Angel With Attitude

Samantha Fox and Page 3

Starting her glamour career at sixteen by coming second in the 1983 Sunday People’s Face and Shape competition, Samantha Fox was a model of irresistible contrasts: an angelic face with a mature body, and possessing large breasts with thin hips.

PUBLISHED in The Sun between 1970 and 2015, the inclusion of a topless model on Page 3 doubled the paper's circulation within a year of its introduction. As other tabloids scrambled to compete, was the notion harmless fun, or softcore pornography for the masses? Conservatives saw it as highly inappropriate for national newspapers, while feminists regarded it as a continuation of a misogynistic tradition. A number of the girls - such as Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker and Debee Ashby - began their careers at sixteen, which was legally permitted in the UK until the 2003 Sexual Offences Act. But in the heyday of the 1980s the models were superstars, and Sam Fox became one of the most photographed women of the world, behind only Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher.

In 1986 Fox retired from Page 3 at the age of twenty, and transitioned into pop music (although she did promote Page 3's 25th anniversary and appear in Playboy). It wasn't all plain sailing for the cheeky Mile Ender however, as Fox dodged fanatical stalkers and sued her father/former manager for embezzlement. Indeed, the title of her 2005 album Angel With an Attitude, and her appearances on chat shows, illustrated a grounded yet feisty "girl next-door" demeanour. Appearing on her record covers in sexy outfits and singing behind synthesized disco tracks, lyrics centred around the conflicts of love and lust. Although commercially successful, critics were less kind. Colin Irwin of Melody Maker called Fox "a small step for man, a huge step for lip gloss," while Alanna Nash, writing for Stereo Review, labeled her "airhead pop" and "less a singer than a sex fantasy."

Samantha Fox's debut single Touch Me (I Want Your Body) was a worldwide smash, reaching number three in the UK, and number four in the US Billboard Hot 100.

But if impressionable men were being conditioned to objectify and demean women, where does exploitation end and art begin? The historical definition of a nude shows the ideals of feminine and masculine beauty. Throughout the centuries this perception has shifted by cultural expectation; the first sculpture - the Venus of Willendorf - is known for her curvy figure and wide hips, and thought to be a deity for fertility. Female nudity also held an important place in prehistory, with Egyptian and Near-Eastern civilisations commonly featuring naked women as goddesses who ruled over love, war and even the underworld. Thus there is a mental and physical stature to the female form throughout history, possessing a real power over a variety of disciplines.

Contrastingly, throughout the Medieval period, women were mostly withheld from positions of power, or speaking their voice. In the time of the Renaissance, females were considered to legally belong to their husbands, and practically forbidden to practice art. An aura of seduction had replaced the perfection of these earlier figureheads, as an aesthetic landscape merged with a socio-political one. Samantha Fox certainly encapsulates the power of the female form, and a celebrated fantasy for girls yearning to be models and pop stars.

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.  

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).