Dracutwig (1969, Bernhardt J. Hurwood)

 

The quest to read Dracutwig has been something of a personal cause of mine for the last few years. The allure of an eccentric sounding, swinging sixties relic -in which Dracula's daughter embarks on a Twiggy like modeling career- calling out to me from the groovy past. At the same time I was never under the illusion that Dracutwig would be a good book in the traditional sense...which is just as well.

Dracutwig began life as a screenplay, allegedly penned by the writer of several Broadway musicals, but when plans for the movie fell by the wayside, the script was retooled and Dracutwig rose from the grave in book form. The book version is credited to Mallory T. Knight, a pen name for Bernhardt J. Hurwood, whose bibliography includes horror fiction, sexy paperbacks and nonfiction occult titles, possibly explaining the uneven qualities of Dracutwig. Hurwood would also go on to the write novelisations of 'Kingdom of the Spiders' and the Linda Blair TV movie 'Born Innocent'.

Dracutwig is initially set in 1950 where Count Dracula has aligned himself with the communist party, who provide him with a regular supply of political undesirables to drink blood from. In return Dracula leaves the local Transylvanian peasants alone, who make their money by shipping their virgin daughters off to the big city to work as prostitutes. Everything is hunky dory until local nympho Charmaine Skakowski, whose 'monumental breasts bounced with every step she took' forces herself on Count Dracula 'instead of blood, Dracula now thought only of the exquisite sensations raging through his long dead body'. After Charmaine becomes pregnant, the disgruntled villagers force their way into Castle Dracula, assaulting Dracula's club footed majordomo Klaus, whose entire purpose in the book seems to be to get kicked in the ass or in the balls. Dracula is forced into a shotgun marriage and the result of his and Charmaine's union is a daughter... Dracutwig, or 'Draculine' as she is actually called in the book. Upon her 18th birthday, young Draculine is dispatched to London to get the best education that money can buy, with all the culture clash, fish out of water comedy you'd expect. Draculine gatecrashes a funeral, and having been raised among the undead, causes an outcry when she tries to help the corpse out of the coffin. While at a fashion show being held at a trendy nightclub called 'The Well Dressed Nude', Draculine accidentally ends up on the catwalk, causing fashion model Petruska to vengefully tear off Draculine's clothes. This results in onlookers getting horny and embarking on a mass orgy. 'For poor Draculine, who pressed herself in agony against the platform where it all had begun, the spectacle seemed like a wild battle scene, but where semen was spewing instead of blood. But she knew one thing for sure as she deliberately kicked a would-be rapist in the groin: Transylvania never offered anything like it!'.

Draculine also becomes an instant fashion sensation due to her pale skin and undead appearance. At which point the book could almost lay claim to have anticipated Goth culture with the masses copying Draculine's look, a fashion trend dubbed 'new morbidity' within these pages. The fact that Dracutwig is essentially a romantic comedy doesn't prevent Draculine from occasionally wandering away from the in-crowd to murder a more diverse section of Londoners. Her victims including a randy priest, an old drunk she meets in Soho, a cross dresser and a stoned hippy. Drinking the contaminated blood of the latter causes Draculine to have an LSD trip in Trafalgar Square 'nothing seemed more natural than for Lord Nelson's statue to slowly turn around on it's sparkling pedestal, unbutton it's fly and begin to urinate in a fantastical iridescent rainbow'. The initial Transylvanian section of the book invites comparisons with The Fearless Vampire Killers, but once we hop over to London, the 'not quite as hip as it thinks it is' sensibility and level of humour is more in the territory of the David Niven 'Vampira', or Son of Dracula (the Harry Nilsson one). Draculine falls for a dandy photographer called Harry Brockton, who is a severe hemophiliac. His confession "I'm a hemo" causes a confused Draculine to question his sexuality "you mean you're like your agent, no that can't be".

As Dracutwig was written by a lifelong New Yorker, the book's version of Swinging London is the type that probably never really existed outside of German Krimi movies. The geography of Dracutwig entirely consisting of well known tourist spots... Belgravia, Trafalgar Square, Soho, and where the sound of Big Ben is never too far away. The book is also fond of absurdly double-barreled English names, we get Sarah Fardley-Butticks, Lady Dorcas-Brockton and Ms. Ponsonby-Smithe's School for Young Ladies.

If you're expecting a wacky, campy romp, then your expectations are only going to be partly met here. Dracutwig gets surprisingly sour and cynical at the halfway point, as Draculine's beau Harry Brockton, cheats on her, exploits her for fame and money and has a disturbingly over affectionate relationship with his mother, the aforementioned Lady Dorcas-Brockton. The book then gets hit with the silly stick again, as Dorcas-Brockton keeps dressing up as a Nun in order to kill Draculine, only to then tonally switch back for an incredibly downbeat ending. Even more so, given that...without trying to give too much away.. it's the kind of ending that makes you think that they'll be some kind of last minute, get out cause that will lead to a happy conclusion, only for the book to instead double down on the darkness.

I suspect that average person will find this book to be an unfinishable, insult to the intelligence. However if, like me, you're a sucker for any ol' Swinging London nonsense, then a date with Miss Dracutwig is difficult to turn down...even if she is difficult to get a hold of these days. As far as I'm aware the book was only ever available in America and Germany, where it was published in 1971 as Dracula's Tochter/Dracula's Daughter. Such was my desperation to read the book that I downloaded a German language ebook of it from a dodgy website, had that converted to a PDF using another dodgy website, then used a further dodgy website to translate the German PDF into English. Meaning that the version I read was an English translation of a German translation of a book that was originally in English. The German edition also includes a dissertation on vampires the gives the main text a run for it's money when it comes to strangeness, and concludes with what inadvertently doubles as a fitting epitaph for Dracutwig 'a completely senseless undertaking, but they didn't know any better'.

Exposé brought to book

In it's day, Exposé (1976) was a movie sold on the basis of being a star vehicle for 1970s sex symbol Fiona Richmond, but it's lasting notoriety rests on being banned in Britain as a Video Nasty in the mid 1980s.

Unusually this novelisation of Exposé appeared in 1978, two years after the release of the movie. Breaking the mould for movie novelisations, which tended to be released concurrent to the movies they were promoting, serving as a pre-VHS way of keeping taking a movie home with you. I can only think that the novelisations of subsequent Fiona Richmond vehicles Hardcore and Let's Get Laid sold enough copies to warrant going back to her first star vehicle and also novelising Exposé.

Rather than merely transcribe the movie, the book chooses to expand on it, adding back-story and presenting a version of Exposé that is free of the budgetary and censorship constraints that the movie was shackled by. The reason why the book isn't just your standard hack-job novelisation is that it was written by the film's own writer/director James Kenelm Clarke, under the pen name Philip Massinger. The novelisations of Hardcore and Let's Get Laid were also credited to Philip Massinger. However those two books were in fact written by a scriptwriter, whose career was mainly played out on British television, using the Massinger name. When he declined to novelise Exposé, Kenelm Clarke himself stepped in to adapt his own work, and inherited the Philip Massinger name. In later life Kenelm Clarke was critical of his own Exposé screenplay, feeling it needed a few months more worth work, and presumably the novelisation was his way of having a second stab at it. His additions to the plot are a mixed bag of positives and negatives, some add extra dimensions to the story, others are questionable choices. As Exposé is at its core a murder mystery in which various unfortunate characters are stabbed to death at the isolated country home of novelist Paul Martin, was it really wise to include an early scene in the book in which Martin's new secretary Linda Hindstatt packs a knife into her suitcase while en route to Martin's country home. Saying that, I suppose you could counter argue that since the book came out two years after the movie, Kenelm Clarke would have been writing it in the knowledge that the majority of his readership would have seen the movie by this point and therefore there wasn't as much point in concealing the killer's identity. As the book's target audience would have been Fiona Richmond's fanbase -she is on the cover and was still very much the selling point- it is no surprise that the book is geared towards the sexploitation market and seizes the opportunity to be more pornographic than the movie was able to be. However what is surprising is that the additional sexed up content here doesn't really relate to Richmond's character Suzanne -Paul's girlfriend referred to at one point as 'darkly lovely, brainless Suzanne' - and is instead allocated to Paul Martin and his secretary Linda, played by Linda Hayden in the movie. In the first major diversion from the movie, we learn that a few years prior to becoming Paul's secretary, young Linda had visited her aunt and uncle in Saint-Tropez to learn the French language. Only to receive a lesson in the language of love, when she is seduced by an older Frenchman. Curiously one of the most well remembered sexual kinks from the film, Paul wearing plastic gloves during sex, isn't in the book. The Exposé novelisation forgoing plastic gloves in favour of muff shaving, with a graphic description of Linda shaving her genitals prior to her date with the French smoothie, Jacques de Chaumont. The film version of Exposé was partly financed by Paul Raymond, renowned publisher of erotica, owner of the Raymond Revuebar and Richmond's wealthy enabler. Raymond's shadowy influence stretches to the novelisation, which adheres to a very Paul Raymond view of the world, with Linda favouring her older, sophisticated French lover, a Marquis no less, over her inexperienced, uncultured boyfriend Colin. As with Raymond's top shelf publications of the time, the Exposé novelisation prides itself on its open minded, sexual libertine stance. Offering a relaxed attitude towards male bisexuality -Linda's sexual limits are tested when she finds Jacques in bed with his male lover Roger Erskine- and enlightened acknowledgement of female sexual frustration, masturbation and orgasm. In fact the book is practically falling over itself to 'acknowledge' those last three topics 'that night, like no other, Roger and Jacques made Linda come several times, each in a different manner'. The novelisation is also very fond of fellatio, and in another show of sexual frankness has no qualms about depicting male homosexually ('Roger's cock had gently slid itself into the mouth of de Chaumont and the Marquis was sucking on it with lazy passion') with all the same enthusiasm as heterosexuality ('and so it came to pass that the first blow job that Linda ever gave was to the Marquis de Chaumont, and as his sperm spurted into her mouth, she loved every minute of it').
Characters in the book also share Paul Raymond's love of wealth, status symbols and the finer things in life. Paul Martin's Rolls Royce agitating two lower class yobbos who sneeringly refer to Linda as a 'Toffee Nosed Git' and 'Hoity Toity', leading to the witty observation 'if they had been in a Cortina Estate, no one would have afforded them a second glance'. Poor Karl Howman, who in the film suffered the indignity of playing a character called 'small youth', here suffers the further indignity of having his character continuously described as having a pumpkin like head. Talk about giving a man a complex! So rather than being called Small Youth in the book he is instead referred to as ‘Pumpkin-head’.  A name that now conjures up images of the Pumpkinhead creature from the horror movie series, rather than the bloke from Brush Strokes.

Just when you think the book is starting to align with the plot of the movie, we then go off on another tangent, as the Roger Erskine story resumes with him trying to make a career for himself as a writer in the cut throat world of Hollywood. Struggling to make ends meet and living in a seedy Sunset Boulevard motel, Roger finds himself having to throw some sex in the direction of Miss Cavendish, a rich, older, married TV executive with the power to make or break the young writer's career. At which point the novelisation resembles a hybrid of Paul Morrissey's Heat and a book by Jackie Collins, right down to some Collins-esque name dropping 'she reminded him of a more wanton Angie Dickinson'. Anyone familiar with the movie version of Exposé will be royally baffled at this point as to why the book is diverting so strongly from it, in order to focus on a seemingly minor and insignificant character as Roger Erskine. Just when it appears the book has lost its way, Kenelm Clarke pulls a blinder and steers it strongly back on course by dropping the bombshell that Roger Erskine is in fact Paul Martin. Erskine having adopted the Paul Martin name when the deal with Cavendish went south and desperation lead him to steal another writer's work. It is tempting to speculate whether the experience of directing a gay actor, Udo Kier, in the role of Paul Martin for the movie, motivated Kenelm Clarke to make the character bi-sexual in the book. Whereas in the film, Paul's heterosexuality is never called into question, in the book even the straight sex that Paul gets up to has homoerotic connotations. After being fellated by Suzanne, Paul notes 'the strange sensation as, now, when kissing her mouth, he tasted the unmistakable memory of his own sex'. Whilst having to put out to Miss Cavendish, Paul consoles himself with the observation that she possesses 'firm, almost boyish buttocks'.

The problem with the extended back stories of Paul and Linda is that, perplexingly, Kenelm Clarke makes little of the incident that pits one of these characters against the other: the suicide of Linda's husband Simon Hindstatt, due to Roger/Paul stealing Simon's novel and passing it off as his own. We learn much about Linda's life in New York, becoming accustomed to the big apple, finding work as a secretary, mixing with the New York elite, none of which is terribly interesting. However, the more significant part of Linda's story....her marriage to Simon, his alcoholism, his work being stolen and his suicide ...is all over in about five sentences. By glossing over the death of her husband, Kenelm Clarke misses the chance to really explore Linda's descent into depression and insanity that would have explained her transformation from easy going English rose to revenge fuelled, cold blooded murderess. Paul's back-story in Hollywood and his relationship with Miss Cavendish feels equally superfluous, other than as an early example of the themes of sex and power that is more strongly conveyed in the novelisation than the film. Cavendish uses her position in the TV world to demand sex from Paul, when he tries to dominate her during sex, she turns on him, dashing his chances of a Hollywood career. After he becomes rich and famous, Paul begins to cruelly treat women as he was once treated by Miss Cavendish, using them for sex then wanting little else to do with them. An attitude that comes back to haunt him in the form of Linda, who he views a potential conquest that he'll eventually become bored with. When she refuses his advances, an ego hurt Paul becomes the weak one, sinking into alcoholism and paranoia. Linda's seduction of his girlfriend Suzanne, which comes across as rather random and gratuitous in the film, takes on greater significance when you're privy to the knowledge that she is essentially doing unto him what he once did unto her. Just as he once posed a homosexual threat to her relationship with Jacques, she now poses a homosexual threat to his relationship to Suzanne. Paul attempts to reassert his power and masculinity by dragging Suzanne away "he would complete this rape with bestial urgency''. Only for Linda to match his actions by later getting rough with the much abused Suzanne, taking on Paul's role by violating her with a strap on...Linda really did think to pack everything. In the ultimate reversal of the power dynamic, Paul dictates his lousy paperback to Linda, only for her to refuse to transcribe his words and humiliates him by instead typing out her own, superior text. Having emasculated him as a man, by stealing his girlfriend away from him, Linda then further emasculates him as an author, by stealing his book away from him.

There is a meta aspect to the Exposé novelisation in that it is a pornographically minded book about an author attempting to write a pornographically minded book, only for the blue prose to refuse to flow. Where I think Kenelm Clarke tries to have his cake and eat it is by parodying bad sex in literature within a book that itself aims to titillate. In that respect, the Exposé novelisation runs the risk of being an example of what it sets out to make fun of. Truth be told there is an extremely blurry line between the cringe worthy nonsense that Paul dictates to Linda ('Then Angus' tongue started it's slow exploration, comma, darting there, comma, playing Anna like a virtuoso with a Stradivarius') and the book's own genuine attempts at arousing material ('She climbed up into a sitting position and sat, gently on his face. He was aware of her scented loins, descending on to his mouth and nose, of how good they smelt, her vagina, her anus').

The film version of Exposé has always been something of a square peg in the round hole of British sexploitation, walking against the crowd by being a straight thriller that wasn't afraid to mix sex with violence in an era when smutty comedy was the norm. If anything the novelisation is even more of a greater abnormality, the additional graphic sex, scenes of male homosexually and decadent globetrotting making it seem more like an adaptation of a nonexistent Radley Metzger film than anything from British sexploitation cinema. For sure the novel is a different beast from the movie, but while this might have caused confusion at the time from people expecting a straightforward, no frills novelisation, in the long term Kenelm Clarke going the extra mile works in its benefit. In book form Exposé now contains everything that people seeking out novelisations tend to look for these days, additional characterization; backstory and answers to questions that the film doesn't provide...just don't go expecting to find out why Paul wears plastic gloves during sex. If you've any interest in the movie, the novelisation is well worth seeking out, since if you've only seen Exposé in movie form, then you've only really seen half of the story Kenelm Clarke wanted to tell, the other half is in this book. Chances are though that the only way you'll be able to experience the book these days is as a PDF which can be found in the shady corners of the internet...if you know, you know... physical copies have been known to fetch the kind of prices that only those with a Paul Raymond sized bank balance could justify paying. The now prohibitively expensive price of the book likely due to the fact that it belongs to that rare breed of novels based on films that ended up on the 'final 39' Video Nasty list. An exclusive club that includes Herschell Gordon Lewis' novelisation of Blood Feast, recent novelisations of Night of the Demon and Mardi Gras Massacre by Brad Carter, and Love Camp 7, which was novelised in 1970 by Harry Burns as Sex Camp 7. Presumably the original title of that movie being too subtle for the sex paperback market.

Speaking of re-titlings, one of the main giveaways that Kenelm Clarke was the author of this book is the constant references to the main location as 'The House on Straw Hill'. Which if you didn't know, was Kenelm Clarke's original and preferred title for the movie, Exposé being a title that was forced on it by a distributor. All these years later, history has favoured Kenelm Clarke. What with The House on Straw Hill becoming the more common and popular title for the film, with few ever referring to it as Exposé anymore. Given that the novelisation breaks with the claustrophobic, singular setting of the movie and whisks characters off to Saint Tropez, New York and Hollywood, it could perhaps be dubbed...Beyond the Valley of The House on Straw Hill.

The Bornless Keeper (1974, Gordon Williams)

 

In-between writing The Siege of Trencher's Farm -the source novel for Straw Dogs- and teaming up with footballer Terry Venables to write the Hazell series of private detective novels, author Gordon Williams made a one-shot stab at folk horror with 1974's The Bornless Keeper.

Peacock Island, owned by the rich, reclusive Bennett Family, is the subject of a curse that has kept the residents of the nearby village of Mundham at bay for decades. "Tread ye on this sacred dell, The Bornless Keeper ye shall see, pointing the road to hell". When Lady Bennett, the last of her line, dies of natural causes, and her corpse is cannibalized by rats, the authorities discover that the Bornless Keeper, a part man, part bird creature protecting the island from intruders, might be more than just an urban myth. Looking for a scoop, a crass TV crew trespasses onto the island, intent on making a documentary about the Bornless Keeper, only to be picked off one by one by the feathered fiend, who has a penchant for slashing throats and plucking out eyeballs.

If you think the horror novels of John Halkin had an axe to grind with the TV industry, then Gordon Williams wants you to hold his beer. Williams' TV crew are a cutthroat, backstabbing bunch. Cameraman Puggy Elder, might be the closest thing to a decent member of the team, but even he is willing to potentially lose his wife and children over his silly infatuation with Victoria Dryden-Chambers, an emotionally frigid career woman with a cruel streak. Victoria has been recently made executive producer of the TV company, and is very much flying the flag for women's lib, bringing her into conflict with underling producer Julian Maltravers, an acid tongued, chauvinistic dandy who thinks her job should have been his. Williams' characters are unlikable, but never uninteresting; conflicts between Victoria and Julian drive the narrative, while their bitchy, verbal punching matches animate it. Puggy might be a 'love-sick, middle aged dope' when it comes to Victoria, but she has her eyes wickedly set on Julian, if only because seducing him would give her power over him. 'You'll weaken Julian, oh yes you will' she tells herself whilst admiring her own nude body in a mirror 'then we'll see who does the mocking'. When Victoria successfully stirs the long dormant heterosexuality in the camp Julian, it leads to the hilarious line "it was a long time since he had thought about breasts".

Nearly all the major characters in the book have their guards up, emotionally speaking, provoking hostility in others, who resent what they can't understand. Victor Daniels, a detective inspector who has moved to Mundham from London, is viewed with suspicion by locals and even co-workers who speculate amongst themselves that his decampment was the result of police corruption, cowardliness or loss of nerve. While Maltravers' aversion to women, and apparent homosexually, turns out to have been the result of a childhood sexual assault by a predatory woman. Leading Julian to confront Victoria with "what do women's libbers say about the possibility of rape by a woman? By a much older woman on a frightened boy?". Sexual trauma is something of a reoccurring theme here, Victoria's lack of interest in men, and unwillingness to jump into bed with them is born out of being sexually abused by her uncle. Daniels' investigation also leads him to an uncouth old lag called Sidney Marley who narrowly survived an attack by the Bornless Keeper in the 1950s, and is now rumoured to be in an incestuous relationship with his own daughter 'Daniels found himself making a mental note of the man's interest in children'. While reading this part of the book, I couldn't help think of Arthur Mullard playing this role in a film version of The Bornless Keeper, but can't decide if this was down to Mullard matching Williams' description of the character, or whether disturbing, posthumous rumours about Mullard were the reason for that imaginary piece of casting. When it comes to this book, you don't have to be sexually messed up to be a character in it...but it helps. Somehow also figuring within it's pages is an Irish dwarf, whose schizophrenia sometimes causes him to believe he is own, dead, puritanical mother...a subject matter handled with all the sensitivity you'd expect from the 1970s.

The Bornless Keeper is the type of book that gives off a Wicker Man type vibe upon approaching it, although after reading it, and knowing all it's secrets, you'd be more inclined to cite 'Tower of Evil' as a more accurate British horror film comparison. Like Tower of Evil, The Bornless Keeper could lay the slightest of claim for providing the blueprint for the slasher genre to come.
The spectre of The Siege of Trencher's Farm, and Straw Dogs, also looms over The Bornless Keeper. There's conflict arising from the new world intruding on the old one. Daniels is very much the David Sumner of the book, an outsider, disliked and distrusted by the locals who call his masculinity into question. Daniels attempts to bury himself away in a 'peaceful' setting, only to find himself having to confront the violent side of his nature that he thought he'd left behind in the big city. The Bornless Keeper, when he is eventually revealed, is akin to the Henry Niles character in The Siege of Trencher's Farm/Straw Dogs.... a confused, pitiful figure, without the capacity to understand his own violent actions. There seems to have been little love loss between Williams and Straw Dogs' director Sam Peckinpah. The latter referred to The Siege of Trencher's Farm as a 'rotten book' and Williams publically denounced Peckinpah's film of his novel, particularly the rape scene, which isn't in the original book. Surprisingly then that Williams provides an almost identical rape scene in The Bornless Keeper which begins with "oh no, please don't, please, oh no" and ends with "don't stop, don't stop". If anything the rape in The Bornless Keeper is even more troubling than the one in Straw Dogs. What with the victim initially play acting consent out of self-preservation 'telling herself over and over again she was doing this to save her life, she began to coil her legs round his hard body' only to then begin to get authentically turned on by it, and ending with her feeling physically, and possibly even emotionally, attracted to her rapist. There's also the implication that the rape helps the victim overcome the trauma of an earlier sexual assault, according to this book, two rapes do make a right.

Perhaps because of this graphic scene, or perhaps because it invites comparisons with the Peckinpah adaptation of his earlier work, Williams used the pen name 'P.B. Yuill' for the The Bornless Keeper. The author biography in the hardback edition merely stating 'P.B. Yuill is a pseudonym. The author doesn't want his real identity disclosed'. A few years later, Williams would resurrect the Yuill name, using it as a joint pseudonym for himself and Terry Venables, when they were co-writing the Hazell novels. Much as I like the idea of Terry Venables co-writing a folk horror novel, all evidence however points to The Bornless Keeper being entirely written by Williams.

For an author whose work- the Siege of Trencher's Farm excepted- was mainly played out in an urban environment, Williams has a real talent, and seemingly affection, for a location that has truly been taken back by nature. Peacock Island is a dark fairy tale land of brambles, thorns, spider’s webs, decaying cottages and harsh woodlands. There is possibly an overkill when it comes to descriptions of the great, but sinister outdoors in the book, you feel like you should be getting green fingers from turning the pages over, but it's a wonderfully atmospheric read, of that there can be no doubt. Inadvertently adding to the experience is the fact that my copy, an ex-library one last hired out in February 1979, has this old, damp smell to it, with a slight aroma of sea air, as if it's been locked in an attic like a mad relative for the last forty years. Which feels exactly how a book such as this should smell, whenever I open it, that smell hits me, immersing me in all things folk horror and what I like to call 'odour de Bornless Keeper'.

 

An Iowa Inferno (1975)

Now on YouTube, we discuss 'An Iowa Inferno: An Erotic Story of Forbidden Lust' (1975) a charming book about incest, bikers, sex with Cthulhu and a woman's unhealthy obsession with Richard Nixon. Clive and Nick talk about the book, I mostly cry with laughter.

Lord Mr Ford- a 1976 interview with Derek Ford

A rare interview with British sex film director Derek Ford, published in the french magazine 'Sex Stars System' in 1976, and here translated (occasionally awkwardly) into English for the first time.

This is the first time that Derek Ford, an English filmmaker, has been interviewed by a French newspaper. I went to London for a multi-hour interview with Ford, whose latest film, "Sex Express," is currently playing in Paris.
Ford's films are comedies in the purest British tradition of "The Lavender Hill Mob" or "The Knack," but seasoned with modern eroticism. Imagine "Kind Hearts and Coronets" or "Whiskey Galore" with a hardcore twist, and you have "Sexplorer" and "Sex Express."

S.S. Can you tell us how you got your start in film? Have you made films for television?

D.F. Yes, but I started with radio. I wrote plays for the wireless. when I was seventeen. After my military service, I decided to pursue a career in film. Since I was an accountant, I was put in the accounting department. But I wanted to be in production. I got a job as a clackman (at twenty-five, I must have been the oldest clackman in the studios). Then I did a bit of everything—boom operator, assistant cameraman, assistant grip, assistant director before becoming production manager and finally director. My first film was partly shot in Paris, but the most extraordinary was my second. I had a crew of Swedish technicians and the actors were Spanish. Completely opposite temperaments, with constant arguments, me as referee. I almost had a nervous breakdown, and for a while, I got fed up with directing films. I started writing screenplays again...

S.S. Not for long. You started again in 1968...

D.F. In 1968, I created my own company, in which I was both director and producer.

S.S. Censorship, whether during filming or editing, do you think about it?

D.F. Censorship exists in England, and so you have to accept it. When I make a film, I have certain responsibilities towards my shareholders who have invested funds in the company. But my films aren't only intended for the English market. There's France, the United States, etc., and if certain scenes have to be highly erotic, I shoot them anyway.
As for France, I can say that we in England sensed, even before the French producers, that censorship controls would be abolished.
That's why we had prepared a hardcore film for the French market, which was ready when the right time came.

S.S. What was the title of this?

D.F. "Keep It Up Jack" The film was shot in England for the French and American markets. It was a success. The film was also screened in London, but the French version was 25 minutes longer.

S.S. Do French films have to be cut when they're screened in England too?

D.F. Yes, foreign films are censored in England, but that's not the case for mine.
I shoot a scene by adding an erotic piece for a foreign country. A hardcore scene in one of my films is an integral part of the sequence. For example, in "Sex Express," I shot two completely different scenes, one for France and the other for England. The French version of "Sex Express" cannot be seen in England, at least for the moment.

S.S. - Tell us about your actresses. When you're preparing a film, do you immediately think of a certain actress?

D.F. - Sometimes during the shooting of my films, I think that I'm the one creating the star, and once the film is finished, she disappears. This is because every time I sit down and write a script, the actress I needed (and we've always had very good actresses in our films) has, as if by magic, turned up ready-made. This is exactly what happened, for example, with Heather Deeley (the star of "Sex Express"). Often the girls I choose don't have much film experience and have only played a few supporting roles. What do I look for in an actress? It's simple.
Naturalness and intelligence. I can't stand silly women. And another thing: I would never give a role to a woman I wouldn't invite to dinner with out on the town. So I impose my tastes. And I would never star in one of my films a girl I wouldn't want to be seen with in public.

S.S. Are your scripts very precise? How much room do you give to improvisation?

D.F. I almost always write my scripts myself and don't improvise afterward.

S.S. What do you prefer to film: a classic love scene, a scene between two girls, or an orgy?

D.F. No preference. I'm only concerned with the success of the scene, which must be sensual and erotic, but also intelligent and have its place in the dramatic structure of the script. I don't have a preference because the end of each scene is dictated, so to speak, by my personal dynamism. Everything follows, and when I'm shooting, I don't want to have relationships with the actresses. I want to remain calm and offstage. So I can't have a preference. I always put myself in the audience's shoes and do my best to excite them. To do that, I have to remain cool and detached.

S.S. And politics? Do you take that into consideration when you're filming? I think, for example, that Pasolini's films contained quite intense erotic scenes, but also left-wing politics.

D.F. No politics! I don't think politics can have a place in my films. My only policy, if you can call it political, is to never distort the truth. I mean, I try to tell a story the way I think it should be told. If it turns out to be politically right, left, or center, I don't care, as long as it's true. Obviously, you can't always avoid politics because politics is life, and cinema is precisely about life. I said that you should never distort the truth, and this naturally applies to scenes of love and eroticism. You should never distort sexuality.

S.S. What is your favorite of your films?

D.F. It's a difficult question because I have preferences for certain scenes in almost every script I've shot, while I don't find any of my films perfect. Currently, I prefer the film I'm currently shooting.

S.S. And directors? Do you have a favorite director?

D.F. I'll tell you a story about Just Jaeckin, the director of "Emmanuelle" and "The Story of O." I tried to buy the rights to film "The Story of O" in 1968.
I didn't succeed because I looked for the money here in London. It wasn't the right time or place. I saw "Emmanuelle" and I must say that, except for a few scenes, I found it average. Then I went specially to Paris to see "The Story of O," which hasn't yet been shown here in London. Since I really wanted to make this film myself, I was prejudiced against the one who had succeeded where I had failed, and, moreover, I knew that it was fashionable in Paris to disparage this film and that the critics hadn't been very kind to Jaeckin. Well, I found "The Story of O" a very great film. It's magnificent, and I have a lot of admiration for Just Jaeckin. I think he did a very, very good job because the book is very difficult to film. I know this because I spent about six months racking my brains over this problem. Maybe I found that, which is also what Pauline Réage, or whoever wrote "Story of O," did. The book doesn't contain objective descriptions of sadism. All of that is left to the reader's imagination. You're presented with a situation and left to your imagination to fill in the details. In my opinion, Just Jaeckin paid the same compliment to his viewers.
The film was so good because I was aware of all the problems Jaeckin had to solve.

S.S. He told me, when I interviewed him, that it was a love story.

D.F. That's right. I think Just Jaeckin and I are the only two people in the world who understand "Story of O." Of course, it's a love story that has nothing to do with sadism. I wrote this in 1968 in a report I wrote for some producers I was trying to interest in the book. It's a love letter addressed to an imaginary lover. If the lover isn't imaginary, he's a very lucky man. Just Jaeckin understood my heroine; he understood that it's not a tragic story. I said the book was a love letter. But it's very difficult to make a film out of a love letter, first of all because the director is obliged to concretize a fantasy. Indeed, there is no objective description of the characters in The Story of O. I know this because I spent a lot of time looking for a description of O. But, no, you have to imagine her. And as soon as you add flesh and bones to a creature of the imagination, you disappoint most people who had imagined her differently. Because the ideal woman, for one person, can be black and tall, 5'7", and for another person she can be tall, 5'11", and blonde. The critics didn't understand any of this at first, I imagine, because they didn't even bother to read the book....

S.S. They said the film was insignificant... Not enough violence, torture...

D.F. Listen to me. If Just Jaeckin had made a film like that, he would have addressed five percent of the world's population, and the other 95 percent would have taken his work as the ramblings of a madman. Instead, he addressed the same audience Pauline Réage had chosen and resolved the various problems admirably. If I'm the only one who thinks Just Jaeckin made a great film, then I hope someone will tell him.

S.S. What's the relationship between your private and professional life?

D.F. None. I have only one life, and I spend most of it making films, preparing for filming, or resting after finishing a film. All my time is taken up by cinema. My wife works with me, and even my children are interested in my films.

S.S. Do you think that today, in the midst of the pornographic trend, a striptease can still play an interesting erotic role?

D.F. But how! Even something that's much less erotic than a striptease. A good director can create a very erotic scene with two people looking at each other from one side of the table to the other. To think otherwise is to forget that there were very erotic films long before the arrival of pornography. In theater, since the Greeks, there have often been very erotic situations without resorting to pornographic realism. To say that you can't create something very sensual without resorting to hard core is to say that ballet can't be erotic when we know that often the opposite is true. But there has never been a hard core ballet. At least, I've never seen it. I would like to make a film of a ballet because I think that ballet is one of the most erotic shows you can see.

S.S. And you'll put hardcore in it?

D.F. Of course, if necessary. The difficulty is that in England, no one wants anything to do with short films.
Otherwise, I would have loved to make a twenty-minute film of a ballet. My wife, Valerie, is a ballet dancer, and we even wrote a screenplay about it together. But there's no market...

S.S. Maybe in France.

D.F. Our screenplay is called "The Orgy." Can you imagine a film about ballet like the classic "Red Shoes" shot without false modesty?

S.S. What are your tastes, your hobbies in life, outside of cinema?

D.F. Like shrimp fishing? No, no. I am completely absorbed in cinema and have no other interests except, of course, my family.

S.S. But then, if you had to stop making films, what would you do?

D.F. I don't know. I could write screenplays like I used to. But assuming the film and television industries ceased to exist tomorrow, I don't know what I would do. I suppose I could write a novel. In fact, I'd like to write a novel, but I've always been too taken up with cinema to do so.

S.S. Would you like to tell us about your plans?

D.F. I start shooting my new film here in England in January. It will be something new, something different. Indeed, the film will examine the relationship between a seventeen-year-old boy and a call girl ten years his senior.

S.S. Like Chéri, by Colette. If only in the novel the woman was a fifty-year-old hen and not a twenty-eight-year-old girl...

D.F. No, no. My story is completely different. It's modern and belongs to 1976.

S.S. Its title?

D.F. "Games."

S.S. When will the film be finished?

D.F. - I hope in May to be presented at the Cannes Film Festival. Then it will be dubbed into French and will be available to Parisian audiences in the fall.

S.S. Are all your films dubbed in French or only some?

D.F. No, no. They're all dubbed in French. I don't want subtitles.

S.S. And after "Games"?

D.F. In May 1976, I'll be leaving for Turkey to shoot a film there. This film will be called "A Turquoise Garden." It is also a psychological film—a study of the relationship between two women and a man. The two women fighting over the man are his own daughter and his second wife. You may have noticed that women always play an important role in all my films. I believe this is one of the reasons for their success. In so many films today, the woman has a secondary role, with the two heroes fighting over her in close-up...

S.S. That's true. And yet in the great classical plays, in Shakespeare, for example, women had very important roles.

D.F. As for erotic films, especially here in England, the woman is merely an "object," as the members of the Women's Liberation Movement say. You currently have on the screens "Confessions of a Window Cleaner", "Adventures of a Taxi Driver" and so on. It's always a story about a man who sleeps with ten women. I think this happens because producers think that a film with only one woman would be boring... If they really believe this, it means that their own wife, the one they live with, bores them. I, on the contrary, believe that the relationship between a man and a woman must always be alive. So an erotic film with a woman in the foreground isn't just good politics, it's also very profitable economically. After all, if a man asks a woman to accompany him to the movies, she'll be the one choosing the show. And women like my films because I give them intelligent roles.

S.S. You were saying that, generally, erotic films are aimed at men and that they feature robust actors making love in every way and in every imaginable position... Can we consider making a pornographic film for women?

D.F. A simple "sex object" can be thoroughly examined, and she becomes very interesting. I'm never afraid to have a single woman in my films and tell the story of her sexual adventures instead of the sexual adventures of a man with a dozen cardboard women.

S.S. It seems that producers of erotic films are aimed at a male audience and think that women aren't interested in eroticism... But is that true? After all, women make up fifty percent of the world's population.

D.F. Women are interested in eroticism, even if they don't make up fifty percent of the audience for erotic cinema.

S.S. I conducted a survey on this subject here and in France.
Women often visit erotic films with their husbands or boyfriends.
They're happy to go if the film is serious with a woman playing an interesting and leading role, not that of a doll who is there to allow men to demonstrate their sexual prowess.

D.F. Of course, but it won't be simply the same thing as for men; I mean, a woman making love in all positions with a dozen men. Eroticism in women depends much more on the realm of imagination, and therefore they want to see an intelligent woman on screen with whom they can identify. If they see a call girl on screen, they will identify with her. That's why "Story of O" is a film about women in search of sensations. All women identify with "O." And I say that if my films are successful with women, it's because they can identify with the star.

S.S. Do women like to dream?

D.F. Dreaming with their eyes open. It's basic psychology. Everyone knows it, but filmmakers often forget it. There are even some basic fantasies among women, such as the knight in armor, or the sheik, who kidnaps the woman, puts her on his horse, and rides off with her. In these intimate dreams, the woman must never be held responsible for what happens to her. She must be taken by force, raped, by a man stronger than her. This allows her to believe that whatever happens to her can never be blamed on her. You know the story told about the German advance in France during the war of 1870. In a certain village, the women shuddered as they heard the terrible stories of rape by enemy soldiers and wondered what they would have done in a similar situation. Finally, the village was taken by the Germans, but they, more interested in pursuing the enemy than sleeping with their wives, continued their advance. The women, alone and disappointed, complained because they had been told stories of rape that weren't true...

S.S. This is, in essence, the story of "The Heroic Fair" by Jacques Feyder. When the Spanish advanced on a small town in the Netherlands in the 16th century, the good bourgeois were terrified of losing their property and their lives, while their wives shuddered with pleasure at the thought of being raped.

D.F. - Yes, but women don't want rape—rape is a horrible thing in life. They want it in their imagination. That's how a woman will go to the movies and identify with the heroine and her suffering and pleasures. She'll go to see an erotic film, if it's well done, and she'll identify with a whore, a fickle woman making love to her lover in front of her husband, or with an innocent, defenseless young girl raped by a brute. If this kind of film is made with taste and intelligence, the director can even spice it up with hardcore material, the woman won't be offended. On the contrary, it will help her imagination, her fantasy.
But I say that the simply dirty film, the sex film, is over. The same thing happened in America and France. All censorship was abolished, and for a few months, audiences flocked to theaters to see anything as long as it involved buttocks. But not anymore. Today, American audiences only go to see erotic films if they are well-conceived and well-directed. That's what I try to do, while giving the woman an interesting role, and if I've had some success, I don't think I'm flattering myself by saying it's due to observing these few rules.

 

Psycho Sex Dolls (2025)

One for fans of cheerfully rude British cinema .... we're talking Sex Lives of the Potato Men level here...as washed up, coke snorting adult video director Damien Self (Simon Weir) and his even more obnoxious producer James Steel (Kieran Chalker) attempt to turn around the fortune of their failing porno operation by replacing flesh and blood porn stars with three sex robots. Only for the sexbots to start thinking for themselves and turn against their chauvinistic owners. 

Smutty, bloke humour is the order of the day here, but it also rubs shoulders with flashes of surprisingly satirical commentary on A.I., the metoo movement and female body image. The film hides it well, but there is a brain here. Making this, in it's smarter moments, a micro-budgeted, Brit variation on The Substance, albeit had that film made the Dennis Quaid character the centre of attention. It's similarly visually hyperactive and in your face, with the downfall of it's train wreck of a protagonist being played out within a confined, claustrophobic setting. The film's concerns about A.I.'s potential dominance of the movie industry- the sexbots quickly master film editing and scriptwriting- and identity thief -Damien models one of the sexbots on his porn star ex-girlfriend- feels particularly topical. Damien's realisation that in terms of being stripped of any artistic integrity and being answerable to unscrupulous masters, he's every bit a machine as the sexbots, leads to a surprisingly redemptive coda. My only gripe with the film is the CGI bloodshed, I just don't think the technology is quite there yet to accurately replicate flowing liquid, resulting in spurting blood having an awkward animated look. Low budget filmmaking's current favouring of this seems doubly baffling given that a bottle of old fashioned stage blood isn't exactly the price of caviar these days. Still as this is hardly a gorefest, the violence in the film being limited to only a few brief seconds, this is only a slight irritation, and these sexy but deadly dolls are well worth a look. The amount of female nudity in the film indicating that along with recent efforts like Graphic Designs, Dirty Work, Dirty Games and Darker Shades of Summer, low-budget British filmmaking has got it's sexploitation groove back. Elsewhere Kieran Chalker brings some sweary, geezer gangster energy to Psycho Sex Dolls, as you might expect from someone who has been in a few Rise of the Footsoldier movies, and Simon Weir gives a debauched tour-de-force as a character who seems to be equal parts Ben Dover and Charlie Endell (esquire). 

As far as recent movies about sexbots go, Psycho Sex Dolls is more ambitious than Gerard Daly's V1200 (2019) and sexier than Louisa Warren's Cyberbride (2019). On a personal note, I was somewhat amused that Damien Self opted to give one of the sexbots a Manchester accent, as a Mancunian I'd never considered our accent the type to get men cumming in their pants, we should be flattered, i guess.

Bannerman (1974, Charlie Chester)

 

Another stab at literature from comedian Charlie Chester, Bannerman gives new meaning to the term 'multi-genred' beginning in yob lit territory, suddenly becoming about boxing, then managing to work in wife swapping before becoming a war novel...and that's only in the initial fifty pages of this thing. If you're looking for evidence of Charlie Chester being a dirty old man, you've also come to the right place, we're barely off page one before he's banging on about schoolgirls... be in no doubt, Mister Chester likes his little girls in socks.

The book lead me to the still unsolved mystery of how Bannerman relates to Chester's earlier novel Bannerman Amen (1972), if it does at all. There's evidence throughout Bannerman of it being a sequel novel with lots of references to the protagonist Mick Bannerman being a chip off the old block, his father's son, just like his father etc, etc...giving the impression that the exploits of Bannerman senior is something we should all be familiar with. Logically then you'd think that Bannerman Amen documented the story of Bannerman's father and this is Chester's 'Son of Bannerman' follow up. However, it appears that the main character in Bannerman Amen was called Vince Bannerman whereas Bannerman's father in this book is called Ben Bannerman. My theory is that Chester intended this as a sequel to Bannerman Amen, only for this idea to be nixed by New English Library who wouldn't have wanted to give Bannerman Amen any free publicity, since it was put out by another publisher and its existence worked against NEL's attempts to portray Bannerman as Chester's debut fictional novel. The back cover blurb claiming 'with Bannerman, Charlie Chester - an international star of entertainment -can now add novelist to his long list of talents'.

Chester's fame might have been a major selling point for the book, but he leaves his family friendly reputation at the door with Bannerman. The opening chapter finding the teenage Mick Bannerman being overcome with lust for a girl from his school, to the extent that he decides to rape her. 'It wasn't his fault that her long blonde silky hair, and her milky white skin with those delicate rosy cheeks had been driving him crazy with yearning for her'. The meticulous planning that goes into the rape and the explicit description of its execution leaves you with the uncomfortable feeling of being in the company of an author who was getting off on sexualizing a young girl and her rape 'with vicious thrusts he seemed to be severing her in two'. The narrative then turns its attention to Jimmy Wall, 'Brick' to his friends, a wannabe championship boxer and brother of Bannerman's victim, 'Goldilocks' to her friends. Being told of his sister's rape immediately before getting in the ring, leads Brick to lose control "just imagine what you would do if he was the bloke who raped young Goldilocks" working off his rage on his opponent, accidentally killing the man in the process.

Chester seems to have borrowed from his friend James Moffatt, when it comes to Bannerman reinventing himself as a social climber upon his release from borstal, marrying into money and becoming a successful businessman. Mirroring the storyline of Moffatt's skinhead series, whose protagonist Joe Hawkins went from anti-social menace to city slicker in the first sequel novel 'Suedehead'.

For the first half of the book Chester takes the unorthodox route of telling Bannerman's story entirely through the eyes of others. Namely Brick, presumably to give the book a moral centre, Brick being the type of principled, ethical pugilist who refuses to throw a fight, and suffers because of it. The other character whose rented eyes we see Bannerman through is his well to do wife Cora...for perhaps less moral reasons on Chester's part. Cora's back-story, and transition from girl to woman, allowing Chester the opportunity to return to his jailbait fixations. 'Even as a long legged juvenile, Cora had had something extra. The boys were crazy about her, and since then, nature had weaved it's miracle. The embarrassing little bumps on her chest had long since awakened to life and swelled with majestic feminine pride'. Chester's aversion to a first person narrative doesn't always pay off. As we are denied a firsthand audience with Bannerman himself for the opening half of the book, it's difficult to get much insight into what makes him tick, or how we're meant to feel about him. Were it not for the nasty business with the schoolgirl at the start of the book, Bannerman would come across as a Leslie Phillips type bounder whose crooked schemes and womanizing we might be persuaded to cheer on.

Strangely the point when Bannerman takes centre stage, is the point when the book hits a dull, uninteresting patch from which it never fully recovers. Falling asleep at the wheel during the third act being an unfortunate trait of Chester's books. Bannerman, now into middle age, decides to reinvent himself again as a mastermind behind several daring robberies and ultimately a plan to blackmail an insurance company. The problem with this part of the book is that Bannerman's non-violent, victimless, white collar crimes always entirely go to plan, hitting absolutely no hitches whatsoever, and thus generating little suspense or excitement.

The book only jump starts back to life, and reverts to its sleaze origins, when Bannerman seduces Margaret Sanderson, a prim and proper secretary, in order to extract information about the insurance company she works for. Even when the sex is consensual in Chester's books, it tends to be of the brutish and aggressive variety. That's how CC's women like it, "Ohhh god yes, hurt me" begs Sanderson. For an apparent lothario though, Bannerman is surprisingly uninspired when it comes to sexy time chat, repeating "Maggie, you're so lovely" to her over and over, then after their relationship has been consummated adding "my god, that was beautiful and quite a surprise in a way". Compare and contrast with Bannerman's swinger pal Max, who appears to have snapped up Chester's best bedroom chat up lines. "I'm a hunter, a confessed bull" he tells Cora, who also turns out to like it rough, crying out "That's it, make me pay, oh more, MORE, MAKE ME PAY".

Rumour has it that Chester 'wrote' his NEL books by dictating them in their entirety to his secretary, straight off the top of his head. Meaning that what you are reading is essentially straight from Chester's mind and onto the printed page, with very little by way of rewriting or editing. Terrible I know, but I can't help but be amused by the idea of a woman going to work as a secretary to Charlie Chester, no doubt expecting an atmosphere of music hall gayety, only to find herself typing out things like "if there's one way of getting a fire quicker than rubbing two sticks together, it's rubbing between a wife and a part time pussy". Chester's making-it-up-as-he-went-along approach lends the book an unpredictability. Say what you will about Bannerman but it's impossible to second guess where it's going, and it can feel like a completely different book to the one you were reading half an hour before. Bannerman is like getting lost in Charlie Chester's brain without a map, CC's grey matter being populated by sexy schoolgirls, Masai warriors, wife swappers, a phony reverend and homing pigeons, all of whom figure in Bannerman's storyline...somehow. However, while I have enjoyed other Chester books like Even the Rainbow's Bent and Symphony & Psychopath, the lacklustre third act means that this one was a step down for me. Bannerman is less a case of Bannerman Amen, and more Bannerman A-Mess.