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 Stanley Long. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanley Long. Show all posts
Monday, 4 March 2013
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.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Adventures of a Private Eye
Bob West (Christopher Neil) is a trainee private eye. He’s also a bit of a mug, the kind of guy who claims to be so much more observant than the average but who nevertheless is immediately recognised as an easy mark by a passing pickpocket and, more importantly, the femme fatale type Laura (Suzy Kendall) who comes into the office when his boss Judd Blake (Jon Pertwee) is on holiday.
Bob can’t resist taking on the case, which involves her deceased husband and someone blackmailing her over some ‘artistic’ photographs taken during days as a model. Soon he is completely and utterly out of his depth, with a body in a trunk to dispose of so that Laura can secure her inheritance...
Producer, director and co-writer Stanley Long later felt Adventures of a Private Eye was the weakest of his three Adventures films on the grounds that his target audience found it more difficult to identify with its ‘glamorous’ protagonist compared to Adventures of a Taxi Driver and Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate.
While there is maybe a bit more laughing at Joe and less empathising with his situation – in part because often as not it is his own fault, rather than that of anyone else – the film really doesn’t depart from formula too much.
Sin in the suburbs
It is, after all, still a sex comedy in which the sex is strictly softcore and the rapid-fire, hit-and-miss comedy based largely around misunderstanding. misidentification and a steady flow of double meanings, from Pertwee’s “You stick with me and you’ll soon become a successful bugger” in reference to contemporary surveillance techniques, to a police inspector’s remark of “What a big Willy I’ve got” with regard to his son.
The cast is the same mix of up and coming and established actors, of varying degrees of talent but undoubtedly equally glad of the chance of some work. Amongst the up and comers there are the likes of Neil, Adrienne Posta, Robin Stewart and Nicholas Young, whilst amongst the established performers Diana Dors, Irene Handl and Harry Corbett showed up for a scene or two.
Here we may also note that Long was presumably satisfied with Neil’s performance – Taxi Driver’s Barry Evans had been offered the role, but declined it – in that the actor again played the lead in Plumber’s Mate.
'Moroni with an I, and not with an E, because Morone would be stupid'
The film also has its own strong points, most notably Posta’s Lisa Moroni character, with her note-perfect impersonation of Liza Minelli’s Sally Bowles from Cabaret.
Note Milton Reid as the leftmost heavy
For the fan of British genre cinema there’s also a nice touch when the Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General cue that introduces Hopkins is played as the blackmailer makes his entrance. Given that Long had worked as a cinematographer on Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers and that co-writer Michael Armstrong made the Witchfinder General-inspired Mark of the Devil, this seems more than coincidental on someone's part.
Bob can’t resist taking on the case, which involves her deceased husband and someone blackmailing her over some ‘artistic’ photographs taken during days as a model. Soon he is completely and utterly out of his depth, with a body in a trunk to dispose of so that Laura can secure her inheritance...
Producer, director and co-writer Stanley Long later felt Adventures of a Private Eye was the weakest of his three Adventures films on the grounds that his target audience found it more difficult to identify with its ‘glamorous’ protagonist compared to Adventures of a Taxi Driver and Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate.
While there is maybe a bit more laughing at Joe and less empathising with his situation – in part because often as not it is his own fault, rather than that of anyone else – the film really doesn’t depart from formula too much.
Sin in the suburbs
It is, after all, still a sex comedy in which the sex is strictly softcore and the rapid-fire, hit-and-miss comedy based largely around misunderstanding. misidentification and a steady flow of double meanings, from Pertwee’s “You stick with me and you’ll soon become a successful bugger” in reference to contemporary surveillance techniques, to a police inspector’s remark of “What a big Willy I’ve got” with regard to his son.
The cast is the same mix of up and coming and established actors, of varying degrees of talent but undoubtedly equally glad of the chance of some work. Amongst the up and comers there are the likes of Neil, Adrienne Posta, Robin Stewart and Nicholas Young, whilst amongst the established performers Diana Dors, Irene Handl and Harry Corbett showed up for a scene or two.
Here we may also note that Long was presumably satisfied with Neil’s performance – Taxi Driver’s Barry Evans had been offered the role, but declined it – in that the actor again played the lead in Plumber’s Mate.
'Moroni with an I, and not with an E, because Morone would be stupid'
The film also has its own strong points, most notably Posta’s Lisa Moroni character, with her note-perfect impersonation of Liza Minelli’s Sally Bowles from Cabaret.
Note Milton Reid as the leftmost heavy
For the fan of British genre cinema there’s also a nice touch when the Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General cue that introduces Hopkins is played as the blackmailer makes his entrance. Given that Long had worked as a cinematographer on Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers and that co-writer Michael Armstrong made the Witchfinder General-inspired Mark of the Devil, this seems more than coincidental on someone's part.
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.
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.
Monday, 27 July 2009
X Rated: Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker
Over recent years Reynolds and Hearn has established itself as one of the leading publishers on cult British cinema, with volumes such as Jonathan Rigby’s self-explanatory English Gothic and Simon Sheridan’s Keeping the British End Up, about the British sex film, and Come Play with Me, a biography of perhaps its biggest star, Mary Millington, vital additions to the bookshelves of anyone interested in the subject.
This latest volume, co-authored by Stanley Long and Sheridan, takes a different approach from the latter’s previous works on the British sexploitation film in that it’s the former’s memoirs of working in the low-budget exploitation end of the British film industry from the 1950s to the 1980s. As such its gives a more direct and personal take on things, presenting a valuable counterpoint to the drier chronological and genre based account presented in its predecessor.
The two accounts complement one another to a large degree, with Long’s discussions of such industry figures as Derek Ford, a former film-making partner who increasingly merged business and pleasure by moving into illegal hardcore territory, according with Sheridan’s previous work.
But they also show the potential pitfalls in taking a genre centred approach when addressing the work of an outfit like Compton / Tigon and a producer-director-cinematographer-distributor-whatever figure like Long.
As producers, Compton / Tigon dabbled in horror and (s)exploitation; as Long comments they were the two genres that for a time more or less guaranteed a profit, though he admits that horror wasn't really his thing.
As a cinematographer Long worked on Repulsion, where he stood in for the credited Gilbert Taylor after shooting overran its schedule, and The Sorcerers, where he recalls Michael Reeves’s intensity and apparent blood kink.
In his capacity as a pilot, Long also helped Polanski scout locations for Cul de sac; talk about a jack of all trades.
Though Long respected Polanski and Reeves, he is also forthright about the difference between his own no-nonsense approach to the business of film-making and the creative excesses of such more artistically inclined figures, that their imaginations could outstrip the means at their disposal.
Long has far less time for the snobbish critics along with Mary Whitehouse and other moral entrepreneurs of the day, viewing the former as out of touch with the ordinary audience member who just wanted to be entertained and the latter as little more than a canny self-publicist. On both counts, it’s hard to disagree.
The BBFC come across a bit better, particularly John Trevelyan, with Long acknowledging the position they were caught in between film-makers keen to push the boundaries forward and the Whitehouses who wanted them pushed back to some pre-permissive golden age.
Long is deservedly proud of his own accomplishments, giving work to actors and technicians who would otherwise have been unemployed and pleasure to his target audience, and bringing in his films on time and on budget.
Informative, entertaining and a pleasure to read, X Rated: Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the shadow / unofficial history of the British cinema, of the films audiences really went to see rather than the ones the critics favoured.
This latest volume, co-authored by Stanley Long and Sheridan, takes a different approach from the latter’s previous works on the British sexploitation film in that it’s the former’s memoirs of working in the low-budget exploitation end of the British film industry from the 1950s to the 1980s. As such its gives a more direct and personal take on things, presenting a valuable counterpoint to the drier chronological and genre based account presented in its predecessor.
The two accounts complement one another to a large degree, with Long’s discussions of such industry figures as Derek Ford, a former film-making partner who increasingly merged business and pleasure by moving into illegal hardcore territory, according with Sheridan’s previous work.
But they also show the potential pitfalls in taking a genre centred approach when addressing the work of an outfit like Compton / Tigon and a producer-director-cinematographer-distributor-whatever figure like Long.
As producers, Compton / Tigon dabbled in horror and (s)exploitation; as Long comments they were the two genres that for a time more or less guaranteed a profit, though he admits that horror wasn't really his thing.
As a cinematographer Long worked on Repulsion, where he stood in for the credited Gilbert Taylor after shooting overran its schedule, and The Sorcerers, where he recalls Michael Reeves’s intensity and apparent blood kink.
In his capacity as a pilot, Long also helped Polanski scout locations for Cul de sac; talk about a jack of all trades.
Though Long respected Polanski and Reeves, he is also forthright about the difference between his own no-nonsense approach to the business of film-making and the creative excesses of such more artistically inclined figures, that their imaginations could outstrip the means at their disposal.
Long has far less time for the snobbish critics along with Mary Whitehouse and other moral entrepreneurs of the day, viewing the former as out of touch with the ordinary audience member who just wanted to be entertained and the latter as little more than a canny self-publicist. On both counts, it’s hard to disagree.
The BBFC come across a bit better, particularly John Trevelyan, with Long acknowledging the position they were caught in between film-makers keen to push the boundaries forward and the Whitehouses who wanted them pushed back to some pre-permissive golden age.
Long is deservedly proud of his own accomplishments, giving work to actors and technicians who would otherwise have been unemployed and pleasure to his target audience, and bringing in his films on time and on budget.
Informative, entertaining and a pleasure to read, X Rated: Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the shadow / unofficial history of the British cinema, of the films audiences really went to see rather than the ones the critics favoured.
Saturday, 25 July 2009
The Sex Thief / Ladro di sesso
Here is a perfect example of why it is unwise to criticise the low budget sexploitation film out of hand. For New Zealand-born director Martin Campbell, who debuted with this film and followed it up with Eskimo Nell subsequently went to Hollywood and made the likes of Goldeneye, Zorro and Casino Royale – i.e. big-budget, major-studio productions. If these are not the kind of films that qualify him as an auteur, they do suggest a competent and reliable journeyman.
With regard to the Bond films, this is also the reason why Quentin Tarantino will never get the opportunity to direct one: his own directorial personality is too strong, such that he would bone up on 60s spy films and seek to make a meta-commentary on the form.
Such references are not arbitrary given the Bondian elements of The Sex Thief; the casting of David Warbeck, who was both an understudy for the role of Bond and played the Sex Thief-like Milk Tray Man in a long running-series of adverts, in the role; and Tarantino’s own avowed enthusiasm for the film.
Returning to Campbell and the importance of exploitation, it is also significant is that, according to exploitation veteran Stanley Long, the debutant director was not the most technically aware at this time, requiring advice on the importance of eye-line matches and the like. Either Campbell was under the influence of new wave directors like Godard and needed to be disabused of such notions as distanciation or – perhaps more likely – he just didn’t know the rules before breaking them.
The two approaches come together to a degree within the film anyway, insofar as it features one of those speeded-up sex scenes, like A Clockwork Orange, that arguably make you aware you are watching a film, along with the characters of a crass agent and a dumb starlet. This said, Eskimo Nell takes things far further in this regard, seeing that it is itself set within the world of the British (s)exploitation industry of the time. (For what it’s worth, I recently entertained the idea of programming Eskimo Nell and Godard’s Contempt with one another.)
If The Sex Thief is not as endearing as Eskimo Nell, it is also more problematic in terms of its attitudes.
The first thing here is the character of the Sex Thief himself. He’s a Bond meets Diabolik meets Milk Tray Man jewel thief, black clad and wearing a domino mask. His modus operandi is to break into the houses of wealthy couples when the husband are absent, steal the valuables and make love to the wife by way of compensation: Not quite a housebreaker-rapist, insofar as the women consent to sex, albeit sometimes in a vaguely no to yes manner, but enough to highlight division between 70s and 90s / 00s mores.
Seeing this is a British softcore sex film, it also serves to again foreground the differences between the form and its contemporaneous US hardcore counterpart, as a viewing of the Vietnam veteran rape-trauma entry Forced Entry will make particularly clear. Similarly, when The Sex Thief was circulated in the US under the titles Handful of Diamonds and Her Family Jewels it was with hardcore inserts.
The second is the way the manager and starlet try to take advantage of the Sex Thief’s notoriety to grab a bit of publicity for their latest project, by claiming that he broke in, stole her (non-existent) valuables and raped her no fewer than seven times – one time for each of her previous films.
Since the Sex Thief’s victims enjoyed their experience and were placed in compromising positions with regard to their respected, society husbands, they told a somewhat different story. Their thieves, one purportedly a six foot six Russian, another a midget, and so on, had only committed burglary, not rape.
One issue here is the growing disbelief that emerges at the press conference as the starlet describes her purported ordeal with ever increasing implausibility. It’s played for laughs, but you don’t have to be much of a feminist to see that the filmmakers are thereby treading on rather thin ground. Another is the way in which the Sex Thief responds to this challenge, by actually breaking into the starlet’s apartment and giving her what she was ‘asking for’. Again, it’s played for laughs, and is not ‘really’ a rape scene, but probably wouldn’t be done today.
But the film is saved by Michael Armstrong and Tudor Gates’s witty script and its equal opportunities approach to offending sensibilities. Thus, Armstrong’s vice squad officer is less concerned with catching the sex thief than taking advantage of his position to steal porn from the customs vaults, which he then trades with the equally sex-obsessed journalist assigned to report on the case. The figure of the corrupt cop also, of course, allows the filmmakers to comment on what they and everyone else in the exploitation industry knew was a fact at the time: That the vice squad were on the take.
While not sex-obsessed, the male half of the insurance team investigating the case and another male cop are basically pathetic and incompetent, both in marked contrast to the smart, sassy, karate and judo expert female insurance adjustor on the look out for a real man able to satisfy her carnal desires…
With regard to the Bond films, this is also the reason why Quentin Tarantino will never get the opportunity to direct one: his own directorial personality is too strong, such that he would bone up on 60s spy films and seek to make a meta-commentary on the form.
Such references are not arbitrary given the Bondian elements of The Sex Thief; the casting of David Warbeck, who was both an understudy for the role of Bond and played the Sex Thief-like Milk Tray Man in a long running-series of adverts, in the role; and Tarantino’s own avowed enthusiasm for the film.
Returning to Campbell and the importance of exploitation, it is also significant is that, according to exploitation veteran Stanley Long, the debutant director was not the most technically aware at this time, requiring advice on the importance of eye-line matches and the like. Either Campbell was under the influence of new wave directors like Godard and needed to be disabused of such notions as distanciation or – perhaps more likely – he just didn’t know the rules before breaking them.
The two approaches come together to a degree within the film anyway, insofar as it features one of those speeded-up sex scenes, like A Clockwork Orange, that arguably make you aware you are watching a film, along with the characters of a crass agent and a dumb starlet. This said, Eskimo Nell takes things far further in this regard, seeing that it is itself set within the world of the British (s)exploitation industry of the time. (For what it’s worth, I recently entertained the idea of programming Eskimo Nell and Godard’s Contempt with one another.)
If The Sex Thief is not as endearing as Eskimo Nell, it is also more problematic in terms of its attitudes.
The first thing here is the character of the Sex Thief himself. He’s a Bond meets Diabolik meets Milk Tray Man jewel thief, black clad and wearing a domino mask. His modus operandi is to break into the houses of wealthy couples when the husband are absent, steal the valuables and make love to the wife by way of compensation: Not quite a housebreaker-rapist, insofar as the women consent to sex, albeit sometimes in a vaguely no to yes manner, but enough to highlight division between 70s and 90s / 00s mores.
Seeing this is a British softcore sex film, it also serves to again foreground the differences between the form and its contemporaneous US hardcore counterpart, as a viewing of the Vietnam veteran rape-trauma entry Forced Entry will make particularly clear. Similarly, when The Sex Thief was circulated in the US under the titles Handful of Diamonds and Her Family Jewels it was with hardcore inserts.
The second is the way the manager and starlet try to take advantage of the Sex Thief’s notoriety to grab a bit of publicity for their latest project, by claiming that he broke in, stole her (non-existent) valuables and raped her no fewer than seven times – one time for each of her previous films.
Since the Sex Thief’s victims enjoyed their experience and were placed in compromising positions with regard to their respected, society husbands, they told a somewhat different story. Their thieves, one purportedly a six foot six Russian, another a midget, and so on, had only committed burglary, not rape.
One issue here is the growing disbelief that emerges at the press conference as the starlet describes her purported ordeal with ever increasing implausibility. It’s played for laughs, but you don’t have to be much of a feminist to see that the filmmakers are thereby treading on rather thin ground. Another is the way in which the Sex Thief responds to this challenge, by actually breaking into the starlet’s apartment and giving her what she was ‘asking for’. Again, it’s played for laughs, and is not ‘really’ a rape scene, but probably wouldn’t be done today.
But the film is saved by Michael Armstrong and Tudor Gates’s witty script and its equal opportunities approach to offending sensibilities. Thus, Armstrong’s vice squad officer is less concerned with catching the sex thief than taking advantage of his position to steal porn from the customs vaults, which he then trades with the equally sex-obsessed journalist assigned to report on the case. The figure of the corrupt cop also, of course, allows the filmmakers to comment on what they and everyone else in the exploitation industry knew was a fact at the time: That the vice squad were on the take.
While not sex-obsessed, the male half of the insurance team investigating the case and another male cop are basically pathetic and incompetent, both in marked contrast to the smart, sassy, karate and judo expert female insurance adjustor on the look out for a real man able to satisfy her carnal desires…
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