, discovers some cultists, and is then pursued (conveniently catching her skirt on a raised nail), caught and sacrificed.
Then, as the main characters drive on, there is a minute or two of long shots of their car while the inane dialogue is done in voice-off.
The writing is such that the name of the younger lesbian is not mentioned until the final scene – “where’s [Susan|Sarah]?” “He I am!” – hence my inability to remember the character’s name.
Of those involved three have names of note, at least within their specific generic area, namely Lindsay Honey/Steve Perry, Linzi Drew, and Bill Wright. Honey, better known as Ben Dover, and Wright, better known as Frank Thring, independently appeared in and directed hundreds of porn films during the 1990s and early 2000s. Drew’s fame was more immediate in terms of being a regular in certain “men’s magazines” (read softcore porn) of the time. She was/is Honey’s partner.
The direction is perfunctory, albeit with at least one moment of vague visual imagination when a mirrored shot pulls back to reveal the actual image.
Thankfully this never happened, unlike the Fantom Killer series
The most intriguing aspect of the film, for me, was how it again highlighted a major distinction between UK softcore and US/Continental European hardcore of the time: In the UK film was the ability of the male performers to not get an unwanted erection valued in a comparable way to the ability of those elsewhere to achieve a wanted one?
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
On the Game
This 1974 entry from producer-director Stanley Long examines the theme of prostitution through the ages via a series of vignettes that take us from prehistoric times through to the present day or even the future, giving several interesting facts (or possibly factiods) along the way.
We begin with a low-budget pastiche of the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey as a male ape barters the sexual services of a female in exchange for some eggs that he has gathered. It may be a black monolith moment in the history that Long is recounting, but there is no triumphant music nor a match cut bridging countless millenia.
Following this the narrative turns to ancient times, identifying Biblical taboos on prostitution along with the different approaches found in Babylonia, Greece and Rome.
In Babylonia, we are told, women were required to serve as religious prostitutes until they had lost their virginity, the sting in the tale being provided by a man approaching a woman only to then find out that she is a severe butterface --- i.e. everything else is fine, but her face isn’t.
In Greece brothels served as places of sanctuary, the problem being that having entered it was frequently impossible to leave.
In Rome prostitutes were licensed by the state, but having assumed the role were then forbidden to marry. Apparently they also had to wear blue or yellow wigs.
One exception to the first point was the Empress Messalina, whose exploits servicing the needs of several legionnaires are depicted via two ever increasing piles of breastplates and coins.
Following this there is the a jump in time to the Victorian era, where a masked husband and wife are predictably shocked when they unmask one another.
So far, very much a fun romp through the ages, Charles Grey’s voice-over getting the right mondo-style balance between serious and supercilious, while also helping paper over the usual weaknesses in the acting department when many performers are cast for their looks and willingness to disrobe and engage in softcore shenanigans. (Grey would, of course, undertake a similar narrator role the following year for The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)
It isn’t all fun and games, however, with a sequence in which a woman accused of being a prostitute is treated to the ducking stool treatment by an angry mob that results in her demise – images that perhaps intentionally recall Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General, Long having served as cameraman on Michael Reeves’ previous film, The Sorcerors.
Another, more jarring tonal shift occurs between vignettes of a German army field brothel in the First World War and of Second World War era British conscripts being shown a film about VD that includes several stills of diseased male and female genitalia that clearly came straight out of an actual sex hygiene film or a medical textbook.
Trivia fans may also care to note that the De Wolfe library cue that plays over the opening cartoon credits later appeared as that supposedly being played by the musicians in Mary Millington’s World Striptease Extravaganza.
We begin with a low-budget pastiche of the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey as a male ape barters the sexual services of a female in exchange for some eggs that he has gathered. It may be a black monolith moment in the history that Long is recounting, but there is no triumphant music nor a match cut bridging countless millenia.
Following this the narrative turns to ancient times, identifying Biblical taboos on prostitution along with the different approaches found in Babylonia, Greece and Rome.
In Babylonia, we are told, women were required to serve as religious prostitutes until they had lost their virginity, the sting in the tale being provided by a man approaching a woman only to then find out that she is a severe butterface --- i.e. everything else is fine, but her face isn’t.
In Greece brothels served as places of sanctuary, the problem being that having entered it was frequently impossible to leave.
In Rome prostitutes were licensed by the state, but having assumed the role were then forbidden to marry. Apparently they also had to wear blue or yellow wigs.
One exception to the first point was the Empress Messalina, whose exploits servicing the needs of several legionnaires are depicted via two ever increasing piles of breastplates and coins.
Following this there is the a jump in time to the Victorian era, where a masked husband and wife are predictably shocked when they unmask one another.
So far, very much a fun romp through the ages, Charles Grey’s voice-over getting the right mondo-style balance between serious and supercilious, while also helping paper over the usual weaknesses in the acting department when many performers are cast for their looks and willingness to disrobe and engage in softcore shenanigans. (Grey would, of course, undertake a similar narrator role the following year for The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)
It isn’t all fun and games, however, with a sequence in which a woman accused of being a prostitute is treated to the ducking stool treatment by an angry mob that results in her demise – images that perhaps intentionally recall Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General, Long having served as cameraman on Michael Reeves’ previous film, The Sorcerors.
Another, more jarring tonal shift occurs between vignettes of a German army field brothel in the First World War and of Second World War era British conscripts being shown a film about VD that includes several stills of diseased male and female genitalia that clearly came straight out of an actual sex hygiene film or a medical textbook.
Trivia fans may also care to note that the De Wolfe library cue that plays over the opening cartoon credits later appeared as that supposedly being played by the musicians in Mary Millington’s World Striptease Extravaganza.
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Emmanuelle in Soho
Young couple Paul and Kate (Julie Lee) and their bisexual flatmate Emanuelle (Angie Quick, billed as Mandy Miller) are short of money. Paul and Emmanuelle try their hand at glamour photography, while Kate gets a job as a stripper at a nude review, Hang About Sebastian. Paul takes his photos to Bill (John M. East), who tells Paul that they are not really what the punters are after and kindly offers to take them off his hands for £50, then sells them for several times this. After Bill has worked this scam several times, Paul realises he is being conned and schemes his revenge. He invites Bill and his secretary cum mistress Sheila to a party, also attended by the cast and artistic crew of Hang About Sebastian. Inevitably, several of the guests pair off, including Bill. Paul secretly films Bill, then blackmails him...
Released to cinemas thirty years ago this month, Emmanuelle in Soho pretty much marked the death of the British sex film as a theatrical form.
The once proud Tigon tiger-lion...
British Cinema: From Blow-Up to this in the span of 15 or so years...
Blackstone and Hooper should be familiar names to students of the genre, with the latter also having some surprise Italian connections...
The film was bankrolled by porn baron David Sullivan as a vehicle for Julie Lee. She was a half-Chinese model who was being groomed as the successor to Mary Millington, who had committed suicide two years earlier and whose legacy it was becoming harder for Sullivan to exploit.
Keep it on!
Lee was originally cast as the Emmanuelle character. This could have suggested more of a connection, however tenuous, to the unofficial Emanuelle cycle from Italy insofar as these had similarly stressed the exotic appeal of 'Black' Emanuelle and 'Yellow' Emanuelle. Any sense of Oriental(ist) fantasy is however immediately dispelled when Lee opens her mouth and reveals her broad Yorkshire accent; had it been an Italian film, shot silent and post-synchronised, this could of course have been avoided.
East and some publicity for other Sullivan product
Lee and Miller swapped roles when it became apparent that she really could not act. Think about that: One model in a sex film being replaced by another because the quality of her performance was not up to scratch!
It is not, however, that the rest of the cast are much better. The actor playing Paul -- I use the term loosely -- performs primarily through raising his eyebrows, while producer and co-writer East reprises his Max Miller comedy routine from the Millington cash-in Queen of the Blues, firing off gag after gag, mostly unfunny.
The direction from first and only timer David Hughes is perfunctory. There is however the odd moment, such as the rack focus from Paul and Emmanuelle in a potentially compromising situation to Kate as she enters the room positioned in the back of the frame, in between them, which suggests someone making an effort.
The version under review ran barely an hour, with much of the running time padded out by the various performance and softcore numbers -- or, depending on your point of view, there is not enough of these and too much of plot stuff.
Signs of the times
Internationally it was also released with a documentary type introduction to Soho and with hardcore inserts. For the present day viewer, meanwhile, its interest is more as a classic piece of trash and for the incidental historical, social and cultural details, ranging from dialogue indicating a pre-AIDS fashionability of bisexuality (though other lines predictably suggest this was exclusively for women); to the giant top-loading VHS machine that was killing off this kind of cinema; to the size of flat the three supposedly impoverished friends have; to Paul's massive bouffant cum mullet.
Lee tragically died less than two years later after crashing her car and suffering massive burns. She was on her way home from a beauty contest in which, as the Monopoly card has it, she won second place...
Released to cinemas thirty years ago this month, Emmanuelle in Soho pretty much marked the death of the British sex film as a theatrical form.
The once proud Tigon tiger-lion...
British Cinema: From Blow-Up to this in the span of 15 or so years...
Blackstone and Hooper should be familiar names to students of the genre, with the latter also having some surprise Italian connections...
The film was bankrolled by porn baron David Sullivan as a vehicle for Julie Lee. She was a half-Chinese model who was being groomed as the successor to Mary Millington, who had committed suicide two years earlier and whose legacy it was becoming harder for Sullivan to exploit.
Keep it on!
Lee was originally cast as the Emmanuelle character. This could have suggested more of a connection, however tenuous, to the unofficial Emanuelle cycle from Italy insofar as these had similarly stressed the exotic appeal of 'Black' Emanuelle and 'Yellow' Emanuelle. Any sense of Oriental(ist) fantasy is however immediately dispelled when Lee opens her mouth and reveals her broad Yorkshire accent; had it been an Italian film, shot silent and post-synchronised, this could of course have been avoided.
East and some publicity for other Sullivan product
Lee and Miller swapped roles when it became apparent that she really could not act. Think about that: One model in a sex film being replaced by another because the quality of her performance was not up to scratch!
It is not, however, that the rest of the cast are much better. The actor playing Paul -- I use the term loosely -- performs primarily through raising his eyebrows, while producer and co-writer East reprises his Max Miller comedy routine from the Millington cash-in Queen of the Blues, firing off gag after gag, mostly unfunny.
The direction from first and only timer David Hughes is perfunctory. There is however the odd moment, such as the rack focus from Paul and Emmanuelle in a potentially compromising situation to Kate as she enters the room positioned in the back of the frame, in between them, which suggests someone making an effort.
The version under review ran barely an hour, with much of the running time padded out by the various performance and softcore numbers -- or, depending on your point of view, there is not enough of these and too much of plot stuff.
Signs of the times
Internationally it was also released with a documentary type introduction to Soho and with hardcore inserts. For the present day viewer, meanwhile, its interest is more as a classic piece of trash and for the incidental historical, social and cultural details, ranging from dialogue indicating a pre-AIDS fashionability of bisexuality (though other lines predictably suggest this was exclusively for women); to the giant top-loading VHS machine that was killing off this kind of cinema; to the size of flat the three supposedly impoverished friends have; to Paul's massive bouffant cum mullet.
Lee tragically died less than two years later after crashing her car and suffering massive burns. She was on her way home from a beauty contest in which, as the Monopoly card has it, she won second place...
Friday, 12 November 2010
Commuter Husbands
This British sex film entry from Derek Ford is not so much a comedy as a drama-documentary. Hosted by Gabrielle Drake’s sexology researcher, Carol, it presents six short vignettes purporting to explore the sexual mores of suburban Londoners in the early 1970s.
I went to drama school for this?
The first sees a husband phone his wife to tell her that he will be away on business for the weekend. In reality, however, he is planning a weekend away with his mistress. As the camera tracks back from the wife we get the first reversal in that she is in bed with her lover and happily takes this news as a chance for them to likewise have a weekend away.
Both couples then unwittingly book into the same hotel, one that is special to both the husband and wife. Things work out very civilly, however, as they go off to talk and come to the conclusion that they are best off together. Reaching a similar conclusion, their opposite numbers have paired off in the meantime...
The next segment plays on the tradesman fantasies so often found in British sex films as a plumber is summoned to a penthouse suite to do some work by a French actress (Claire Gordon) and finds a swingers party in full flow. The route from one set of plumbing to the other is, however, not a smooth and easy one...
Oh yes, not
The most interesting of the segments is also the most fantastical as a slightly long-haired but otherwise eminently respectable looking suited and bowler hatted type imagines himself as a Hells Angel type having his brutal way with any woman that tickles his fancy (innuendo deliberate).
Psychomania Rising
As one IMDB reviewer perceptively remarks, it’s a bit like a heterosexual (and thereby inherently less transgressive) reinterpretation of Kenneth Anger’s gay underground classic Scorpio Rising.
Voyeurism
The next segment is about a middle-aged businessman who regularly visits a brothel in order that he can watch others having sex. Besides the obvious voyeurism theme – us watching him, watching them, but without consequence – the relationship between the madame and the businessman is interesting for its reversals. It reminded me a bit of the sequence in Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty in which going to the toilet is a public activity while eating is something shameful to be done in private.
Ford looks to have used a working trip abroad as the basis for an Amsterdam set segment in which another hapless, hopeless male, on another business trip, tries to attract the attentions of his tour guide and blunders into a sex shop in the process...
The final segment features Drake herself and is introduced, with a nod to De Sade, as “the misfortunes of virtue”. It sees her husband being given the responsibility for entertaining an Italian businessman, with entertaining meaning call girls. Knowing that she has a friend who’s up for most things sexually, he wonders if Drake and said friend might pose as the call girls. They can pair off, as can the Italian and the friend. Needless to say it doesn’t quite go according to plan...
None of the sex scenes featured in the film are of the hardcore type, at least in the version I saw. Nevertheless, they appear pretty close to the limits of acceptability for a British film of this time and have the definite look of material that could be tailored to the demands of a particular market and/or the censors. There is a distinction evident here between the legitimate actors and the porn extras, with the former not called upon to do much except bare some flesh sex-wise, and the latter not being called upon to do dialogue, act and react and so on.
Piccadilly Circus
The opening scenes of the film, presenting a drive round Soho – something also seen in Diversions – have the usual inadvertent documentary interest.
It goes without saying that the film’s own value is similarly sociological rather than aesthetic – or, for that matter, erotic.
I went to drama school for this?
The first sees a husband phone his wife to tell her that he will be away on business for the weekend. In reality, however, he is planning a weekend away with his mistress. As the camera tracks back from the wife we get the first reversal in that she is in bed with her lover and happily takes this news as a chance for them to likewise have a weekend away.
Both couples then unwittingly book into the same hotel, one that is special to both the husband and wife. Things work out very civilly, however, as they go off to talk and come to the conclusion that they are best off together. Reaching a similar conclusion, their opposite numbers have paired off in the meantime...
The next segment plays on the tradesman fantasies so often found in British sex films as a plumber is summoned to a penthouse suite to do some work by a French actress (Claire Gordon) and finds a swingers party in full flow. The route from one set of plumbing to the other is, however, not a smooth and easy one...
Oh yes, not
The most interesting of the segments is also the most fantastical as a slightly long-haired but otherwise eminently respectable looking suited and bowler hatted type imagines himself as a Hells Angel type having his brutal way with any woman that tickles his fancy (innuendo deliberate).
Psychomania Rising
As one IMDB reviewer perceptively remarks, it’s a bit like a heterosexual (and thereby inherently less transgressive) reinterpretation of Kenneth Anger’s gay underground classic Scorpio Rising.
Voyeurism
The next segment is about a middle-aged businessman who regularly visits a brothel in order that he can watch others having sex. Besides the obvious voyeurism theme – us watching him, watching them, but without consequence – the relationship between the madame and the businessman is interesting for its reversals. It reminded me a bit of the sequence in Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty in which going to the toilet is a public activity while eating is something shameful to be done in private.
Ford looks to have used a working trip abroad as the basis for an Amsterdam set segment in which another hapless, hopeless male, on another business trip, tries to attract the attentions of his tour guide and blunders into a sex shop in the process...
The final segment features Drake herself and is introduced, with a nod to De Sade, as “the misfortunes of virtue”. It sees her husband being given the responsibility for entertaining an Italian businessman, with entertaining meaning call girls. Knowing that she has a friend who’s up for most things sexually, he wonders if Drake and said friend might pose as the call girls. They can pair off, as can the Italian and the friend. Needless to say it doesn’t quite go according to plan...
None of the sex scenes featured in the film are of the hardcore type, at least in the version I saw. Nevertheless, they appear pretty close to the limits of acceptability for a British film of this time and have the definite look of material that could be tailored to the demands of a particular market and/or the censors. There is a distinction evident here between the legitimate actors and the porn extras, with the former not called upon to do much except bare some flesh sex-wise, and the latter not being called upon to do dialogue, act and react and so on.
Piccadilly Circus
The opening scenes of the film, presenting a drive round Soho – something also seen in Diversions – have the usual inadvertent documentary interest.
It goes without saying that the film’s own value is similarly sociological rather than aesthetic – or, for that matter, erotic.
Friday, 5 November 2010
Under the Doctor
Starring Adventures of a Taxi Driver's Barry Evans in a somewhat different role, that of a sex obsessed doctor rather than a sex obsessed cabbie, this is a middling example of the 1970s British sex comedy that manages to be of some theoretical interest.
The film is structured around three of Evans's patients, played by Penny Spencer, Hilary Pritchard and Liz Frazer and their respective case histories.
First, Spencer relates how she went for a job interview and had fantasies about her potential employer.
Next, Pritchard first tells how she obtained valuable stock market information from an upper-class broker type only to have difficulties with his lecherous butler, then of her fantasies of being an 18th century noblewoman whom two suitors are duelling over.
Finally, Frazer relates of how she has attempted to reignite the passion of her imagined husband.
The key point of significance in Spencer and Pritchard's cases, along with Fraser's fantasy, is that Evans is present, as the would-be employer, one of the suitors and the imaginary husband respectively. As such, amidst the bums, boobs and bad humour, there is the question of whose fantasies are actually being represented, and of who is projecting or transferring what onto whom.
The film is structured around three of Evans's patients, played by Penny Spencer, Hilary Pritchard and Liz Frazer and their respective case histories.
First, Spencer relates how she went for a job interview and had fantasies about her potential employer.
Next, Pritchard first tells how she obtained valuable stock market information from an upper-class broker type only to have difficulties with his lecherous butler, then of her fantasies of being an 18th century noblewoman whom two suitors are duelling over.
Finally, Frazer relates of how she has attempted to reignite the passion of her imagined husband.
The key point of significance in Spencer and Pritchard's cases, along with Fraser's fantasy, is that Evans is present, as the would-be employer, one of the suitors and the imaginary husband respectively. As such, amidst the bums, boobs and bad humour, there is the question of whose fantasies are actually being represented, and of who is projecting or transferring what onto whom.
Put another way, someone with an interest in psychoanalytic film theory really ought to look at this film and what it is 'saying' in a more or less unselfconscious / unconscious way...
For the rest of us there is also the Barry Lyndon parody of the 18th century sequence. (The film's writer, Ron Bareham, was a production accountant on the Kubrick film.)
For the rest of us there is also the Barry Lyndon parody of the 18th century sequence. (The film's writer, Ron Bareham, was a production accountant on the Kubrick film.)
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Au Pair Girls
One of the things I find fascinating about British exploitation cinema from the 1970s is the existence of an obvious division amongst their personnel.
On the one hand we have those with little or no prospect or at times interest in careers in the mainstream.
On the other hand we have those who might well once have enjoyed mainstream careers but who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time now that London had stopped swinging and US money coming in.
Au Pair Girls is a film which perfectly illustrates this tendency.
In the former camp we have David Grant, credited as author of the story. One of the biggest figures in the British porn scene as producer, distributor and exhibitor, Grant would later be jailed for distributing the video nasty Nightmares in a Damaged Brain in the 1980s before dying in mysterious circumstances in 1991, the possible victim of a hit.
In the latter camp we have co-writer and director Val Guest. A forty-year industry veteran by this point, he had first made his mark in comedy in the 1930s and 40s before playing a major role in kick-starting the British horror cinema through The Quatermass Xperiment for Hammer. Here, however Guest, veteran of some 14 Hammer productions in total, was working for that company’s more downmarket rival, Tigon.
The mark of quality
Perhaps more interesting, however, is the way in which the film also exhibits something of a tension in its own approach, between presenting exploitation and commenting critically on it. Whether this was a deliberate strategy on someone’s part – the likes of Quatermass 2 and Hell is a City have a critical, realist edge to them – or unintentional is another matter, of course.
This is most evident towards the end of the film.
Never has a place been less appropriately named, though was the intention or not?
In one of the four stories the German au pair, Christa, who is a virgin, is taken to a Ricky Strange gig at Groovers nightclub and offered up as a sacrifice to the rock god by the opportunistic daughter of the family she has been placed with, “a Deutschland dolly where the hand of man has never set foot before”
Whilst no Permissive, it’s pretty sordid, depressing stuff and perhaps provides a hint of why Guest, who also helmed Confessions of a Window Cleaner around this time, was not involved with its sequel, Confessions of a Pop Performer.
Ironic use of phallic symbolism, or what?
In another of the four stories a Swedish sexpot type, Anita, with a colour TV obsession is recruited by an Arab Sheik to be part of his harem. Though there’s a hint of criticism, in that we’re told the Sheik has magnanimously raised the annual income of his people from £10 to £20, it’s basically played for laughs.
Ferdy Mayne plays the Sheik
Following this, however, Christa, along with the other two Au Pair Girls, Nan and Randi, is herself picked up by the Sheik for what seems a bit of a dramatic transition from virgin to whore and an odd way to end the film on a high.
The story featuring Nan is also a bit off-key as she is placed with a family of eccentric aristocrats and immediately becomes involved with their piano playing child-man son Rupert (A “new playmate” / “It’s beautiful, I like it”), has sex with him and then silently departs.
Yet if there’s perhaps a hint of the inscrutable Oriental stereotype here, that ‘we’ cannot fathom ‘them’, Nan is also the only one of the four girls whose English is perfect and devoid of unwitting innuendo (Anita’s “I work with them all day and in the evening I play with myself. Is no good?” or Randi’s “I am not miss Lindstrom. My friends call me Randi”)
Again, some sort of critical comment ((Me Me Lai, more famous for her roles in Italian cannibal films, is Anglo-Burmese) or just unsatisfactory writing and characterisation?
Taken on its own basic terms, of providing laughs and showcasing female pulchritude, the film is a success.
For some reason the au pairs on the right is not featured subsequently – was there perhaps an export version with extra material?
It also has a very cool theme song, the kind that had it been sung in Italian or in Italian accented English would surely have showed up on a Beat at Cinecitta or Easy Tempo collection.
Le Mesurier's finest moment
And then there’s the immortal sight of none other than John Le Mesurier fondling his secretary’s breast before telling his son – who imagines this – to “Piss off!”
[See also: http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=1797
and http://monsterhunter.coldfusionvideo.com/2008/05/au-pair-girls-1972/ ]
On the one hand we have those with little or no prospect or at times interest in careers in the mainstream.
On the other hand we have those who might well once have enjoyed mainstream careers but who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time now that London had stopped swinging and US money coming in.
Au Pair Girls is a film which perfectly illustrates this tendency.
In the former camp we have David Grant, credited as author of the story. One of the biggest figures in the British porn scene as producer, distributor and exhibitor, Grant would later be jailed for distributing the video nasty Nightmares in a Damaged Brain in the 1980s before dying in mysterious circumstances in 1991, the possible victim of a hit.
In the latter camp we have co-writer and director Val Guest. A forty-year industry veteran by this point, he had first made his mark in comedy in the 1930s and 40s before playing a major role in kick-starting the British horror cinema through The Quatermass Xperiment for Hammer. Here, however Guest, veteran of some 14 Hammer productions in total, was working for that company’s more downmarket rival, Tigon.
The mark of quality
Perhaps more interesting, however, is the way in which the film also exhibits something of a tension in its own approach, between presenting exploitation and commenting critically on it. Whether this was a deliberate strategy on someone’s part – the likes of Quatermass 2 and Hell is a City have a critical, realist edge to them – or unintentional is another matter, of course.
This is most evident towards the end of the film.
Never has a place been less appropriately named, though was the intention or not?
In one of the four stories the German au pair, Christa, who is a virgin, is taken to a Ricky Strange gig at Groovers nightclub and offered up as a sacrifice to the rock god by the opportunistic daughter of the family she has been placed with, “a Deutschland dolly where the hand of man has never set foot before”
Whilst no Permissive, it’s pretty sordid, depressing stuff and perhaps provides a hint of why Guest, who also helmed Confessions of a Window Cleaner around this time, was not involved with its sequel, Confessions of a Pop Performer.
Ironic use of phallic symbolism, or what?
In another of the four stories a Swedish sexpot type, Anita, with a colour TV obsession is recruited by an Arab Sheik to be part of his harem. Though there’s a hint of criticism, in that we’re told the Sheik has magnanimously raised the annual income of his people from £10 to £20, it’s basically played for laughs.
Ferdy Mayne plays the Sheik
Following this, however, Christa, along with the other two Au Pair Girls, Nan and Randi, is herself picked up by the Sheik for what seems a bit of a dramatic transition from virgin to whore and an odd way to end the film on a high.
The story featuring Nan is also a bit off-key as she is placed with a family of eccentric aristocrats and immediately becomes involved with their piano playing child-man son Rupert (A “new playmate” / “It’s beautiful, I like it”), has sex with him and then silently departs.
Yet if there’s perhaps a hint of the inscrutable Oriental stereotype here, that ‘we’ cannot fathom ‘them’, Nan is also the only one of the four girls whose English is perfect and devoid of unwitting innuendo (Anita’s “I work with them all day and in the evening I play with myself. Is no good?” or Randi’s “I am not miss Lindstrom. My friends call me Randi”)
Again, some sort of critical comment ((Me Me Lai, more famous for her roles in Italian cannibal films, is Anglo-Burmese) or just unsatisfactory writing and characterisation?
Taken on its own basic terms, of providing laughs and showcasing female pulchritude, the film is a success.
For some reason the au pairs on the right is not featured subsequently – was there perhaps an export version with extra material?
It also has a very cool theme song, the kind that had it been sung in Italian or in Italian accented English would surely have showed up on a Beat at Cinecitta or Easy Tempo collection.
Le Mesurier's finest moment
And then there’s the immortal sight of none other than John Le Mesurier fondling his secretary’s breast before telling his son – who imagines this – to “Piss off!”
[See also: http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=1797
and http://monsterhunter.coldfusionvideo.com/2008/05/au-pair-girls-1972/ ]
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
West End Jungle
Effectively banned on its initial release but now coming across as a quaint time-capsule, this 1961 expose of prostitution in London exhibits the tension between documenting and exploiting its subject matter from the off.
If it's a good film, it's a Miracle!
Though the production company’s name, Searchlight, connotes the documentarian ideal of illumination and enlightenment, those behind the film were none other than Arnold Miller and Stanley Long whose other contributions to cinema the same year, setting the pattern for the kind of exploitation material to follow, were Nudist Memories and Nudes of the World.
More important, though the film purports to show scenes captured from the sordid underbelly of London life, the fact that various performers are credited clearly undercuts its claims to realism. There’s also, however, an amateurishness and ugliness to them, a fact emphasised by the absence of actual dialogue in lieu of a soundtrack comprised of extensive use of needle-drop crime jazz interspersed with authorial voice-off and unidentified responses to interview-style questions in which the participants seem curiously okay about self-incriminating:
Interviewer: “How gay and cheerful do they [the girls] have to be? Enough to go to bed with the customers?”
Club owner: “That is their concern. What they do after they leave here is nothing to do with us at all. “
“When a girl comes to you for a job as a hostess do you ask her whether she has any objections to going to bed with men?”
“Well...”
“Do you?”
“Well, yes.”
“And supposing she does object to sleeping with a client does she get the job?”
“No, not necessarily.”
Dancer: “Men? They make me sick. Look at them sitting there drooling!”
Interviewer: “Then why do you do it?”
“I don’t know the money’s not bad. Better than I got serving in a shop. Besides, I always wanted to be on the stage. You’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t you?”
For the most part Miller’s direction serves to keep up the documentary pretence by being of an unobtrusive and functional sort, though inevitably he is unable to resist the odd jarring subjective shot when it comes to filming a strip routine.
Street prostitution, before the new law
And off the street, sort of, afterwards
Long’s cinematography is crisp and professional, but thereby perhaps likewise a bit incongruous at times – things tend to look that bit too well set-up.
If its depictions can be taken as valid the film had a certain social/moral value. To wit:
If you are a young woman from the provinces then this is how a pimp sizes you up and operates, so beware and don’t be taken in by him: “The transformation, mental as well as physical, is easy. In only a few days the weak willed, glamour hungry bumpkin has become a skilful heartless gold-digger.”
If you are a young man then this is how a clip joint works, so watch out or you may find yourself paying “as much as ten shillings for a glass of blackcurrant juice.”
If you are a businessman and offered companionship, then be forewarned about where this might lead in terms of blackmail.
Predictably, however, these messages are dealt with in somewhat two-faced and decidedly hyperbolic terms: Look at these pathetic figures, male and female alike, and feel superior to them, even as you’ve maybe been taken in the filmmakers.
The inevitable Raymond Revue Bar shot
“Laughable or sordid, perhaps something of both. But really pitiful and depressing” about sums it up.
If it's a good film, it's a Miracle!
Though the production company’s name, Searchlight, connotes the documentarian ideal of illumination and enlightenment, those behind the film were none other than Arnold Miller and Stanley Long whose other contributions to cinema the same year, setting the pattern for the kind of exploitation material to follow, were Nudist Memories and Nudes of the World.
More important, though the film purports to show scenes captured from the sordid underbelly of London life, the fact that various performers are credited clearly undercuts its claims to realism. There’s also, however, an amateurishness and ugliness to them, a fact emphasised by the absence of actual dialogue in lieu of a soundtrack comprised of extensive use of needle-drop crime jazz interspersed with authorial voice-off and unidentified responses to interview-style questions in which the participants seem curiously okay about self-incriminating:
Interviewer: “How gay and cheerful do they [the girls] have to be? Enough to go to bed with the customers?”
Club owner: “That is their concern. What they do after they leave here is nothing to do with us at all. “
“When a girl comes to you for a job as a hostess do you ask her whether she has any objections to going to bed with men?”
“Well...”
“Do you?”
“Well, yes.”
“And supposing she does object to sleeping with a client does she get the job?”
“No, not necessarily.”
Dancer: “Men? They make me sick. Look at them sitting there drooling!”
Interviewer: “Then why do you do it?”
“I don’t know the money’s not bad. Better than I got serving in a shop. Besides, I always wanted to be on the stage. You’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t you?”
For the most part Miller’s direction serves to keep up the documentary pretence by being of an unobtrusive and functional sort, though inevitably he is unable to resist the odd jarring subjective shot when it comes to filming a strip routine.
Street prostitution, before the new law
And off the street, sort of, afterwards
Long’s cinematography is crisp and professional, but thereby perhaps likewise a bit incongruous at times – things tend to look that bit too well set-up.
If its depictions can be taken as valid the film had a certain social/moral value. To wit:
If you are a young woman from the provinces then this is how a pimp sizes you up and operates, so beware and don’t be taken in by him: “The transformation, mental as well as physical, is easy. In only a few days the weak willed, glamour hungry bumpkin has become a skilful heartless gold-digger.”
If you are a young man then this is how a clip joint works, so watch out or you may find yourself paying “as much as ten shillings for a glass of blackcurrant juice.”
If you are a businessman and offered companionship, then be forewarned about where this might lead in terms of blackmail.
Predictably, however, these messages are dealt with in somewhat two-faced and decidedly hyperbolic terms: Look at these pathetic figures, male and female alike, and feel superior to them, even as you’ve maybe been taken in the filmmakers.
The inevitable Raymond Revue Bar shot
“Laughable or sordid, perhaps something of both. But really pitiful and depressing” about sums it up.
Friday, 11 June 2010
Keep it up Jack
One reason the British sex comedy was never particularly well regarded by critics is, at base, social class: Middle class critics were looking at a working class form that drew more from music hall than modernist theatre and whose pleasures were thereby fundamentally alien to them.
Available to buy from Movie Poster Mem; another design is here http://www.wrongsideoftheart.com/2009/10/keep-it-up-jack-1973-uk/
The correlations are immediately made in this 1973 entry from Derek Ford in that it opens on a pier-front theatre where protagonist Jack James (Mark Jones) is performing his one-man version of Oliver Twist, then develops into a bawdier version of the Victorian-era farce Charley's Aunt.
All that's needed here is the Donald McGill postcard as well
Unfortunately for Jack times are not what they were and the theatre's owner soon decides that his act – which had been performed by his father and grandfather before him – is not what is needed to draw in the punters these days.
At this point Jack has a stroke of luck as he inherits a property following the death of his aunt. It turns out that the place is a brothel where she was the madam. Or, rather it was a brothel, seeing as only one of the girls working there, the ironically named Virginia (Sue Longhurst) remains on site.
Taking a fancy to Virginia, Jack starts posing as his aunt and re-opens the place for business.
He soon learns that Virginia has distinctly amorous intentions towards Auntie. But rather than coming clean about things (oo er!) Jack continues to keep it up (fnaar fnaar!) and impersonate all manner of the brothel's clients, each with their own preferences and pecadilloes amongst the seven women now working there...
The set up gives plenty scope for Jones and Longhurst to demonstrate their talents.
Jones’s various personas are particular highlight – even if his Japanese visitor is, inevitably, the kind of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s style caricature unacceptable today. Interestingly earlier in his career Jones had worked with avant garde theatre director Peter Brook, suggesting that just because something appealed to the critics this didn't necessarily mean it provided a decent wage for the actor.
Longhurst, meanwhile, comes across (oo er!) as something of a British version of Edwige Fenech: Sexy, uninhibited and a whole lot better actress than many would probably give her credit for.
Though the version I saw was strictly softcore Ford apparently also shot alternative hardcore scenes for the export market. As it is there are some scenes which push the envelope a bit, such as Longhurst's memorable first appearance, lying naked on a bed pleasuring herself, and a pseudo-lesbian threesome.
Sue Longhurst goes exploring
There are also some amusing in-jokes: One of the prostitutes, who specialises in playing an infantile role, is played by On the Buses's Linda Regan. When the place is threatened with closure she remarks that she may have to go back “on the buses”...
Available to buy from Movie Poster Mem; another design is here http://www.wrongsideoftheart.com/2009/10/keep-it-up-jack-1973-uk/
The correlations are immediately made in this 1973 entry from Derek Ford in that it opens on a pier-front theatre where protagonist Jack James (Mark Jones) is performing his one-man version of Oliver Twist, then develops into a bawdier version of the Victorian-era farce Charley's Aunt.
All that's needed here is the Donald McGill postcard as well
Unfortunately for Jack times are not what they were and the theatre's owner soon decides that his act – which had been performed by his father and grandfather before him – is not what is needed to draw in the punters these days.
At this point Jack has a stroke of luck as he inherits a property following the death of his aunt. It turns out that the place is a brothel where she was the madam. Or, rather it was a brothel, seeing as only one of the girls working there, the ironically named Virginia (Sue Longhurst) remains on site.
Taking a fancy to Virginia, Jack starts posing as his aunt and re-opens the place for business.
He soon learns that Virginia has distinctly amorous intentions towards Auntie. But rather than coming clean about things (oo er!) Jack continues to keep it up (fnaar fnaar!) and impersonate all manner of the brothel's clients, each with their own preferences and pecadilloes amongst the seven women now working there...
The set up gives plenty scope for Jones and Longhurst to demonstrate their talents.
Jones’s various personas are particular highlight – even if his Japanese visitor is, inevitably, the kind of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s style caricature unacceptable today. Interestingly earlier in his career Jones had worked with avant garde theatre director Peter Brook, suggesting that just because something appealed to the critics this didn't necessarily mean it provided a decent wage for the actor.
Longhurst, meanwhile, comes across (oo er!) as something of a British version of Edwige Fenech: Sexy, uninhibited and a whole lot better actress than many would probably give her credit for.
Though the version I saw was strictly softcore Ford apparently also shot alternative hardcore scenes for the export market. As it is there are some scenes which push the envelope a bit, such as Longhurst's memorable first appearance, lying naked on a bed pleasuring herself, and a pseudo-lesbian threesome.
Sue Longhurst goes exploring
There are also some amusing in-jokes: One of the prostitutes, who specialises in playing an infantile role, is played by On the Buses's Linda Regan. When the place is threatened with closure she remarks that she may have to go back “on the buses”...
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Adventures of a Plumber's Mate
To the casual viewer there probably isn't much to be said about British Sex Comedies from the 1970s: If you've seen one, you've seen them all. Not particularly funny, nor particularly sexy and differentiated from one another by their permutations of otherwise interchangeable performers, established and new, often reluctantly taking parts in them as the only ones going.
Stephen Lewis as Blakie, er, B A Crapper
Willie Rushton and the omnipresence of porn
There is an element of truth to this, but there are differences. For instance, whereas the Confessions films were based around a common set of characters and progressed from one film to the next, the rival Adventures films from producer-director Stanley Long had only their titles in common.
Whereas nudity and softcore sex were very much the raison d'etre of Adventures of a Taxi Driver they come across as something of an addition here, in that the scenario could well have formed the basis of a Will Hay, Ealing or Norman Wisdom comedy in an earlier decade.
A homage to Deadly Weapons?
Sid South (Adventures of a Taxi Driver had featured 'Joe North' and Adventures of a Private Eye 'Bob West') is behind on the rent and in debt to a local gangster to the tune of £900.
Always looking for ways to make a few extra pound, Sid asks one of his customers, whose toilet seat he's just replaced, if she minds if he takes the old one. He then sells on to an antique dealer, who duly sells the seat on at a not inconsiderable profit.
It then transpires that the seat is actually made of solid gold, another gangster's loot from an armed robbery a few years back. As it so happens, he's just been released from jail...
Kitchen sink drama
In terms of directing, writing, performances and production values the film is mostly rudimentary and perfunctory. Nevertheless, there is the occasional spark of imagination. For example, following the title credits, atop which plays a breezy theme by lead Christopher Neil, we get a long tracking shot of a bedsit that wouldn't have been out of place in a kitchen sink drama.
Long's experience as cinematographer on The Sorcerors clearly helped when it came to doing guerilla style scenes
Stephen Lewis as Blakie, er, B A Crapper
Willie Rushton and the omnipresence of porn
There is an element of truth to this, but there are differences. For instance, whereas the Confessions films were based around a common set of characters and progressed from one film to the next, the rival Adventures films from producer-director Stanley Long had only their titles in common.
Whereas nudity and softcore sex were very much the raison d'etre of Adventures of a Taxi Driver they come across as something of an addition here, in that the scenario could well have formed the basis of a Will Hay, Ealing or Norman Wisdom comedy in an earlier decade.
A homage to Deadly Weapons?
Sid South (Adventures of a Taxi Driver had featured 'Joe North' and Adventures of a Private Eye 'Bob West') is behind on the rent and in debt to a local gangster to the tune of £900.
Always looking for ways to make a few extra pound, Sid asks one of his customers, whose toilet seat he's just replaced, if she minds if he takes the old one. He then sells on to an antique dealer, who duly sells the seat on at a not inconsiderable profit.
It then transpires that the seat is actually made of solid gold, another gangster's loot from an armed robbery a few years back. As it so happens, he's just been released from jail...
Kitchen sink drama
In terms of directing, writing, performances and production values the film is mostly rudimentary and perfunctory. Nevertheless, there is the occasional spark of imagination. For example, following the title credits, atop which plays a breezy theme by lead Christopher Neil, we get a long tracking shot of a bedsit that wouldn't have been out of place in a kitchen sink drama.
Long's experience as cinematographer on The Sorcerors clearly helped when it came to doing guerilla style scenes
Saturday, 1 May 2010
The Wife Swappers
Although the mondo film was, as its name suggests, an Italian invention, its pseudo-documentary exploitation format was one which was readily exportable to other countries and imitable by their film-makers.
Thus West Germany gave us the Schoolgirl Report series and the US entries like the Italian sounding Mondo Oscenita and the more overtly homegrown Mondo Mod, Mondo Teeno and Mondo Topless.
British film-makers, however, tended to avoid the mondo label, instead preferring the likes of raw and primitive, usually deployed in some combination with London.
One of the key British players here was Stanley Long, a writer, producer, director, cinematographer and general go-to-man who worked on numerous British exploitation films in a variety of capacities over the course of the 1960s.
Another, working in a similarly broad range of capacities was Derek Ford.
The two men pooled their talents at the end of the decade, with the result being this film, an expose of the then-hot phenomenon of Wife Swapping.
The film's hypocritical mixture of voyeurism and condemnation is evident from the opening voice-off atop scene-setting images of London:
“Within the urban sprawl of any great city there is almost an infinite number of variations in human behaviour, millions upon millions of people going about their everyday business. Unfortunately we shall also find gambling alcoholism, drug addiction, pornography and every conceivable kind of sexual licentiousness.”
Needless to say, without these vices and licentiousness, along with a desire amongst a certain portion of the public to partake in them via film – I'm talking about you and me – the film-makers obviously wouldn't have had anything to work with.
But if their moral claims must be taken with a more than the recommended daily amount of salt, this can also be explained by the need for the film to have some sort of educational or social value.
Or, to be more exacting, particular kinds of these values. The nature of the BBFC at the time was, after all, such that no film without suitable pedigree – i.e. not a Stanley Long production – could ever really be neutral about wife swapping or sexual licentiousness. The terms couldn't be placed up for discussion, but rather had to be taken at face value. The established order of things, or things as they had existed before the cultural and sexual revolutions of the 1960s, had to be reasserted.
This reactionary aspect first becomes manifest about a third of the way into the film with the appearance of a psychoanalyst whose role is to proffering purportedly informed, objective and scientific commentary upon the reconstructions cum case studies presented for our entertainment and edification.
The message seems to be that unless your sex life is confined to the missionary position for the purposes of dutiful procreation then you will come to a nasty end: “The logic of all S&M relationships is the seeking of total destruction,” with the jaded thrill-seeker going to greater and greater lengths in pursuit of a newer, harder, kick.
If this puritanical attitude prevents the film from being as much fun as it might otherwise be it also heightens its value as a cultural artefact beyond the usual incidentals of fashions, hairstyles and so on.
This is important in that there's actually previous little to get excited about in terms of nudity and sex, while the balance of the material within the film is heavily skewed towards the imagined and reconstructed, with little that comes across as genuine – and this with other mondo films as a baseline.
This is most evident in a sequence which warns against the danger of wife swapping meetings being used as a front for garnering blackmail material. The blackmailers use special cameras which do not require as much light as their normal counterparts, but for this to be made visible to the filmmakers' camera everything obviously has to be lit conventionally.
A sequence featuring a publisher of contact magazines is better, with the man's discussion of how he first got into the business and of its risks coming across as having been drawn from life and the experiences of the film-makers' themselves or others within their circle. Again, however, one can't help feeling it would have been better had a real-life pornographer been present on camera rather than an actor playing one.
Another point of note is the film's title. In the US the film was released as The Swappers rather than The Wife Swappers. It may seem a minor alteration but is in fact one which suggests an important shift in meaning: Wife Swapping implies a male prerogative, that the woman is a piece of property to be exchanged with another man without her having much say in the matter, swapping a somewhat more egalitarian arrangement.
Perhaps the greatest irony about the film's approach is in relation to the life of director Ford. According to fellow-filmmaker Ray Selfe, Ford was something of a male nymphomaniac – or satyr. While not wishing to commit the intentional fallacy, of drawing direct comparisons between author and text, or engage in amateur psychoanalysis of the sort found within the diegesis, there does seem to be something inadvertently revealing about The Wife Swappers' approach.
The film's opposition between public virtue and private vice is also one that Ford himself seems to have followed, publicly professing to be a somewhat reluctant maker of softcore sex films whilst privately shooting hardcore inserts and versions after hours.
In this he contrasts with another figure associated with the production, stills photographer John Lindsay, who is inadvertently caught on camera in this capacity in the opening scene. Lindsay never made any secret of shooting hardcore, nor that it was just business, nothing personal.
In sum, neither the best nor the worst of its type – such positions necessarily being relative ones – but worth a look for the British trash fan.
Thus West Germany gave us the Schoolgirl Report series and the US entries like the Italian sounding Mondo Oscenita and the more overtly homegrown Mondo Mod, Mondo Teeno and Mondo Topless.
British film-makers, however, tended to avoid the mondo label, instead preferring the likes of raw and primitive, usually deployed in some combination with London.
One of the key British players here was Stanley Long, a writer, producer, director, cinematographer and general go-to-man who worked on numerous British exploitation films in a variety of capacities over the course of the 1960s.
Another, working in a similarly broad range of capacities was Derek Ford.
The two men pooled their talents at the end of the decade, with the result being this film, an expose of the then-hot phenomenon of Wife Swapping.
The film's hypocritical mixture of voyeurism and condemnation is evident from the opening voice-off atop scene-setting images of London:
“Within the urban sprawl of any great city there is almost an infinite number of variations in human behaviour, millions upon millions of people going about their everyday business. Unfortunately we shall also find gambling alcoholism, drug addiction, pornography and every conceivable kind of sexual licentiousness.”
Needless to say, without these vices and licentiousness, along with a desire amongst a certain portion of the public to partake in them via film – I'm talking about you and me – the film-makers obviously wouldn't have had anything to work with.
But if their moral claims must be taken with a more than the recommended daily amount of salt, this can also be explained by the need for the film to have some sort of educational or social value.
Or, to be more exacting, particular kinds of these values. The nature of the BBFC at the time was, after all, such that no film without suitable pedigree – i.e. not a Stanley Long production – could ever really be neutral about wife swapping or sexual licentiousness. The terms couldn't be placed up for discussion, but rather had to be taken at face value. The established order of things, or things as they had existed before the cultural and sexual revolutions of the 1960s, had to be reasserted.
This reactionary aspect first becomes manifest about a third of the way into the film with the appearance of a psychoanalyst whose role is to proffering purportedly informed, objective and scientific commentary upon the reconstructions cum case studies presented for our entertainment and edification.
The message seems to be that unless your sex life is confined to the missionary position for the purposes of dutiful procreation then you will come to a nasty end: “The logic of all S&M relationships is the seeking of total destruction,” with the jaded thrill-seeker going to greater and greater lengths in pursuit of a newer, harder, kick.
If this puritanical attitude prevents the film from being as much fun as it might otherwise be it also heightens its value as a cultural artefact beyond the usual incidentals of fashions, hairstyles and so on.
This is important in that there's actually previous little to get excited about in terms of nudity and sex, while the balance of the material within the film is heavily skewed towards the imagined and reconstructed, with little that comes across as genuine – and this with other mondo films as a baseline.
This is most evident in a sequence which warns against the danger of wife swapping meetings being used as a front for garnering blackmail material. The blackmailers use special cameras which do not require as much light as their normal counterparts, but for this to be made visible to the filmmakers' camera everything obviously has to be lit conventionally.
A sequence featuring a publisher of contact magazines is better, with the man's discussion of how he first got into the business and of its risks coming across as having been drawn from life and the experiences of the film-makers' themselves or others within their circle. Again, however, one can't help feeling it would have been better had a real-life pornographer been present on camera rather than an actor playing one.
Another point of note is the film's title. In the US the film was released as The Swappers rather than The Wife Swappers. It may seem a minor alteration but is in fact one which suggests an important shift in meaning: Wife Swapping implies a male prerogative, that the woman is a piece of property to be exchanged with another man without her having much say in the matter, swapping a somewhat more egalitarian arrangement.
Perhaps the greatest irony about the film's approach is in relation to the life of director Ford. According to fellow-filmmaker Ray Selfe, Ford was something of a male nymphomaniac – or satyr. While not wishing to commit the intentional fallacy, of drawing direct comparisons between author and text, or engage in amateur psychoanalysis of the sort found within the diegesis, there does seem to be something inadvertently revealing about The Wife Swappers' approach.
The film's opposition between public virtue and private vice is also one that Ford himself seems to have followed, publicly professing to be a somewhat reluctant maker of softcore sex films whilst privately shooting hardcore inserts and versions after hours.
In this he contrasts with another figure associated with the production, stills photographer John Lindsay, who is inadvertently caught on camera in this capacity in the opening scene. Lindsay never made any secret of shooting hardcore, nor that it was just business, nothing personal.
In sum, neither the best nor the worst of its type – such positions necessarily being relative ones – but worth a look for the British trash fan.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
The Playbirds
London, the late 1970s. Someone is killing the models of porn magazine Playbirds. With no real leads to go on, the police decide to send one of their own undercover / uncovered in a bid to make the maniac reveal himself from amongst the suspects already identified / proposed. They are:
Alan Lake as / is David Sullivan
Not that the film really open up space for discussing pornography anyway, other than to mock the anti-porn types of the time – as Sullivan did by naming another of his magazines, Whitehouse, after the religious puritan campaigner of the same surname. Still, the way in which his own alter-ego is presented seems somewhat curious. For he is crass, lacking in taste, obsessed with his horse racing (“use the whip!”) and generally someone you would very much like to see get his comeuppance.
We also get some footage of the mechanics of porn business, with copy upon copy of Playbirds being printed and stapled, rolling off the presses and being bundled up and into boxes for distribution: Fascinating from a documentary point of view, but distinctly anti-erotic.
The work of porn in the age of mechanical reproduction
Much the same can be said of the glamour shoots: Although the intention is clearly to make things seem sexy and exciting, the very fact that we're aware of this intentionality, or a lack of spontaneity and authenticity serves to distance us.
This emergent auto-critique also applies to the funniest and sleaziest moment in the entire film, in which Inspectors Porno and Bribeasy – er, Holbourne and Morgan – interview volunteers for going undercover and uncovered as a model in a bid to root out the maniac. Bump and grind music plays on the soundtrack as a succession of unsuccessful candidates strip off, the camera retaining a detached, observational eye throughout. Then, when glamour star Mary Millington steps into the breach, the camera becomes an active participant, moving around her and going in for close-ups as her routine continues.
Cue obligatory pseudo-lesbian scene
As with the giallo-inspired murder set-pieces, it's a moment of spectacle that makes us all the more aware of the banality of the bulk of the film, be it the detectives at work or 'Sullivan' at the racetrack.
Willy Roe is also the kind of point-and-shoot director whose attempts at visual style, such as a hand-held mirror based sex scene, don't really come off anyway.
Like other Sullivan productions most of the cast divides into two camps: Besides the models and porn types who cannot act but are happy providing the nudity and simulated sex, we also have various slumming thespians happy for just about the only work available them at the time.
Suzy Mandel
Somewhere in between, in uncredited roles, there are also some interesting other figures: unlikely 50-something porn performer Derek Aylward as a client in a massage parlour, candidly / knowingly acknowledged as the front for a brothel that the police are fully aware of, and performance artist / musician Cosey Fanni Tutti as a model; while her work within the British porn industry was also part of her wider art project – she posed for Sullivan's magazines and mounted an exhibition called Pornography – the film does not address this subject.
Playbirds goes off the rails a bit towards the end and finishes with one of those shock endings commonly found in weaker thrillers.
Yet if it leaves you dissatisfied and feeling cheated, this is perhaps apropos given the film's milieu, of a product which promises more than it can ever deliver and leaves you wanting more. (Not that such charges can only be levelled against porn...)
Insofar as the film is essentially 1959's The Cover Girl Murders revamped for a more permissive age and filtered through contemporary exploitation trends, intertexts are not difficult to find: The politician recalls the judge in Night after Night; the use of computer profiling in an attempt to narrow down the list of suspects The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; the glamour/model/sleaze setting Strip Nude for Your Killer, Delirium: Photos of Gioa and so on; the Playbirds of reality/Playbirds of fiction element the diegetic and non-diegetic Tenebres; the cod occultism Virgin Witch or Satanic Rites of Dracula; and fetishistic shots of black gloves around women's necks and a clue concealed in the photographic blow-up countless gialli.
The hands of doom
The white heat of the Scotland Yard computer system
The film also features plenty of jaw-droppingly funny / bad and just plain distasteful dialogue (“O goody, I'm going to be raped, I've never been raped before”) and some nice location shots of Soho for good measure.
[See also: http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvbirds.php
http://www.hysteria-lives.co.uk/hysterialives/Hysteria/the_playbird_murders.html ]
- The Playbirds photographer with a history of violence.
- The politician who preaches virtue in public and practices his vices in private.
- The Christian prophet of doom.
- The Playbirds owner who finds that his sales increase with each new murder.
Alan Lake as / is David Sullivan
Not that the film really open up space for discussing pornography anyway, other than to mock the anti-porn types of the time – as Sullivan did by naming another of his magazines, Whitehouse, after the religious puritan campaigner of the same surname. Still, the way in which his own alter-ego is presented seems somewhat curious. For he is crass, lacking in taste, obsessed with his horse racing (“use the whip!”) and generally someone you would very much like to see get his comeuppance.
We also get some footage of the mechanics of porn business, with copy upon copy of Playbirds being printed and stapled, rolling off the presses and being bundled up and into boxes for distribution: Fascinating from a documentary point of view, but distinctly anti-erotic.
The work of porn in the age of mechanical reproduction
Much the same can be said of the glamour shoots: Although the intention is clearly to make things seem sexy and exciting, the very fact that we're aware of this intentionality, or a lack of spontaneity and authenticity serves to distance us.
This emergent auto-critique also applies to the funniest and sleaziest moment in the entire film, in which Inspectors Porno and Bribeasy – er, Holbourne and Morgan – interview volunteers for going undercover and uncovered as a model in a bid to root out the maniac. Bump and grind music plays on the soundtrack as a succession of unsuccessful candidates strip off, the camera retaining a detached, observational eye throughout. Then, when glamour star Mary Millington steps into the breach, the camera becomes an active participant, moving around her and going in for close-ups as her routine continues.
Cue obligatory pseudo-lesbian scene
As with the giallo-inspired murder set-pieces, it's a moment of spectacle that makes us all the more aware of the banality of the bulk of the film, be it the detectives at work or 'Sullivan' at the racetrack.
Willy Roe is also the kind of point-and-shoot director whose attempts at visual style, such as a hand-held mirror based sex scene, don't really come off anyway.
Like other Sullivan productions most of the cast divides into two camps: Besides the models and porn types who cannot act but are happy providing the nudity and simulated sex, we also have various slumming thespians happy for just about the only work available them at the time.
Suzy Mandel
Somewhere in between, in uncredited roles, there are also some interesting other figures: unlikely 50-something porn performer Derek Aylward as a client in a massage parlour, candidly / knowingly acknowledged as the front for a brothel that the police are fully aware of, and performance artist / musician Cosey Fanni Tutti as a model; while her work within the British porn industry was also part of her wider art project – she posed for Sullivan's magazines and mounted an exhibition called Pornography – the film does not address this subject.
Playbirds goes off the rails a bit towards the end and finishes with one of those shock endings commonly found in weaker thrillers.
Yet if it leaves you dissatisfied and feeling cheated, this is perhaps apropos given the film's milieu, of a product which promises more than it can ever deliver and leaves you wanting more. (Not that such charges can only be levelled against porn...)
Insofar as the film is essentially 1959's The Cover Girl Murders revamped for a more permissive age and filtered through contemporary exploitation trends, intertexts are not difficult to find: The politician recalls the judge in Night after Night; the use of computer profiling in an attempt to narrow down the list of suspects The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; the glamour/model/sleaze setting Strip Nude for Your Killer, Delirium: Photos of Gioa and so on; the Playbirds of reality/Playbirds of fiction element the diegetic and non-diegetic Tenebres; the cod occultism Virgin Witch or Satanic Rites of Dracula; and fetishistic shots of black gloves around women's necks and a clue concealed in the photographic blow-up countless gialli.
The hands of doom
The white heat of the Scotland Yard computer system
The film also features plenty of jaw-droppingly funny / bad and just plain distasteful dialogue (“O goody, I'm going to be raped, I've never been raped before”) and some nice location shots of Soho for good measure.
[See also: http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvbirds.php
http://www.hysteria-lives.co.uk/hysterialives/Hysteria/the_playbird_murders.html ]
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair / The David Galaxy Affair / Sex Star
During the 1970s the bottom pretty much fell out of the British film industry. One of the few genres to remain profitable was the sex film. Because of the strictness of British censorship laws hardcore porn, never became the dominant form as in the US and in continental Europe. Instead, a particularly British kind of softcore sex film continued to dominate, much as it had done in the previous decade.
At the same time new players entered the game. Some were established filmmakers struggling to find work in even more marginally respectable genres such as horror – take a bow Val Guest, for instance. Others were part of the emergent pornocracy. Of these the most important was arguably David Sullivan, the UK’s answer to Penthouse’s Bob Guccione. Unlike Guccione, however, Sullivan had no pretensions to art: The idea of producing a Caligula, of making a serious and would-be respectable X film, would never have crossed his mind. Gore Vidal, John Gielgud and so on cost real money.
Rather, Sullivan was a master of bait and switch, promising the dirty mac brigade more than his films ever delivered and taking them for a ride. There was no benefit, after all, in either telling the truth or endeavouring to actually offer punters the hardcore they wanted, as demonstrated by the fates of John Lindsay – sent to jail for openly selling hardcore – and Mary Millington– hounded to suicide for believing in sexual liberation as a freedom issue and practicing what she preached.
Instead, it was always about reaching a comfortable and profitable arrangement with the established order rather than really challenging it.
The mark of quality - not!
But Sullivan was also like Guccione in another way: An early master of media synergy, he promoted the films he produced via his porn magazines and vice versa. Though Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair doesn’t go as far as The Playbirds – a nasty, giallified remake of The Cover Girl Murders with a title derived from one of Sullivan’s magazines and Millington’s policewoman going undercover as a model – it nevertheless again features Millington alongside other models from his stable such as Vicky Scott.
In truth, however, this is the first con aspect of Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair, insofar as the roles played by Sullivan’s models are relatively minor.
Or perhaps it isn’t a con, in that the title at least foregrounds Galaxy himself, even as it alludes to the Confessions of series that it has nothing whatsoever to really do with, alongside throwing in a general purpose Affair for good measure.
This only leads to a larger problem, however, inasmuch as Galaxy, as played by Alan Lake is really a pretty repulsive individual that its difficult for anyone to feel much for; indeed in the course of the narrative he telephones his mother, who tells him in no uncertain terms to fuck right off.
He’s a sexist, racist, homophobic unreconstructed example of 1970s machismo with a profitable sideline in fortune telling. He may also be guilty of involvement in a bank robbery some five years ago, a robbery in which a guard died.
This last aspect is the thing that amounts to a narrative drive, although it doesn’t exactly propel the story along at pace. Rather, we have subplots involving Galaxy’s new potential landlady, played by Lake’s real life wife Diana Dors – she also contributes vocals to the truly awful theme song – and his attempt to raise some cash by being the man who can give the woman who’s had 1000 lovers what she’s never had, namely an orgasm. (Hence the opportunistic “Mary Millington meets Super-Stud!!” tagline.)
Somewhat incongrously, we also have a trip to a VD clinic – a strange interjection of reality, albeit a strangely comforting one from a time when everything could be cured by a quick course of penicillin – and a visit to the racetrack.
Dors, the British Marilyn Monroe (or Jane Mansfield) was actually a pretty good actress, as demonstrated by her work in Yield to the Night. Unfortunately by this point in time – four years before her death from cancer and Lake’s suicide soon after – her talent was very much in decline.
Much the same might be said for Lake, though it’s questionable how much talent he had in the first place. Had it not been a David Sullivan production one could almost imagine his intention in playing Galaxy as being to alienate the audience, to set them against the character or make them begin to question their own assumptions and attitudes.
Alan Lake - sex god or Mr Self Destruct?
But Sullivan certainly didn’t do irony; as we’ve said, gold was all he was interested in.
As such, the hints of self-hatred that may be detected in Lake’s performance must be ascribed a darker, more personal motive. One moment that encapsulates this, as Lake’s own De Niro/La Motta moment, comes at the end of the film when he’s in a cell, Lake having himself been imprisoned for his part in a pub brawl. Revenge will be his...
As is often the case in this kind of production the supporting cast, the kind simply grateful for the chance of some work, provide less troubling relief. Euro-horror fans will note John Moulder-Brown of The House that Screamed and Vampire Circus, the most fantastique of Hammer’s vampire outings. Followers of British TV of the time will surely recognise Glynn “Dave” Edwards; in a possible in-joke the apartments where Galaxy lives are called Winchester, just like the club ran by Edward’s character in the long-running series Minder.
Willy Roe’s direction is functional and efficient, certainly more than this was too much to ask for, but perhaps thankfully he at least doesn't give us any less.
In the final analysis, Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair can be recommended to scholars of British sleaze and low culture, if no one else.
At the same time new players entered the game. Some were established filmmakers struggling to find work in even more marginally respectable genres such as horror – take a bow Val Guest, for instance. Others were part of the emergent pornocracy. Of these the most important was arguably David Sullivan, the UK’s answer to Penthouse’s Bob Guccione. Unlike Guccione, however, Sullivan had no pretensions to art: The idea of producing a Caligula, of making a serious and would-be respectable X film, would never have crossed his mind. Gore Vidal, John Gielgud and so on cost real money.
Rather, Sullivan was a master of bait and switch, promising the dirty mac brigade more than his films ever delivered and taking them for a ride. There was no benefit, after all, in either telling the truth or endeavouring to actually offer punters the hardcore they wanted, as demonstrated by the fates of John Lindsay – sent to jail for openly selling hardcore – and Mary Millington– hounded to suicide for believing in sexual liberation as a freedom issue and practicing what she preached.
Instead, it was always about reaching a comfortable and profitable arrangement with the established order rather than really challenging it.
The mark of quality - not!
But Sullivan was also like Guccione in another way: An early master of media synergy, he promoted the films he produced via his porn magazines and vice versa. Though Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair doesn’t go as far as The Playbirds – a nasty, giallified remake of The Cover Girl Murders with a title derived from one of Sullivan’s magazines and Millington’s policewoman going undercover as a model – it nevertheless again features Millington alongside other models from his stable such as Vicky Scott.
In truth, however, this is the first con aspect of Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair, insofar as the roles played by Sullivan’s models are relatively minor.
Or perhaps it isn’t a con, in that the title at least foregrounds Galaxy himself, even as it alludes to the Confessions of series that it has nothing whatsoever to really do with, alongside throwing in a general purpose Affair for good measure.
This only leads to a larger problem, however, inasmuch as Galaxy, as played by Alan Lake is really a pretty repulsive individual that its difficult for anyone to feel much for; indeed in the course of the narrative he telephones his mother, who tells him in no uncertain terms to fuck right off.
He’s a sexist, racist, homophobic unreconstructed example of 1970s machismo with a profitable sideline in fortune telling. He may also be guilty of involvement in a bank robbery some five years ago, a robbery in which a guard died.
This last aspect is the thing that amounts to a narrative drive, although it doesn’t exactly propel the story along at pace. Rather, we have subplots involving Galaxy’s new potential landlady, played by Lake’s real life wife Diana Dors – she also contributes vocals to the truly awful theme song – and his attempt to raise some cash by being the man who can give the woman who’s had 1000 lovers what she’s never had, namely an orgasm. (Hence the opportunistic “Mary Millington meets Super-Stud!!” tagline.)
Somewhat incongrously, we also have a trip to a VD clinic – a strange interjection of reality, albeit a strangely comforting one from a time when everything could be cured by a quick course of penicillin – and a visit to the racetrack.
Dors, the British Marilyn Monroe (or Jane Mansfield) was actually a pretty good actress, as demonstrated by her work in Yield to the Night. Unfortunately by this point in time – four years before her death from cancer and Lake’s suicide soon after – her talent was very much in decline.
Much the same might be said for Lake, though it’s questionable how much talent he had in the first place. Had it not been a David Sullivan production one could almost imagine his intention in playing Galaxy as being to alienate the audience, to set them against the character or make them begin to question their own assumptions and attitudes.
Alan Lake - sex god or Mr Self Destruct?
But Sullivan certainly didn’t do irony; as we’ve said, gold was all he was interested in.
As such, the hints of self-hatred that may be detected in Lake’s performance must be ascribed a darker, more personal motive. One moment that encapsulates this, as Lake’s own De Niro/La Motta moment, comes at the end of the film when he’s in a cell, Lake having himself been imprisoned for his part in a pub brawl. Revenge will be his...
As is often the case in this kind of production the supporting cast, the kind simply grateful for the chance of some work, provide less troubling relief. Euro-horror fans will note John Moulder-Brown of The House that Screamed and Vampire Circus, the most fantastique of Hammer’s vampire outings. Followers of British TV of the time will surely recognise Glynn “Dave” Edwards; in a possible in-joke the apartments where Galaxy lives are called Winchester, just like the club ran by Edward’s character in the long-running series Minder.
Willy Roe’s direction is functional and efficient, certainly more than this was too much to ask for, but perhaps thankfully he at least doesn't give us any less.
In the final analysis, Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair can be recommended to scholars of British sleaze and low culture, if no one else.
Thursday, 27 August 2009
The Sexplorer / The Girl From Starship Venus
This is apparently Quentin Tarantino's favourite British sexploitation film, one that he saw on its initial US release at a drive-in in the mid 1970s; it's also a film that he liked enough to acquire his own print of, which he has screened in some of his Grindhouse type events.
While Tarantino's endorsement is undoubtedly useful for attracting curious audiences to The Sexplorer, the truth is that it's such a fun little film it's hard to see anyone not being won over by, which knows it strengths and weaknesses and plays to them, encouraging you to laugh along.
An innuendo laden US poster for the film, under its Girl From Starship Venus title
We open with a cheesy sci-fi theme - one of several - and a mock-portentous voice over, as the Starship Venus prepares to land on the planet Dom, the Purple Planet, to investigate its inhabitants. The spaceship, which proves to be the size of a ball bearing, lands in what is described as an uncharted sea. But it is actually a puddle in the middle of Picadilly circus, London.
Having extricated itself, the tiny spaceship discharges one of its crew, the surveyor, who then takes the form of a Dom, or human. The surveyor's cover is that, if anyone asks, they are the author Mark Twain.
Never mind that Twain is 170 years old, nor that 'he' has the form of a female, more specifically German-born nude model and sexploitation actress Monika Ringwald, nor that looking down at her naked, "ugly" form for Twain's moustache, described by the spaceship's data bank as a patch of superfluous hair, the surveyor identifies it with her pubic hair.
Given the potential for misunderstandings in all this, it's fortunate that the first place the surveyor happens to investigate is a sauna, where most of those present are also nude. Thinking that she has been robbed, the staff kit her out with a dress and send her on her way.
Having made the discovery of "another Dom of differing configuration," "some sort of mutation," flatter and with their moustache spreading further up, the surveyor next ventures into an adult bookstore, followed by a gents, together allowing for some initial observations: The "canopies," the tribe of her assumed form, seem happier and the norm, while the "tubulars," the other, perhaps dangerous, mutant tribe, seem overly anxious.
By this time another pattern also begins to in the Surveyor's interactions with the tubulars: When they aren't running away, they are keen to take advantage of her. The bookstore manager tries to interest her in a photo shoot and telling the photographer on the phone that his new find is "a bit dim but well stacked - just the right combination." Then, in a porn theatre, another patron tries to "refuel" her with his "probe" in the manner that the tubulars on the "holoplay" screen have just attended to the canopies.
Significantly, the film-makers use these misunderstandings in a self-deprecating manner, with the theatre manager throwing the Surveyor out and remarking that they deal strictly in fantasy, not reality. His bookstore counterpart, meanwhile, was played by Ringwald's real-life manager, Alan Selwyn.
Though it would be stretching the point to call the film feminist, there's nevertheless a definite something to Sexplorer's mocking of its primary male audience, even as it gives them the T&A that they've come for.
Indeed, given the way in which the men often respond to the surveyor's tendency towards silence, I was reminded at times of the dynamics of Abel Ferrara's Ms .45 and Zoe Tamerlis's mute heroine, perhaps as hybridised with John Sayles's Brother from Another Planet, as a film with alien whose 'just happening' to look like an African-American also leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.
There's also perhaps a hint of a vegetarian subtext as the Surveyor later passes a diner and wonders about the Dom's putting pieces of scorched bird into their bodies, as a "ritual" she describes as being "primitive" in a manner recalling an early, unreflexive, 20th century colonialist anthropologist.
Although The Sexplorer isn't what you would call imaginatively or particularly well directed, it doesn't need to be. The voice-off dialogue between the surveyor and the crew back on the ship and the survey and the Doms she encounters are witty, while Ringwald herself is attractive to look at and suitably unconscious about showing us her goods. More generally, her foreignness appears a help rather than a hindrance, precisely because not knowing how to act, react or speak like a member of the culture is what the film is all about.
Being a Derek Ford production, The Sexplorer was also released in a different version to that reviewed here, one incorporating hardcore inserts. Whether these feature Ringwald or an other female performer I don't know.
To finish with the obvious pun: Anyone out there come upon this hardcore version?
[See http://templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2009/01/girl-from-starship-venus-1975.html for another review of the film]
While Tarantino's endorsement is undoubtedly useful for attracting curious audiences to The Sexplorer, the truth is that it's such a fun little film it's hard to see anyone not being won over by, which knows it strengths and weaknesses and plays to them, encouraging you to laugh along.
An innuendo laden US poster for the film, under its Girl From Starship Venus title
We open with a cheesy sci-fi theme - one of several - and a mock-portentous voice over, as the Starship Venus prepares to land on the planet Dom, the Purple Planet, to investigate its inhabitants. The spaceship, which proves to be the size of a ball bearing, lands in what is described as an uncharted sea. But it is actually a puddle in the middle of Picadilly circus, London.
Having extricated itself, the tiny spaceship discharges one of its crew, the surveyor, who then takes the form of a Dom, or human. The surveyor's cover is that, if anyone asks, they are the author Mark Twain.
Never mind that Twain is 170 years old, nor that 'he' has the form of a female, more specifically German-born nude model and sexploitation actress Monika Ringwald, nor that looking down at her naked, "ugly" form for Twain's moustache, described by the spaceship's data bank as a patch of superfluous hair, the surveyor identifies it with her pubic hair.
Given the potential for misunderstandings in all this, it's fortunate that the first place the surveyor happens to investigate is a sauna, where most of those present are also nude. Thinking that she has been robbed, the staff kit her out with a dress and send her on her way.
Having made the discovery of "another Dom of differing configuration," "some sort of mutation," flatter and with their moustache spreading further up, the surveyor next ventures into an adult bookstore, followed by a gents, together allowing for some initial observations: The "canopies," the tribe of her assumed form, seem happier and the norm, while the "tubulars," the other, perhaps dangerous, mutant tribe, seem overly anxious.
By this time another pattern also begins to in the Surveyor's interactions with the tubulars: When they aren't running away, they are keen to take advantage of her. The bookstore manager tries to interest her in a photo shoot and telling the photographer on the phone that his new find is "a bit dim but well stacked - just the right combination." Then, in a porn theatre, another patron tries to "refuel" her with his "probe" in the manner that the tubulars on the "holoplay" screen have just attended to the canopies.
Significantly, the film-makers use these misunderstandings in a self-deprecating manner, with the theatre manager throwing the Surveyor out and remarking that they deal strictly in fantasy, not reality. His bookstore counterpart, meanwhile, was played by Ringwald's real-life manager, Alan Selwyn.
Though it would be stretching the point to call the film feminist, there's nevertheless a definite something to Sexplorer's mocking of its primary male audience, even as it gives them the T&A that they've come for.
Indeed, given the way in which the men often respond to the surveyor's tendency towards silence, I was reminded at times of the dynamics of Abel Ferrara's Ms .45 and Zoe Tamerlis's mute heroine, perhaps as hybridised with John Sayles's Brother from Another Planet, as a film with alien whose 'just happening' to look like an African-American also leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.
There's also perhaps a hint of a vegetarian subtext as the Surveyor later passes a diner and wonders about the Dom's putting pieces of scorched bird into their bodies, as a "ritual" she describes as being "primitive" in a manner recalling an early, unreflexive, 20th century colonialist anthropologist.
Although The Sexplorer isn't what you would call imaginatively or particularly well directed, it doesn't need to be. The voice-off dialogue between the surveyor and the crew back on the ship and the survey and the Doms she encounters are witty, while Ringwald herself is attractive to look at and suitably unconscious about showing us her goods. More generally, her foreignness appears a help rather than a hindrance, precisely because not knowing how to act, react or speak like a member of the culture is what the film is all about.
Being a Derek Ford production, The Sexplorer was also released in a different version to that reviewed here, one incorporating hardcore inserts. Whether these feature Ringwald or an other female performer I don't know.
To finish with the obvious pun: Anyone out there come upon this hardcore version?
[See http://templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2009/01/girl-from-starship-venus-1975.html for another review of the film]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)