Short Cuts (Part II of III)

INFERNO (2001)

THE LANDLADY (2013)
SELKIE (2014)

Caroline Munro has an ornament fixation in THE LANDLADY.

AS the bombastic, blockbuster ethic of 1980s cinema developed, there was less need for supporting features. And with the dawning of the Internet, young filmmakers looked for other avenues of funding. For example, of the three entries considered here, INFERNO was commissioned by Channel 4, THE LANDLADY received funding on an Indiegogo campaign, and SELKIE turned to Kickstarter. Twenty-five minute THE LANDLADY has cult favourite Caroline Munro as the titular character, in a bitesize portmanteau with delicious EC Comics and Amicus riffs.

Four vignettes are set across four decades, each having a young female taking a room: in Munchies a hippy chick (Marian Elizabeth), in Drum Solo a punk (Zoe Grisedale), in Kitty a Michael Jackson-obsessed girl (Gina Jones), and The Visitor is set in modern day (with Sara-Jane Howard). The Landlady herself is steeped in Victorian values (and dress sense), listening to classical music on her antique radio, while enjoying tea and biscuits. And she only asks the girls to adhere to four rules: no smoking, no loud noises, no pets and no guests after midnight. Of course each rule is broken, with The Landlady leaving magic figurines which enact supernatural revenge. Munro is overtly stilted, leaving the flair to the younger actresses; in her Thriller jacket Jones is a standout in the best section, due to a greater consistency in narrative. All the technical qualities however are excellent, particularly as there is only a room and a staircase to work with.

Emily Booth brings a pinniped/human to life for her pet project SELKIE.

The other two films feature starlet and presenter Emily Booth. Paul Kousoulides' INFERNO is a twenty-eight minute masterclass of the short form, a chaotic but comedic fusion of science fiction, AI and first-person style video games. Two petty criminals Jaz (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and Naz (Nitin Ganatra) - together with gangster Mr Bonecrusher (Alan Talbot) and his hoodlums - are absorbed into a new trail-blazing computer experience. Rife with STAR WARS references, Jaz attempts to save his "Princess" Laura (Booth), a Lara Croft facsimile with a preference for a very large chain gun. Within a constantly looping game level Laura hardly needs rescuing from anything, and as our "heroes" return to their own deadbeat reality, Laura destroys the London Eye with infectious glee. Actually, Booth's role in INFERNO can be seen as an extension of her two years co-hosting and co-writing Channel 4's computer game review show BITS.

The fourteen minute sombre fairy tale SELKIE is directed by Booth's brother from her original treatment. The Selkie sea creature has its roots in Celtic and Norse Myth, changing its form from seal to human by shedding its skin. The story has a typically brooding fisherman (Joseph Rye) finding a Selkie skin on the shore. Subjecting the female form (Booth) to household chores and his lustful needs, he keeps her outer tissue locked away in a trunk. Against this oppressive existence, the hybrid must reclaim her scales to escape and return to the sea. Essentially a mood piece with beautiful cinematography and haunting score, the tale opens up considerably during Booth's transformation, as the viewer shares her mental shifts and natural calling. Playing against her B-movie type Booth is wonderful, bringing the mute Selkie to life with expressive eyes and instinctive movement.

John Gilling Double Bill

MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE (1952)

THE GAMMA PEOPLE (1956)

"Its enough to make a bat laugh!" Arthur Lucan and Bela Lugosi at the end of their careers in MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE. A release in America was held over until 1964, by which time it had been retitled to MY SON THE VAMPIRE due to a novelty song by Allan Sherman.

AFTER serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, John Gilling became a prolific director and screenwriter in British cinema. The filmmaker is best known for his masterful take on Burke and Hare, THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, and the two anti-colonial Hammer "Cornish Classics" PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES and THE REPTILE. As David Pirie states in A Heritage of Horror, Gilling expressed his stories using abstract imagery and, unlike Terence Fisher, his works could end with prevailing gloom. Gilling's earlier directing assignments under consideration here are more of historical note rather than artistic merit; the first Britain's initial vampire picture, the second one of the biggest oddities in 1950s science fiction.

MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE was the final film in the Old Mother Riley comedies, featuring Arthur Lucan in drag as the eponymous off-kilter Irish washerwoman. Bela Lugosi stars as Van Housen/The Vampire, but his arrival in England is not because of blood, rather to obtain uranium to fuel an army of 50,000 super robots. The two characters meet thanks to a mix-up: Riley's inheritance goods of a banjo and a bedwarmer are mistakenly delivered to Van Housen, while the villain's Mark I prototype automaton ends up at Riley's shop. Designed by Bernard Robinson - soon to become Hammer's renowned art director - Lugosi gives his last great performance before suffering from morphine addiction and Ed Wood appearances. On the suggestion of Richard Gordon, Bela had traveled to the UK to appear in a stage tour of Dracula, which was such a disaster Lugosi and his wife were unable to pay their way home. Luckily, Gordon persuaded fellow producer George Minter to use the actor here to solve the issue. 

"Is this your future?" Filmed mostly in Austria, science meets anticommunist propaganda in THE GAMMA PEOPLE. 

Six years before Bruce Banner became The Hulk due to gamma rays, Albert Broccoli and Irving Allen masterminded the long-gestating THE GAMMA PEOPLE under their Warwick Films banner. American journalist Mike Wilson (Paul Douglas) and English photographer Howard Meade (Leslie Phillips) end up in Gudavia, an out-of-time European hamlet, when their train carriage mysteriously detaches. Greeted by bumbling General Koerner (Phillip Leaver), the two men are suspected of being spies, but released from jail on orders of Professor Boronski (Walter Rilla). It is discovered that Boronski - reluctantly aided by Paula (Eva Bartok) - is using gamma rays to transform the brains of the young to create a race of geniuses (including Hugo (Michael Caridia), who leads a Hitler Youth style gang, and piano prodigy Hedda (Pauline Drewett)). Unfortunately the radiation doesn’t always work, turning subjects into zombie "goons".

THE GAMMA PEOPLE is an uneasy mix of sci-fi, melodrama and comedy, further hindered by cardboard characters and irrelevant detail. Burly Douglas was a latecomer to acting, previously having a successful announcer and hosting radio career, and is a strange choice for a leading man (his sly advances to the stunning Bartok are quite queasy). In contrast Phillips is a joy, effortlessly perfecting his suave ladies man persona. At least the future for Broccoli is shadowed in the James Bond-like climax, with its castle lair, raygun, a laboratory with large signage, mechanised sliding doors and grand explosions.

"They Raped the Regulations"

The Bojeffries Saga (1983 - 2014)

Makes Monty Python look like a comedy; 

the arrival of the Bojeffries in Warrior.

ILLUSTRATED by Steve Parkhouse and written by Alan Moore at his most sardonic, The Bojeffries Saga intermittently spanned decades and graced several publications. A wryly-humoured yet surreally chaotic merging of THE ADDAMS FAMILY and CORONATION STREET, we follow the meandering lives of a household not necessarily led by weary Jobremus Bojeffries. In their dilapidated abode, we have moody, repulsive and obese daughter Ginda, nerdy son Reth (who has a model kit of the Atlantic ocean), uncles Raoul (a cheerfully dumb dog-eating werewolf) and Festus (a bitter vegetarian vampire), Grandpa Podlasp (a senile amorphous blob in the final stages of organic matter), and a basement-dwelling baby that emits enough thermonuclear energy to power England and Wales.

The Bojeffries Saga first appeared in Warrior #12 (August 1983), under the shadow of Moore's other strips for the magazine, Marvelman and V for Vendetta. We open with humble rent collector Trevor Inchmale, who attempts to obtain considerable arrears from the family while fantasizing about writing his autobiography. After Warrior's premature demise, Fantagraphics reprinted the first four strips in colour during 1986 in Flesh and Bones, and commissioned a new preface for American readers in Dalgoda. A further five stories appeared in the British Atomeka anthology A1 three years later, and to complete the saga there was a contemporary tale - 'After They Were Famous' - specially produced for the 2014 Top Shelf/Knockabout collection.

Trevor Inchmale realises the extent of his problem 

in the opening salvo of The Bojeffries Saga.

In his introduction to the 1992 Tundra collection The Complete Bojeffries Saga, Lenny Henry states that the series arrival was "a breath of fresh air, bringing an anarchy and weirdness to comics similar to the kick up the arse that THE YOUNG ONES brought to television." Moore captures the essence of ramshackle working class lives with irresistible touches (Festus has a poster of Ray Reardon, for example), and Parkhouse's scratchy lines exist somewhere between Leo Baxendale, Marie Severin and Robert Crumb. The Bojeffries Saga is both a political cartoon and a deconstruction of the British sitcom, and a particular pleasure because it is unshackled from the convoluted histories that have long maimed mainstream comic books.

Over thirty years, Moore's expert lampooning of our quintessential past-times and traditions remains constant, while the art and panel style differ widely from story to story. 'Song of the Terraces' is a light opera, and 'Our Factory Fortnight' has wordless illustrations followed by short bursts of text. 'After They Were Famous' is a fitting end, a scathing satire of celebrity and the media obsession with exploiting the disenfranchised. Reth has been banished by his family for writing an expose of them, Ginda became Minister for Knife Crime and Fisheries, and Festus - now commonly known as Britney Sutcliffe - is vocalist for Goth band Pram of Shit. And in a classic dig at motion picture treatments of Moore's work, Meryl Streep is Oscar-nominated for her role as Raoul, in 19th Century Dodo's 2005 film version MEET THE MACJEFFRIES.

Pythons on Parade

YELLOWBEARD (1983)

ERIK THE VIKING (1989)

A parody of Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach and pirates in general, YELLOWBEARD was co-written and starred Graham Chapman.

SEA-FARING travesty YELLOWBEARD was a long-gestating project from the warped brain of Graham Chapman, at the prompting of Keith Moon who wanted to play Long John Silver. YELLOWBEARD wastes a checklist of British and American comedians - and a distinguished plethora of actors - for a film that was clearly more fun behind the scenes than anything on screen (apart from Marty Feldman, who died of a heart attack on the last day of filming in Mexico). Its mix of old school British humour, Mel Brooks lampoonery and Monty Python surrealism is impossible to gel; bloodthirsty pirate Yellowbeard (Chapman) is in jail for tax evasion, and just as he is about to be released, the British Secret Service (led by Eric Idle) convinces him that 100 more years has been added to his sentence, in the hope that he will escape in desperation and lead them to his treasure.

Behind his elaborate beard, Chapman attempts to carry the can in a manically wide-eyed performance. Yet because of the overall utter banality, even the swashbuckling and attempts at humour seem out of sync ("no woman ever slept with me and lived.") Relying on bringing a limp script to life by turning up in costume in the name of cliché can only result in an unfunny mess, as performers wave their swords and look for inspiration. It's no wonder that John Cleese - who appears as Blind Pew only out of loyalty to Chapman - described it as "one of the six worst films made in the history of the world." One laments that Chapman's career was one of unrealised talent, never providing a masterpiece beyond his Python association, unlike writing partner Cleese's FAWLTY TOWERS, Michael Palin and Terry Jones' RIPPING YARNS, or Terry Gilliam with BRAZIL.

Bearing little resemblance to Terry Jones' children's book The Saga of Erik the Viking, neither the knockabout humour or heroes journey is particularly spontaneous for Jones' film version, ERIK THE VIKING. 

Six years after YELLOWBEARD Terry Jones made his own adventure, ERIK THE VIKING. Questioning Viking preferences for raping and pillaging, Erik (Tim Robbins) suffers further guilt over the death of Helga (Samantha Bond). Existing in the age of Ragnarok, the young warrior forms a crew of misfits to travel to Hy-Brasil to seek the Horn Resounding, which will take them to Asgard and awaken the Gods. Yet these men have differing ideals, from Christian missionary Harald (Freddie Jones) to Blacksmith Keitel (Gary Cady), the latter secretly opposing Erik's plan for peace as it would be bad for business. Similarly warlord Halfan the Black (John Cleese) is also on Erik's tail, in a chomping ship of skull-wearing henchmen.

Although not on the disastrous level of YELLOWBEARD, ERIK THE VIKING is a pretty nondescript production, again wasting a host of talent. More Gilliamesque than Pythonesque, at least Jones is enjoying himself as Arnulf, the King of Hy-Brasil. Living like ancient Greeks, Arnulf's sunlit land is extremely hospitable and the centre of the most overt humour, especially Princess Aud (Imogen Stubbs)'s magic cloak of invisibility. Eartha Kitt is also memorable as the prophet Freya - seductively convincing Erik to embark on his voyage of discovery to escape the "great winter" - and Antony Sher makes a perfectly slimy Loki. 

The Road to Unreason

SIR HENRY AT RAWLINSON END (1980)

Thespian and alcoholic Trevor Howard is in his element as Sir Henry Rawlinson, Vivian Stanshall's most famous comedy creation.

MUSICIAN and wit Vivian Stanshall was best known for his work with the surrealist comedy/art revue group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and his outlandish exploration of the British upper classes at Rawlinson End. This latter concept first appeared as a track on the Bonzo's contractual obligation album Let's Make Up and Be Friendly, then as thirteen radio broadcasts on The John Peel Show as an individual performer, before evolving into a fully-fledged LP in 1978. This anarchic movie version - filmed in sepia monochrome and running a shade over seventy minutes - follows drunken aristocrat Sir Henry (Trevor Howard)'s attempts to exorcise the ghost of his brother Hubert (played by Stanshall). Hubert was accidentally killed in a duck-shooting incident whilst escaping trouser less from an illicit liaison. Apparently, this ghost will not rest until it is supplied with another pair of trousers; until then, the spirit walks the corridors, accompanied by his possessed stuffed dog Gums.

Bigoted imperialism is expertly brought to life by the cinematography of Martin Bell, as if a fading photograph. The eccentric family members, mad servants and unhinged acquaintances - players include Patrick Magee, Sheila Reid and Suzanne Danielle - all seem to exist in a world that isn't quite Monty Python, The Goons, Peter Cook or anything else, more a haphazard set of observations on the absurdity of being British. Incoherency is evident both in its sequences (Sir Henry is shown blacked up on a unicycle wearing a tutu, billiards played on a horse) and its dialogue ("generally speaking when I eat something I don't want to see it again," "I don't know what I want, but I want it now!")

Stanshall's behaviour was never straightforward. He once held a reporter captive for three hours until he would listen to his favourite records, and visited the East End with Keith Moon dressed up as Nazis.

A heavy drinker who also suffered from depression and a tranquiliser addiction, Stanshall was full of contradictions: both pleasant and threatening, even his voice could be posh (an order from his tyrannical father) or sport a cockney accent. At the time of his death - at fifty-one due to an electrical fire at his Muswell Hill bedsit - Vivian was developing a project about Loch Ness, and Warner's had approved a second Sir Henry album. Generously championed by Stephen Fry as "one of the most talented Englishmen ever," Stanshall's legacy is one more of infrequent flashes of oddness, an absurdist world which was too fragmented and silly for its own good.

Britain in the Raw

COOL IT CAROL (1970)
GOODBYE GEMINI (1970)

Released by AIP in the United States as DIRTIEST GIRL I EVER MET, COOL IT CAROL is a kitsch time capsule of swinging London that also started Britain's love affair with Robin Askwith's naked arse.

COOL IT CAROL and GOODBYE GEMINI were released within four months of each other in the latter half of 1970, both telling tales of young couples traveling to London. Inspired by a true story, COOL IT CAROL is part sex comedy part cautionary tale, and Pete Walker's finest slice of sexploitation before shifting to horror. Butcher boy Joe Sickles (Robin Askwith) and garage attendant Carol Thatcher (Janet Lynn in a role intended for Susan George) leave Shropshire to seek fame and fortune. With Joe unable to find work, he soon becomes Carol's manager, Thatcher guiding their wealth through modelling, cheap porn loops and prostitution ("it's only a fuck - I can't believe people pay good money for it.") As Carol becomes a high class call girl with Sheikh and cabinet minister clients, the pair become tired of fabricated existence and return home to resume their old jobs. 

COOL IT CAROL benefits from a solid Murray Smith script and strong performances (we are naturally enthused by Joe and Carol to the extent that the pimping sequence is quite harrowing). Unsurprisingly the papers couldn't see past the smut, describing it as "liable (if not calculated) to corrupt" (Evening News) and "a patch of untreated effluent" (Sunday Times). Similar to Walker's exploitation breakthrough HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, COOL IT CAROL portrays corruption as being far more dictated (and practiced) by those with higher moral standing, where sexual possession is seen as commodity (even in the filmmaker's 1969 travesty SCHOOL FOR SEX, a Judge takes over promiscuous reigns). After all, this is a London for the domain of young players, greasy businessmen and seedy politicians, in Soho clubs with indoor swimming pools.

Judy Geeson, Martin Potter and Alexis Kanner enjoy a London on the threshold of hippie disintegration in GOODBYE GEMINI.

Judy Geeson and Martin Potter star as fraternal birth partners Jacki and Julian Dewar in Alan Gibson's GOODBYE GEMINI. A companion piece to MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY in its portrayal of childlike family interaction, Jacki and Julian, on a University break, are sent by their father to an old Chelsea Embankment house and immediately hospitalise their elderly governess. They frequent London's underground party scene - complete with Jacki's teddy bear Agamemnon - and are soon ensnared by hustler Clive Landseer (Alexis Kanner with elaborate sideburns). Clive is using the Dewars to shroud him from gangster Road Barstowe (Mike Pratt), who he owes a large gambling debt; Clive blackmails Julian by plying him with whiskey and marijuana then taking him to a hotel room with two transvestite prostitutes. When Landseer is stabbed to death by the twins in a ritual - dressed in bed sheets as makeshift ceremonial robes - Agamemnon is cut in half, and Jacki goes on the run.

Adapted from Jenni Hall's experimental and fragmented 1964 novel Ask Agamemnon, the film abandons the book's Greek tragedy and fantasy sequences for a more linear experience, focusing more on Julian's incestuous yearning. Although it is hard to categorise - psychological sexploitation is perhaps nearest the mark - GOODBYE GEMINI is a surprisingly dull affair. Geeson (at the height of her career following TO SIR WITH LOVE) and Potter (fresh from Fellini's SATYRICON) are overshadowed by Kanner's stellar performance; neither does their journey gel with the older performers ("two old tombstones" Michael Redgrave as "member of parliament with a heart" and partygoer Freddie Jones). It is all too hedonistic to be enjoyable; self-indulgence is one thing, but no production can cope with such a quirky mix of naivety and ruthlessness. At least the fashions and party scenes are garish enough to hold interest, priming Gibson for helming Hammer's DRACULA A.D. 1972.

Come and Get It

THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (1969)

Raquel Welch and Ringo Starr share a moment on set.

BASED on Terry Southern's irreverent novel, THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN is an anti-establishment black comedy/satire so laboured to the point of self-nihilism. Eccentric billionaire Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers), together with newly adopted homeless person Youngman (Ringo Star), bribe people with vast sums of money for "educational" whim. The narrative that every man has his price is spread thinly over a series of jaw-droppingly unfunny skits and cameo appearances. These include cutting out a portrait's nose at a Sotheby's auction - much to the astonishment of director Mr Dugdale (John Cleese) - and approaching the Oxford rowing team - one played by Graham Chapman - to purposely ram the Cambridge crew. The film ends with Guy and Youngman, having returned to the park where the film opened, bribing the park warden to allow them to sleep there.

Working from an endlessly rewritten screenplay by Southern and director Joseph McGrath (with additional material by Sellers, Cleese and Chapman), the sketches are often homoerotic: there is a homosexual boxing match and a Hamlet striptease. The only amusement is of a dog show where a new breed is feeding on the contestants. One wonders that if the climactic vat of urine, blood and excrement - liberally sprinkled with money - is a statement for the production itself (the inclusion of a newsreel Vietcong execution is bewildering and contemptible). The stars are particularly abundant on the good ship Magic Christian, on its maiden voyage from London to New York: Christopher Lee as a vampire, a whip-wielding Raquel Welch, and Yul Brynner in drag singing "Mad About the Boy" to a suitably unimpressed Roman Polanski.

Peter Sellers bribes Spike Milligan into eating his own parking ticket in one of many heavy-handed meditations on capitalism and human vanity.

Amongst the mess we find British stalwarts swallowing their pride (Hattie Jacques, John Le Mesurier, Dennis Price, Wilfred Hyde-White et al), and Starr is disposable behind Sellers' foppish onslaught (allegedly imposed by Sellers himself). At least Cleese is seen honing his petulance, and the unfilmed Cleese/Chapman contribution - The Mouse Problem - became a classic as part of the second episode of MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS. A presage of Furry Fandom, the sketch is an obvious parody of the secretive lives and social condemnation of gay men, the piece mimicking techniques used in serious television documentary exposés.

School of Shadows

SCHOOL FOR SEX (1969)

HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS (1983)

SCHOOL FOR SEX unfairly lures the viewer into a cliched catastrophe; even its director/producer/writer Pete Walker calls it "terrible."

MOST British sex comedies are unsexy and unfunny, but Pete Walker's SCHOOL FOR SEX - sold on its title alone - is also terminally boring. After the sudden death of his parents, bounder Giles Wingate (Derek Aylward) - on a suspended sentence for embezzlement - inherits a country estate. Yet his wealth is soon diminished by a series of gold-digging wives, leading him to take revenge: setting up a "school for sex" which trains young female offenders to fleece money from millionaires for a third of the profit. Wingate converts his house for the venture and employs ex-boxer Hector (Nosher Powell) and dipsomaniac Duchess of Burwash (Rose Alba) as staff; with a steady flow of girls from a corrupt probation service, anti vice campaigners finally lead Wingate back to court.

Similar to COME PLAY WITH ME, SCHOOL FOR SEX was a triumph of marketing, hiding the embarrassment underneath. One of Walker's biggest box office successes, the film was particularly popular in the United States and France, where punters - high on the sexual revolution - were duped with fake promises of underage sex even in the more risqué export version (in fact, American success is enshrined: during the opening of SHAFT, when Richard Roundtree strides down 42nd Street, he passes the Rialto Cinema advertising "first New York show, SCHOOL FOR SEX.") Yet, while Walker draws on the permissive age, the result is a regressive opposite; we are still in the realm of the stereotypical British farce, pigeon-holing carnal urges like a pre-war sex tussle.

In Pete Walker's only film as a "director for hire," Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price occupy the HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS. 

Fourteen years later, Walker's final release HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS is also renowned for cranking up the boredom and living in the past. Publisher Sam Allyson (Richard Todd) makes a $20,000 bet with author Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz Jr) that he cannot write a novel in the classic tradition within 24 hours. Allyson arranges for Magee to write at the secluded and empty Baldpate mansion in Wales as not to be distracted. The writer is soon interrupted by Allyson's secretary Mary Norton (Julie Peasgood), holidaying couple Andrew and Diana Caulder (Richard Hunter and Louise English), and buyer Corrigan (Christopher Lee). The main source of disruption however are the Grisbanes, with father Elijah (John Carradine) and daughter Victoria (Sheila Keith, in a role originally intended for Elsa Lanchester) initially posing as caretakers. It transpires that the Grisbanes are the house owners - welcoming back sons Lionel (Vincent Price) and Sebastian (Peter Cushing) - for a final night of retribution on their murderous sibling Roderick.

Based on the 1913 novel Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers, which became the hit stage play by George M. Cohan, this often adapted story is given a Gothic makeover but wastes a stellar cast. Scripted by Michael Armstrong for Cannon, HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS is too much of a throwback for 1980s blockbuster cinema, and consequently was a box office failure. The Seven Keys to Baldpate foundation itself was old school, with its gangsters, stolen jewels and femme fatales, and morphing into a comedic chiller only changes the nature of the cliched failure. The production escalates into a number of absurd twist endings, but Price, Lee and Cushing play off each other delightfully, and are obviously relishing this opportunity of screen time together. In fact Lionel's dialogue "All of us, locked in the past forever ... now we too must crumble into dust" acts an obituary for the films that made them famous. Unfortunately there is little chemistry between Arnaz and Peasgood, though the actresses' theatrical delivery could be seen to make sense in hindsight.

Louise English as bickering Diana Caulder in HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS. The actress, singer and dancer is best remembered as a regular on THE BENNY HILL SHOW.

The photography of Norman Langley attempts to capture a Roger Corman/Poe vibe, but cannot shake the crusty ambience that sank that other "out of time" failure THE MONSTER CLUB. It is ironic that Walker should bow out with such blandness, after making his name with gratuitous sex and violence (English's acid demise is the only nastiness here). Another factor against the Walker grain is the moral of the climactic cop-outs; Magee - known for pulp novels - learns that he should be more empathetic to his craft and value characterisation over cash. However post-production tinkering over the more comedic elements, in order to promote the work as a horror film, did not create any winners.

Porn Again

THE LOOK OF LOVE (2013)

"Not bad for a boy from Liverpool who arrived with 5 bob in his pocket." Rejoicing in his own notoriety, Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan) had problematic relationships with his wife, lovers, sons and daughter.

MICHAEL Winterbottom's biopic of erotica magnate Paul Raymond (nee Geoffrey Quinn) focuses on the years between 1958 and 1992. Portrayed in flashback, it opens with Raymond (Steve Coogan, essentially playing himself) viewing old videotape of daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) after attending her funeral. The film shows his start as a seaside act through launching "sophisticated" strip clubs and revue theatres, allowing him to expand a property portfolio and indulge in a cocaine-fuelled playboy lifestyle. These heady events also include leaving wife Jean (Anna Friel) for aspiring actress Amber St George/Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton), and producing a publishing empire aided by Tony Power (Chris Addison).

Written by Matt Greenhalgh based on Paul Willetts' book Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, this Winterbottom/Coogan vehicle depicts a cautionary tale with all the effectiveness of Alan Partridge. Once the richest man in Britain, Raymond as a screen character is left vaguely flapping at his fragile reality, not understanding how a daughter who has everything materialistically could die from a heroin overdose (bleakly, Debbie is shown sniffing a line of cocaine - supplied by her father - as she gives birth). Greenhalgh's previous biopics on John Lennon and Ian Curtis had grounded specifics, but Raymond's episodic life is further undermined by its unnecessary comedic tone and casting, such as David Walliams as Reverend Edwyn Young, Simon Bird as Jonathan Hodge, and cameos from Matt Lucas, Dara O'Briain and Stephen Fry. Raymond is no Hugh Hefner, a consistently dull self-made businessman/smut peddler with double standards, who resisted his classification as a pornographer. 

First appearing in 1935 as a pocket-sized male humour publication, Paul Raymond re-launched Men Only in 1971 as the start of his top-shelf line which would encompass Club International, Razzle, Escort and Mayfair. Cover stars shown here are Fiona Richmond and Francoise Pascal.

Speeding through the swinging 1960s and coke-covered 1970s, THE LOOK OF LOVE is as flaccid as a television variety show, lacking cinematic scope and spectacle (only Poots and Friel leave any real lasting impressions, while others seem content in how cheeky they're being). Raymond's greatest legacy swims against the prudish tide of English decency, accumulating his wealth from a subject matter which has always been treated as a bad smell. While Paul Thomas Anderson's extraordinary BOOGIE NIGHTS celebrates the American porn industry with a zeal which also illustrates a cohesive extended family, THE LOOK OF LOVE shows a country replete with shallow entertainments, fractured relationships and festering regrets. It's a shame, as Raymond's journey can be seen as a microcosm on how culture slowly turned women into commodities.

Daleks, Daloids and Phaleks (Part II of II)

ABDUCTED BY THE DALEKS (2005)
DOCTOR LOO AND THE PHALEKS (2005)

28 years after Katy Manning's notorious spread in Girl Illustrated, the mutants from Skaro return to menace nude Earth women in ABDUCTED BY THE DALEKS. Needless to say, the BBC and the estate of Terry Nation swiftly moved to pull the plug on any legal distribution.

AS the DOCTOR WHO reboot hit television screens in 2005, these two zero-budgeted "Daleks Do Porn" abominations attempted to cash in on the return of the Time Lord. The softcore ABDUCTED BY THE DALEKS, with a story by "Billy Hartnell" and directed by "Don Scaro" - in reality London based magazine distributor Trevor Barley/Roman Nowicki - mixes Eastern European models and The Doctor's most famous foes for 55 long, erotica-free minutes. Not even a title change to ABDUCTED BY THE DALOIDS - while retaining the Dalek name on all prints - could fool the BBC from threatening legal action (there is also an unlicensed use of Pink Floyd). As for the actual plot, four women (including a Dalek agent) accidentally hit an Alien "Grey" in their car. In full party dress and high heels, they investigate in woodland famous for being a hunting ground for The Serial Skinner killer. But before long they are being taken captive by Daleks, who show a preference in interrogating their prisoners nude.

After surviving an encounter with a scared hunter and his machine gun, plus the Serial Skinner, the Dalek agent explains to the police that the metal menace wanted to impregnate their slaves. The film even makes the long passages of naked girls wandering through the forest monotonous, obliquely mirroring the Time Lord's reputation of endlessly running around corridors. Shot in different aspect ratios, there is also plenty of on-screen goofs (visible Dalek operators, the boom mike handle) and a surreal title card warning of strobe effects. Even the writhing of the starlets when strapped to a stark metallic wall is unsynchronised, though best of all is the impromptu actress switch between Lina Black and Maria Vaslova, presumably due to a no nudity clause.

In DOCTOR LOO AND THE PHALEKS, Whovians recoiling from Tom Baker talking to the phallic appendage of THE CREATURE FROM THE PIT are likely to suffer chest cramps at the sight of the Phaleks.

The hardcore DOCTOR LOO AND THE PHALEKS - also known as DOCTOR LOO AND THE FILTHY PHALEKS - was made by the short lived UK porn studio Doll Theatre. And for anyone still distraught on the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the latest Doctor, remember that Britain's leading sex actress Alicia Rhodes got their first. Dr Louise Flangebatter (Billie Piper lookalike Rhodes) travels through space in her luxury toilet Turdis ("wherever there's scum she'll flush it away"); picking up damsel in distress Quimberly Dickmore (McKenzie Lee), the pair travel with house shag-bot Kay Nine to Skrotum 4, where they encounter Emperor Minge (in a gimp mask) and Lady Sodomi with her army of oversexed Phaleks. Pretty inconsequential to the greater scheme of things, the Phaleks are painted water butts, with rubber dildo's attached to the base of their garish red casing.  

"I'm Fiona ... Fly Me!"

HARDCORE (1977)

Based on her 1976 book Fiona, HARDCORE charts the rise of Fiona Richmond, the "frankly sensational adventures of a liberated lady."

MAKE no illusions, there is no hardcore in James Kenelm Clarke's fictionalised sex odyssey of Fiona Richmond. A mockumentary before the term was coined, the model/non-actress turned writer - portrayed by Richmond herself - recounts her carnal exploits to an acquaintance at her publisher's South of France whitewashed villa in 80 tidy minutes. These encounters include her chemistry teacher (who pockets her panties), becoming a member of the mile high club, and frollicking at the back of a moving mixed vegetables delivery van with John Hamill. With its above average production values and beautiful cinematography by Mike Molloy, HARDCORE is the Rolls Royce of British sex comedies, and actually achieves some laugh-out-loud moments. With the opportunity to film in the heatwave of 1976, even the British locations have a welcoming sheen.

Particularly unsettling when viewed today is the scene at the chemistry lab, where the then 31-year-old in school uniform receives her "punishment." Throughout, Richmond plays herself with a wilful abandon that attempts to hide her stilted style, and thankfully she has a parade of seasoned performers for support: Ronald Fraser as the Soho impresario who first employs Fiona (she strips off, puts a vase of flowers over his head and punches him to get his attention) and Victor Spinetti as the proprietor of Men Only (both characters interpretations of Richmond's lover Paul Raymond). On the peripheral, Harry H. Corbett manages to be hilarious in his split-second cameo as Art, and for trivia hounds, an early scene shows Kenelm Clarke's 1974 movie GOT IT MADE playing on television, which featured future DOCTOR WHO Romana Lalla Ward. The picture caused a furore as it was later edited - incorporating sex scenes that the cast had no knowledge - and reissued as SWEET VIRGIN. When Raymond's Club International published photos of the hardcore action alleging Ward was a participant featured, the actress successfully sued.

Richmond with Paul Raymond, the uncredited financier of the picture. Raymond ensures that his businesses are on show, such as his Revuebar, the Windmill and Whitehall theatres, and the Men Only offices.

Released in the United States as FIONA, the only facts the project brings to the table is that Richmond is indeed the daughter of an vicar, was once an air stewardess, and that she earned her stripes as a columnist for Men Only. The rest is cloaked in her persona as a free-spirited 70s sex goddess, who was regularly seen along the streets of Soho in her yellow E-type Jaguar (a gift from Raymond). Alongside her writing "career," Richmond was the headliner in a succession of Raymond-sponsored West End stage shows and revues before screen roles beckoned, and when the cinematic sex market tired at the end of the 70s, Fiona achieved some kind of respectability on TV game shows such as CELEBRITY SQUARES and BLANKETY BLANK. Although Richmond's popularity pre-dated Mary Millington, the draw of Fiona waned upon the arrival of the fresh, sexual liberation qualities of Millington. The tall brunette became overshadowed by the short blonde, with punters preferring Mary's girl-next-door demeanour to Fiona's more remote sophistication.

"New Thrills! New Faces! New Horror!"

HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (1970)

In the same year that David Prowse became The Green Cross Code Man, the Bristol native appeared in the second of his three roles as Mary Shelley's most famous creation.

JIMMY Sangster's HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN is detested by Hammer purists for its comedic tone, and plays out as a parody of the previous respected entries. The film opens with Victor Frankenstein (Ralph Bates) at school, accompanied by friends Elizabeth (Veronica Carlson), Stefan (Stephen Turner) and Henry (Jon Finch). Victor arranges for the death of his father and travels to university in Vienna, where he acquires sidekick Wilhelm (Graham James) and impregnates the daughter of the Dean. Returning to Ingstad, Victor starts a series of experiments, using corpses delivered by a local body snatcher (Dennis Price) - who lets his wife do the digging. After electrocuting Wilhelm for complaining about his work - which includes reanimating a tortoise - Victor poisons Elizabeth's professor father (Bernard Archard) for his brain, but the organ is damaged and the resulting patchwork man is a mute thug (David Prowse).

Initiated as a start-over remake of CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, the picture dispenses with Peter Cushing's services and tries to introduce a younger generation (a failed attempt, as Cushing returned four years later in FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL). Despite the traditional 19th Century setting, HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN is very much of its time - as illustrated by Bates' hair and puffy shirts - and quite anarchic, mixing additional plot threads (Elizabeth's finances, Stefan's crush on Victor) with comic relief (a severed arm making a V-sign) and grue (Victor's hands smearing his face with blood). Duelling femmes fatale O'Mara and Carlson are always watchable, but only Price can deliver a performance at the correct pitch. Bates, at this point being groomed to become the studio's next big star, is not so much a mad scientist but a psycho scientist, enjoying the thrill of the kill and rejoicing in the fact that he has this powerful monster ready to do his bidding. And when the creature eventually appears - an hour in, and sporting white cycling shorts - Prowse goes through the motions with a checklist of victims and a perfect physique which bestows its fragmented origins.

"You’ve put on weight in a couple of places"; Kate O’Mara is the bed-warming housekeeper of Hammer's relaunch of its Frankenstein franchise.

Reusing the Karnstein Castle set from THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, and even shooting most of its forest scenes on Elstree stages, there is a distinctly cheap and recycled feel. Furthermore, HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN was not helped by a misleading marketing campaign, where it went out on a double bill with the sombre and gristly SCARS OF DRACULA (as Sangster states in Wayne Kinsey's Hammer Films: The Elstree Studio Years, "if people had gone to see it knowing it was shot light hearted they would have enjoyed it more [instead of] thinking it was a Gothic horror.") However, this twin feature did hold the distinction of the first Hammer movies to be totally financed by British companies, thanks to a deal between Sir James Carreras and ABPC/EMI. But Hammer's new partner would only distribute to England and the Commonwealth, leaving Carreras able to acquire just a small American distributor - Continental - to impossibly cover the whole of the United States market. 

The notion of deriving humour from such pseudo-scientific source material is an interesting one. Since Frankenstein was published in 1818, and Boris Karloff's seminal interpretation hit screens in 1931, Mary Shelley's serious text - and similar works - generate mythical themes and uncomfortable laughter. As the initial power of the book recedes in a collected consciousness, the tome gathers extraordinarily wide responses, snowballing a range of spoofs and humorous asides now over 200 years on. The level of comedic takes is mind-boggling, even to the point of delicious meta-levels: Mel Brooks' celebrated YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, for example, used many pieces from James Whale's original laboratory set, and even in The Beatles film YELLOW SUBMARINE we had the Monster drinking a potion and becoming John Lennon.

True Blue (Part II of II)

THE PLAYBIRDS (1978)
CONFESSIONS FROM THE DAVID GALAXY AFFAIR (1979)

"A Murder Thriller with Thrilling Bodies!" THE PLAYBIRDS provided Britain's premier 70s sexpot Mary Millington with her most substantial part.

BECAUSE of the unfathomable financial success of COME PLAY WITH ME, executive producer David Sullivan quickly announced his next venture, with lover Mary Millington taking on a more sizable role. Proclaiming the follow-up would be the "hottest film ever to be screened in Britain," THE PLAYBIRDS is actually an overblown exercise in self-promotion, but does capture the tawdry aspects of 70s Soho amongst its car chases and bombastic theme tune. Belonging to a genre of British film that rejoice in the psychopathic killing of models (COVER GIRL KILLER, PEEPING TOM et al), Harry Dougan (Alan Lake, as an on-screen persona of Sullivan) is a racehorse-owning millionaire glamour publisher, who starts a series of supernatural-themed spreads that has attracted a deranged killer (who the press term "The Chopper.") After dispatching two ladies of sexploitation royalty (Pat Astley and Suzy Mandel), the murderer becomes involved in a cat-and-mouse game against Scotland Yard's finest (Glynn Edwards and Gavin Campbell, with Millington as undercover WPC Lucy Sheridan).

The in joke of pouring a 4'11" porn non-actress into a Police uniform - especially one as harassed by the law as Millington - is quickly forgotten as Sheridan is more at home to her new assignment than somnambulantly delivering dialogue at cop shop meetings. Developing her talents as a sauna prostitute, Lucy soon has a lesbian fling and sleeps with Dougan to achieve her goal to become a Playbirds centrefold. Regardless of the film being moulded as a Mary vehicle, the real actress with sex appeal here is Mandel: it was no mistake that she shared equal space on Tom Chantrell's eye-popping posters of COME PLAY WITH ME and THE PLAYBIRDS alongside her more illustrious colleague. The cherubic Mandel could actually deliver her lines with a knowing twinkle, and was a mainstay of 70s smut in this country until she emigrated to the United States. If you actually care about the murder investigation you have a variety of suspects beyond Dougan, but the final "shock ending" will leave no one satisfied.

The start of a stormy union: Diana Dors and third husband Alan Lake on their Wedding Day, November 1968. In 1972 after his release from prison, Lake broke his back during a horse riding accident, starting a descent into alcoholic violence and eventual gunshot suicide.

The following year Sullivan attempted to cash-in on the CONFESSIONS name with CONFESSIONS FROM THE DAVID GALAXY AFFAIR, another Roldvale production distributed by Tigon. Lake gives one of the most self-indulgent lead performances in British film history as the titular super stud astrologer, who may - or may not - have been involved in a Securicor robbery five years previous. Behind his sparkling medallion, large lapels and annoyingly knowing swagger, Lake regularly breaks into a series of excruciating impressions (embracing anyone from Basil Rathbone to Bruce Forsyth, and anything from racism to homophobia), and also breaks wind in one jaw-dropping love-making scene. Despite this goggle-eyed eccentricity, Galaxy is still irresistible to women, refers to his penis as Fido, and sleeps with the entire female cast except for real-life wife Diana Dors, who plays the new owner of his apartment block.

In new levels of cinematic tedium, there is endless offering and pouring of drinks (often involving the police, tokenly fronted again by Glynn Edwards) but the film is saved from total disposability by the appearances of Rosemary England (Miss Beauty Bust) and - in a subplot incidental to the main narrative - Mary Millington (high society heiress Millicent Cumming). Never having experienced orgasm, Cumming hooks up with Galaxy in a multi-positional sequence played out against the astrologer's mirrored headboard. Despite this lengthy scene being one of the most explicit in a British sex comedy - one press release even insinuated that Lake and Millington actually had intercourse, much to Dors' disgust - the picture was a box office and critical disaster.

True Blue (Part I of II)

MISS BOHRLOCH (1970)

ESKIMO NELL (1975)

Translating the German Bohrlock ('borehole', 'blast-hole') was too difficult for most British porn fans; the film consequently enjoyed a variety of alternative titles such as MISS BAWLOCK and even MISS BOLLOCK.

BRITAIN's sex superstar of the saucy 70s, Mary Millington's girl-next-door demeanor actually encompassed everything from magazine cover girl to hardcore actress. An outspoken opponent of the Obscene Publications Act, she also starred - often fleetingly - in British sex comedies, including COME PLAY WITH ME, which holds the record of the longest-ever theatrical booking in domestic cinema history. Her open bisexuality - she cited Harold Wilson and Diana Dors as lovers - illustrated a genuine love of carnal activity ("the old slogan of 'make love, not war' was a very good one"), before the predictable spiral to prostitution, kleptomania and cocaine abuse. A chance meeting in a Kensington coffee shop with pioneering Scottish pornographer John Lindsay led Mary to play the title role of MISS BOHRLOCH, the first of around twenty hardcore 8mm shorts made in Britain and on the continent over a four-year period.

Filmed in Frankfurt, MISS BOHRLOCH was a huge success in Europe (some 300,000 copies were sold) and created an underground following back home. Millington runs the whole gamut in her initial outing, and is mesmerizingly unrelenting (no wonder it was awarded the Golden Phallus Award at the Wet Dream Festival in Amsterdam). An insatiable and upbeat call girl in a fur coat, stockings and suspenders, Bohrloch welcomes two men to her flat for a "full service," after giving her address over the phone ("6 Pop Street") and dropping a ping pong ball from her vagina. Dubbed back in the UK, Mary becomes a Southern Belle while her clients are Irish-American, which makes the banal dialogue slightly amusing ("yes, we'll have a little music here"). In best British seaside postcard tradition, there is a punchline of sorts: having spent all their money on the activities, the duo cannot pay for the service charge; Bohrlock smiles and leads them off screen, "you've been well fed, now you can wash the dishes".

ESKIMO NELL is a British sex comedy about the industry in which Mary Millington would become so deeply entrenched.

Directed by Martin Campbell and produced by Stanley Long, ESKIMO NELL saw Mary's mainstream sex comedy debut, albeit for approximately ten seconds. Then a jobbing actress and model using her married name Mary Maxted, Millington's role as a stripping traffic warden auditioning for a film-within-a-film is speed up for comedic effect. But this is more of a footnote for one of the few genuinely entertaining and funny entries in the much maligned sub-genre, which sees fledgling film auteur Dennis Morrison (Michael Armstrong, who also scripted), producer Clive Potter (Terence Edmond) and screenwriter Harris Tweedle (Christopher Timothy) hired by seedy erotic film linchpin Benny U. Murdoch (Roy Kinnear, in his element) to make a dirty movie based on the bawdy poem 'The Ballad of Eskimo Nell'. When each of the backers request a completely different style - and Murdoch makes off with the money - the budding filmmakers attempt to keep everyone happy by providing the first gay Western/hardcore/kung-fu musical for all the family. With four different versions in the can, the hardcore cut is then mistakenly shown at the Royal Charity premiere.

The triumph of ESKIMO NELL is that it is a thinly veiled critique of the film industry itself, and an illustration of the moral guardians of the day: Lady Longhorn and Lord Coltwind - backers of the wholesome version - are caricatures of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford; Murdoch is based on Tigon supremo Tony Tenser; and Bick Dick - played by Gordon Tanner - ridicules Louis "Deke" M. Heyward, the London representative of AIP who had previously clashed with Armstrong during the shambles of THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR. Of other interest is DOCTOR WHO's Katy Manning, who appears as Hermione Longhorn; this was Manning second film after leaving the services of UNIT, the first being the screen adaptation of the Whitehall farce DON'T JUST LIE THERE, SAY SOMETHING! (written by Jon Pertwee's brother Michael).

Sexual Encounters of the Close Kind

FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE (1956)
OUTER TOUCH (1979)

FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE hid behind poster hyperbole in an attempt to shroud its crushing tedium.

SCIENCE fiction movies of the 1950s can be divided into four firm camps: alien invasion pictures, those obsessed with the effects of atomic radiation, and generally more sombre films dealing with space exploration. Last and certainly least is an odd set where humankind encounter either planets full of women, or those where alien females visit Earth for mating. In this male-centric sub-genre, Britain could match the worst of Hollywood: for every CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON and QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, we can boast DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS and FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE. This turgid set of releases illustrate the wider treatment of women within the science fiction field; at the time of pulp magazines, female SF writers were extremely rare, harbinging the view that they could not capture the adventures of muscle-bound heroes, especially within an imaginative context. This leads to the main question of why the mythology is so hegemonic where there is no factual basis for it.

Regularly disowned in the same breath as other 50s SF misfires ROBOT MONSTER and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE opens with the launch of an Anglo-American rocketship to Jupiter. A compelling voice guides the craft through thick "space fog" to the planet's 13th moon, where the crew - led by Luther Blair (Anthony Dexter) - meet the Atlanteans, descendants who once inhabited Earth's lost continent. It is unclear how or why the sole survivors now populate a planetary satellite; patriarch Prasus (Owen Barry) and his many beautiful "daughters" may now inhabit outer space, but they have clearly not forgotten their very English etiquette. Although a subplot involving a Fire Maiden (Susan Shaw) overstepping her ancestral mark is quickly forgotten, ultimately the Atlanteans need men for breeding purposes, and to aid them in destroying The Creature ("the man with the head of a beast"), a lumpy-faced caveman in a black bodysuit who wanders their boundaries.

The cover to Jezebel's 2006 R1 DVD for Norman J. Warren's OUTER TOUCH/SPACED OUT (under their brand "Sexy Retro from the Saucy Seventies.")

This painfully dull fantasy was written and directed by Chicago-born Cy Roth, a filmmaker whose style is to vaguely aim the camera in the direction of the players. Having made two Z-grade war movies, Roth surpases himself here in a travesty filled with preposterous chauvinism ("A woman! You can say that again, with all the necessary ingredients"). Its special effects are lifted from other productions - the meteor shower from ROCKETSHIP X-M, a rocket landing from KING DINOSAUR - and the Jupiter landscape is a well-kept woodland (even less demanding patrons awaiting the "electronic monster" promised in the trailer must have been disappointed by the slow-moving neanderthal). The only interesting points to make are both oblique to the film itself: the 13th moon of Jupiter wasn't actually discovered until 1974, and its use of classical music within a SF setting - here Borodin's 'Polovetsin Dances' - occurs more than a decade before 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

Two years prior to INSEMINOID, Norman J. Warren made OUTER TOUCH, an amateurish, aptly-named space sex comedy. Described by the director as "CARRY ON meets FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE" and "dreadful, in a nice kind of way," a malfunctioning cargo spacecraft lands on Clapham Common, and four hapless Londoners are taken on board: research assistant Oliver (Barry Stokes), his "no sex before marriage" fiancee Prudence (Lynne Ross), dog-walking plank Cliff (Michael Rowlatt) and masturbation-happy shelf-stacker Willy (Robin Askwith substitute Tony Maiden). Aboard the ship are cigar-chomping Skipper (Kate Ferguson), engineer Partha (Ava Cadell) and general assistant Cosia (Glory Annen), aliens under heavy makeup and disco clothing who are soon educated on the joys of the male reproductive organ ("Have you got a weapon down there? It's changing shape!").

Ava Cadell is fascinated by Tony Maiden's heady reading material in OUTER TOUCH. Hungarian Cadell was a former hardcore actress 

who is now an internationally-renowned sex therapist.  

OUTER TOUCH is typical of the British sex comedy in that, although providing an abundance of writhing nudity, is softcore without any sexual charge, though repressed Prudence enjoys temptation of the flesh by the end of the picture (while Oliver typically keeps his glasses and socks on). Of its design, scaffolding covered with plastic sheets were used for certain sections of the craft, and such Ed Woodesque ingenuity sits awkwardly with the beautiful spaceship exteriors culled from SPACE: 1999 (due to a variety of shots used, its appearance changes through the course of the film). Although usually a footnote in the career of Warren in this country, the picture was re-edited, re-dubbed and featured a new soundtrack for its release as SPACED OUT in the United States, where it has acquired something of a cult following.