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/ ]

Permissive

Suzie arrives in London from the provinces, hoping to catch some of that Swinging London vibe that she has heard about through the mass media. Fiona takes Suzy under her wing and introduces her to the band she hangs out with. After a short while Suzy does an All About Eve and usurps Fiona's position, with fatal consequences...

It may have plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but 1970's Permissive is not exactly what you'd call a fun film. Rather it's one of the most dreary, drab and depressing films you could hope to see about the realities of the music world, more Cocksucker Blues than Almost Famous, but with a band whose material circumstances are more akin to those of Black Flag than the Rolling Stones.

Stylistically the film is an odd combination of pseudo-documentary nothing much to see for the most part punctuated by moments of machine gun editing, as if someone had decided to make a kitchen sink drama of the Cathy Come Home or Bleak Moments type with editing inspired by Performance.


Is it Madeleine or Maria? One of the Collinson twins as a groupie

Even more intriguingly, the editing isn't used to make the musical performances more interesting, as might be expected, but rather to present disconcerting (acid?) flashbacks and flashforwards as to the characters' relationships and fates.

The big surprise is who was responsible for it all, with notorious hack for hire Lindsay Shonteff writing and directing and Tony Tenser's Tigon producing.

Yes, part of the business of exploitation filmmaking was exploiting the audience in giving less than is promised.

But to make a film that is utterly joyless, which leaves you feeling cheated and like you also just might want to end it all?!

Either Shonteff seriously pulled the wool over Tenser's eyes and intended this all along as some sort of perverse artistic statement, which seems unlikely, or something just started to happen once the cameras were rolling.

Witchfinder General - Ronald Bassett

This novel by Ronald Basset was first published in 1966 and then reissued with a new cover in 1968 as a tie-in with Michael Reeves' film of the same name. Besides being a interesting curiosity in its own right, it's both worth a read and provides some insights into the adaptation process undertaken by Reeves and his collaborators.

The first difference that is apparent, as mentioned by David Pirie in his seminal A Heritage of Horror, is that the film-makers dispense with much of the psychological motivation underlying the self-styled witch-finder of all England's actions. In the book he's the original forty year old virgin, regarding women with a mixture of fear and loathing.

In keeping with this, the book, which is divided up into sections covering the years 1643 to 1947, starts with Hopkins and his assistant-to-be Stearne as reluctant pikemen in the Parliamentarian army. They soon desert and embark on a more profitable career as witch-finders. These initial excursions are absent from the film, which begins with Hopkins secure in his position and, as such, showing little sign of insecurity.

Running parallel to this narrative we are also introduced to the young soldier Ralph Margery, also in the Parliamentarian army but a bit more dedicated to that cause than his enemies-to-be.

The two men's paths cross, as in the film, when Hopkins executes John Lowes, a clergyman suspected of Catholic sympathies. While Stearn simply has his way with Lowes's ward, Sara, Hopkins makes a bargain with her for the life of her uncle.

Margery swears that he will have his revenge on Hopkins for defiling his fiancee, and pursues the witchfinder as best he can, given the contingencies of the war raging around them.

There's a strong western element to all this, strangely reminiscent of the picaresque structure of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, as the characters just manage to evade one another or, on occasion, unwittingly cross one another's paths.

At the same time the distinction between the resources available to Leone and to Reeves is highlighted by another omission from the film, that of the battle of Naseby where Hopkins is pressed into military service for a second time. Another omission, that of an orgy which turns out to be attended by the local magistrate upon whom Hopkins would otherwise depend upon for a successful prosecution, can presumably be attributed more to the censorship regime of the day.

The novel also has a different ending to the film, one that takes place in 1647 at a point by which the war has been won by the Parliamentarians but the peace has not yet been established. Compared to the film's unforgettable ending – Margery, consumed by his desire for revenge, hacks at Hopkins until one of his colleages puts the witchfinder out of his misery – it's somewhat anticlimactic.