The Sex Victims (1973)

 

The Sex Victims has always been a source of intrigue for British exploitation film fans, due to a plot synopsis that promised a mix of sex and horror, the presence of sexploitation starlets Jane Cardew and Felicity Devonshire, and a pre-fame appearance by acclaimed actor Alun Armstrong.  It was one of many featurette length, support features made by the Fancey family in order to exploit the Eady Levy Tax.  The Fanceys would commission a low-budget short, then double-bill it with a feature length film they’d bought in from overseas. A situation that would qualify the Fanceys for Eady money, a tax system set up by the government to support the British film industry.  The Fanceys originally opened The Sex Victims as the co-feature to the French import ‘She Should Have Stayed in Bed’ starring Sandra Jullien, before bouncing it around fleapit cinemas throughout the 1970s, sometimes on a Fancey triple-bill with The Games That Lovers Play and A Lustful Lady.

After its theatrical run, the film disappeared for decades before turning up- with little fanfare- on the BFI Player in 2017.  An unexpected surprise to about the dozen or so people who’d heard of the film, but realistically never expected to see it.  As someone remarked back then, The Sex Victims plays out onscreen pretty much as you imagined it would in your head: blokes in denim, chicks in mini-skirts, a minimal cast, softcore nudity, the favouring of library music over dialogue.  All the hallmarks of a Fancey cheapie, shot in ‘kick bollocks and scramble’ conditions.

The Sex Victims concerns Jack Piper (Ben Howard), a permanently frowning truck driver with a one track mind.  Jack is also the most short tempered, hot headed character to ever appear in a British exploitation film, he’s a man who alternates between a state of extreme horniness and extreme anger.  Characteristics that bleed over and define the film itself.  Jack is introduced in The Sex Victims pulling a pervy look in the direction of a sassy young thing in a mini-skirt, who then lifts that skirt up to scratch her ass, which is shown in classy close-up.  Fortunately for her, she hops onboard someone else’s truck, declining Jack’s offer of a lift.  An invitation to trouble if ever there was one.  Jack slams the door of his truck in frustration.  All work and no skirt makes Jack a...very pissed off boy.  Jack is driving his truck down a lonely country lane when out of the blue a totally naked woman (Felicity Devonshire) who is riding about on horseback, bolts out in front of him. Causing Jack to steer into a ditch. If a quick flash of buttocks was enough to get Jack hot under the collar at the transport cafe, you can imagine what seeing a totally naked lady on horseback does to him.  “What are you doing...you stupid bitch...running around starkers” Jack yells after her with his trademark mixture of anger and lust.

Inexplicably, Jack decides to take up horse riding, in order to gain the experience needed to sexually pursue Surrey’s answer to Lady Godiva.  Only for his unwanted attention to instead get diverted in the direction of stable owner Miss Heath (Jane Cardew).  Jack’s hypersexual behaviour does lend some much needed laughability to The Sex Victims.  Mere moments after introducing himself to Miss Heath, he takes to futzing about with her riding stick, all but fellating it in front of her, before stroking it in a blatantly masturbatory gesture.  The Jack Piper charm fails to work on Miss Heath though, who is awfully posh, and clearly has him down as a jumped up, bit of rough.  After Heath corrects him, by pointing out that what he calls a crop is actually called a riding stick, he responds by bringing it down on her hand.  Having cast himself as the Mellors to Heath’s Lady Chatterley, you suspect that this relationship isn’t going to end well.  Surprisingly though it doesn’t have any kind of conclusion at all, with Heath being all but forgotten after this scene.  Leaving you to speculate on what happened there, is there footage missing? did time and money run out? Or did actress Jane Cardew jump ship?  Given that The Sex Victims is about an enigmatic, mysterious woman, it is fitting that it co-stars a real life example of one.

Everybody loved Jane Cardew, with leading British sex film directors all queuing up to publically sing her praises. Stanley Long considered her “a girl who’s very serious about her craft”, Derek Ford remarked “she can handle anything, comedy or drama, works very hard and can really relax on set”.  While Pete Walker praised her as “a true professional...one of the very few young actresses around who looks good, acts good, has a marvellous figure and is prepared to do all you ask of her”.  Even so, at the height of her popularity Cardew dropped out of the movie business entirely, and was never heard from again.  Saying that, I’m doubtful there was anything sinister about her disappearance from the scene.  It has always felt like she may have hooked up with a guy who disapproved of her movie career, or that she got married and decided to abruptly sever ties with her past life.  Tellingly, one of her last assignments in the sexploitation field was to model for Mayfair magazine, only to get cold feet about allowing them to use her name.  Forcing them to instead bill her in their pages as ‘Jean Fordwater’, a name that the magazine openly admitted was fake, since they suspected her real identity would already be known to their readership. 

“‘Jean’ has done some acting and if you were to purchase a certain copy of a film magazine you’ll see her in there, in the nude and getting groped.  These pictures were taken from one of those films that keep some of London’s smaller cinemas in the black.  We told ‘Jean’ this, and she still didn’t change her mind. It only seemed to harden her”.

Chances are the film Mayfair was referring to there was Suburban Wives, a likely source of their fake name for her.  Suburban Wives having featured a character called JEAN, been directed by Derek FORD, for blackWATER films.  The other explanation for that name is that Jean is an anagram of JANE, ford is a make of CAR, and DEW is water.  Either way, it’s amazing the amount of thought that Mayfair put into inventing that pseudonym.  “Don’t get the impression that ‘Jean’ is a bitch” added Mayfair “quite often a girl has second thoughts after the pictures have been taken, but they come round in the end”.  Alas, Jane Cardew was not for turning.  The Mayfair pictorial giving her fans one last chance to wave goodbye to her, albeit under an unfamiliar name.

Now proficient enough in the saddle to give chase on horseback, Jack once again sets his sights on the mystery woman on the horse, who is wearing slightly more clothes for her second appearance in the film.  The Sex Victims then plays matchmaker to the sex and horror genres  as Jack chases her around woodlands, first on horseback, then on foot.  The film attempts to play to the horror crowd by providing a suspenseful ‘woman in peril’ scenario, while milking the spectacle of a scantily clad woman being pursued for all its titillating worth.  Seemingly the only reason for Felicity Devonshire’s character to be clothed for her second appearance in the film, being that she can gradually lose them during the chase.  It does make you wonder where they expected audiences’ allegiance to lie.  By rights your concern should be with the woman in peril, yet its Jack rather than her, who we’re more familiar with.  Imagine how different the foot chase in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre would have played if we’d spent the opening act of that film hanging out with Leatherface and Sally Hardesty was unknown to us.  It’s a turn of events made all the more disturbing by the fact that the terrorised woman is played by Felicity Devonshire, a well liked Page 3 girl whose young looks and slender body often saw her cast in teasing, jailbait type roles.  The funniest eulogy for the type of roles Felicity played came in 1973’s Secrets of a Door To Door Salesman “A girl shouldn’t be allowed a body like that until she’s old enough to be trusted with it”.

In keeping with The Sex Victims’ male chauvinist mentality, the victor in this foot chase is rewarded with consensual sex, with Felicity Devonshire’s character rationalising to her wannabe rapist “it can be so much easier with my help”.  A jump cut in her subsequent striptease in front of Jack indicating that a horny projectionist is likely to have made off with a few frames of full frontal nudity at some point.  Never in a million years imagining that this print would one day be released by the BFI, with the incriminating evidence of his thievery intact.

Up until this point The Sex Victims has dropped hints of a supernatural subplot- earlier Jack had met a tramp who warned him about the woods- and it is an aspect the film follows through with its twist ending.  Devonshire asks Jack to return next week and bring his friend George (Alun Armstrong) with him for a threesome.  This he enthusiastically does, egging George on with the promise “she deserves a double thrushing” only to find themselves ambushed by the police, who arrest them for the rape and murder of the girl they expected to meet, who it transpires died at that spot three months ago.  It’s a shocker of an ending with a suggestion of necrophilia, the arresting officer noting that her body was well preserved due to being wrapped in plastic, and Jack vocally protesting that she was alive when they had sex the week before.  Saying that, this isn’t an ending that holds up under close scrutiny.  Are we meant to believe that the police have been staking out the place for three whole months, just on the off-chance that the killers would return to the scene of the crime.  If so, why weren’t they around when Jack was there the week before?  There is the implication that this is a case of mistaken identity, with the police referring to Jack as ‘Charlie’, but if Jack isn’t the killer, why does George break down and confess to the crimes, incriminating Jack as his partner in crime in the process.  These and many other questions no doubt plagued the confused minds of men stumbling out of their local fleapit after watching The Sex Victims way back when.  Don’t go looking for answers from the Fancey family though, who were probably half way to the bank to deposit that Eady money.

On the basis of The Sex Victims, Felicity Devonshire’s reputation as a trouper was well earned.  An accomplished equestrian in real life, her bare assed horse riding here provides The Sex Victims with its most striking imagery, and can be chalked up as yet another example of Devonshire going way beyond the call of duty for a film role.  Others included jumping naked in the sea for What’s Up Nurse, and appearing in the 1977 horror/sex short ‘The Kiss’ despite being heavily pregnant at the time.  A condition that renders her uncharacteristically busty, in what turned out to be her final film role.  Nicknamed ‘Fluff’, or to give her full title Felicity Portia Estelle Devonshire, after leaving acting she went on to become extremely wealthy –due to her involvement in the property sector- breaking the bimbo stereotype associated with Page 3 girls. 

To paraphrase Dr Samuel Johnson, we cannot look into the hearts of men, but their British sex films are open to interpretation.  On the basis of The Sex Victims, director Derek Robbins must have liked ‘em in boots, every female cast member gets into a pair at some point.  Hell, Robbins even has Jack wear boots during his horse riding sessions. It’s safe to assume that Robbins also had a Lady Godiva fetish going on... and those are just the savoury aspects to The Sex Victims.  Robbins is known for few films, including ‘Nasty Nastase’ –a 1974 documentary about tennis player Illie Nastase- and his only other sexploitation credit, the ultra-obscure ‘Sextet’ (1976) which he directed under the Bogey influenced pseudonym ‘Sam Spade’.  If The Sex Victims is a film he was happy to attach his real name to, you do have to wonder what a film he made under a false name must be like.

It’s peculiar that the BFI balked at releasing Take An Easy Ride on disc (“a step too far for the BFI”) but were happy to pull the trigger on The Sex Victims. Since it is difficult to draw a distinction between the two films.  Both capture the atmosphere of a sunny day in 1970s Britain, have their fair share on nostalgia triggering imagery...greasy spoon cafes, now oddly deserted looking motorways etc, etc.  None of which fails to mask the sexually aggressive tone that runs through both those films like an electrical current.  While The Sex Victims’ short time on the BFI player passed without notice, it is fair to say that its appearance on physical media, as part of the BFI’s ‘Short Sharp Shocks’ Blu-Ray release, went down like a lead balloon. Hard to believe, I know, that a film which features a close-op of a woman scratching her bum, portrays attempted rape like a leisurely pursuit, and stars a woman nicknamed ‘Fluff’, didn’t sit well with a modern audience. 

I’ve always held onto the belief that a hitherto impossible to see movie being brought back into circulation can only be a positive...but The Sex Victims sure makes that a difficult case to argue.  Due to the Blu-ray release The Sex Victims has gone from being unknown to being despised, the BFI have had rotten fruit metaphorically thrown in their direction for releasing it, and aside from giving them the opportunity to virtue signal about 1970s attitudes, it looks like the people who bought that disc had a thoroughly rotten time watching it.  Are there any winners there?  Certain films would benefit from certain people remaining blissfully ignorant to their existence.  If nothing else The Sex Victims proves that industrial strength British exploitation cinema and the type of people who buy BFI releases make for uncomfortable bed fellows.

For a less sensitive audience, one more receptive to sleaze, The Sex Victims is a film that lives up to its menacing title.  Whereas Take An Easy Ride wore the false mask of a public information film, The Sex Victims has the initial appearance of an episode of Brian Clemens’ Thriller TV series, before getting lost someplace between sexploitation and a trashy 1970s pulp novel written by an over amped alpha male.  The Sex Victims is like being trapped in Jack’s passenger seat on a sweaty, summer day, forced to listen to his farfetched tales of sexual conquests and male chauvinist rhetoric that the opposite sex is begging for it...and Jack is of course just the man to give it to them.  Spending a mere 40 minutes in his company doesn’t leave you in the mood to pay him many compliments.  Still you have to admit that the almighty kick to the head he gives someone at the end of The Sex Victims is an impressive piece of footwork. Dare I say that Jack would have made a much better football player than he did a rapist.