A Blast of the Ask

Heres “This Space is Reserved for You”
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xksfk6_robin-askwith-this-space-is-reserved-for-you_music


the B-Side to Robin Askwith’s only real stab at the pop charts from 1977. The single charted at 39- despite the fact that his name is spelt wrong (‘Robin Aswith’) on the single itself- leading to the A Side ‘Confessions’ being performed by Askwith on Marc Bolam’s show Marc, as immortalised on Youtube here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAlvVUwfKbU















For more Askwith fun check out this blog about the man and his movies:
http://robinaskwithmoviereviews.blogspot.com/

Howard Nelson in Minder

While watching an episode of Minder on ITV4 recently I was surprised to spot the late, great Howard “Vanderhorn” Nelson pop up as a boxer. The episode “No Way to treat a Daley” was from 1993, so this was a good few years after his last film credit, 1978’s Carry On Emmannuelle, and his 1982 appearance as a spanking milkman in Harrison Marks’ New Janus magazine. However I’m unsure whether this appearance represented a belated return to acting, or whether Howard did more TV extra work in the 1980s and 1990s that has gone under the radar. His character is allocated a name, Bill “Flying Dutchman” Van Dyke, but no dialogue and in terms of screen time its a strictly ‘blink and you’ll miss him’ appearance, or in the context of his role “blink and he’s been knocked out”. 

Review: Wild Lovers (Mary Millington/Mountain Films)

‘Lost’ 8mm films starring Mary Millington might not turn up as regular as buses, but of late they have been appearing with agreeable frequency; what with “Sex Is My Business” surfacing in 2008 and “Special Assignment” turning up in 2009. Now, two years on from Special Assignment, “Wild Lovers” another previously thought lost 8mm short film starring Mary has been traced and transferred to DVD.


This softcore 8mm epic wasn’t made by any of the usual suspects like Harrison Marks or John Lindsay, and its origins proved to be far more obscure and undocumented. While we are sailing into very uncharted cinematic territory here-and a degree of guesswork has had to come into play during my research-a bit of detective work into Wild Lovers has thrown up an intriguing and unlikely connection between Mary Millington and the company that would become the pre-cert video label Mountain Video, as well as Mountain’s own, hitherto unknown, involvement in 1970s pornography.

These days Mountain are best remembered for their video era output, and released a truly eclectic mixture of low-budget horror, concert films, Star Trek episodes and such British sex film milestones as Eskimo Nell and The Wife Swappers onto video during the early 80s. Way before becoming a video label however, Mountain had been a huge player in the 8mm distribution world. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Mountain issued many popular titles on 8mm in the UK, including cut-down films from the RKO back catalogue and vintage Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy comedy shorts. Mountain also had a secretive hand in the 8mm skin flick business, but preferred to keep this side of their output separate from their mainstream releases, and used other company names to sell adult 8mm titles to the general public. Mountain were aka “Elysium” films, but bar a brief period in 1972 when they were calling themselves “Impact Films”, Mountain’s most common company alias was “Unique Films” which was the name they used to advertise in magazines like Continental Film Review and Cinema X. Mountain favoured acquiring their line of adult titles from established 8mm filmmakers rather than to make these films themselves, notably picking up the rights to the Heritage range of 8mm glamour films from Pete Walker when Walker left the 8mm glamour film business behind for a career in feature film directing.


Mountain did occasionally though produce their own material; as was the case in the early 1970s when they commissioned around forty 8mm adult short films that they released under the series title “Impact Double X Home Movies”. This is where Mary Millington enters into the equation, as in her pre-fame days she appeared in least two of the Impact Double X titles, “Wild Lovers” and “Love Games”. Chances are that these two films were not the highest paying gigs of her early career, as Mountain’s miserly budgets for these productions reportedly barely covered the director and cast members’ fees.


When Mountain made the transition from an 8mm film label to a video company in the late 70s, the Impact Double X titles were largely forgotten about in the process. Only three films from the series “Emmanuelle from Bangkok”, “Hot Flesh” (aka The Orgy) and “The Handyman” were committed to video by Mountain Video. Compiled into one 24 minute featurette, those three titles-complete with dubbed on narration- were issued as a video called “Emmanuelle and Friends” by Mountain in 1980. Wild Lovers wasn’t so lucky, and has remained in the pornographic wilderness for over thirty years, that is until now.


Wild Lovers certainly deserves an award for the unlikeliest premise for an 8mm sex film, since the film centres around a game of “spirit of the glass”. The players of the game, which include a bearded guy, Mary, and two other girls, clearly must have made contact with a dirty minded ghost, as the glass wildly moves in all directions, spelling out rude words in the process. Erotically inspired by this, the foursome are soon pairing off and creeping away from the table. Mary and the bearded guy are the first to leave the séance, and rather than feeling an otherworldly presence, just end up feeling each other. In their absence the two remaining girls opt for a spot of lesbian hanky panky over continuing on with the séance. Both couples are however reunited for the film’s grand finale which sees all four cast members humping away in the lounge.



On the basis of Wild Lovers and the films on the Emmanuelle and Friends video, Mountain were exploring similar sexploitation terrain on 8mm that director Derek Ford was pursuing with feature films like The Wife Swappers and Suburban Wives. Suburban settings and the sexploits of frustrated housewives, middle class swingers and au pairs appear to be the hallmarks of the Impact Double X Films. No matter what the premise, whether it be a séance, a card game or even a gardening assignment, all roads lead to group sex in the Impact Double X Films’ world. You half expect The Wife Swappers’ Larry Taylor to pop up in Wild Lovers, modelling a godawful cravat and offering to help Mary prepare a Campari and Lemonade by breaking out a few ice cubes. Visually Wild Lovers is overwhelmingly early 70s in appearance, from the loud décor of the lounge that the majority of the action takes place in, right down to the sole male actor sporting a Joy of Sex beard and the obligatory British sex film Y-Fronts.


The primitive nature of the filmmaking on display also holds its own fascination, since Wild Lovers gives the impression of having been put together by somebody with only the basic knowledge of directing and editing. Jump cuts constantly appear within scenes, shots of actors taking direction are left in, a brief snippet of one scene is accidently spliced into the middle of another, in an almost subliminal fashion. The end credits crudely employ stop motion techniques to spell out “The End” with playing cards. It speaks volumes about Mary’s sex appeal that even in these threadbare surroundings she remains a captivating onscreen presence, straight from the opening sight of her in the film, which is of a close-up of her distinct, bright red painted fingernails. Like Sex Is My Business, Wild Lovers may be something of an ‘ensemble’ piece with numerous other nude bodies simulating sex for a pay-packet, but it is Mary’s performance that you remember from the film, and her presence alone lends Wild Lovers its unintended historic importance.



Exactly who directed Wild Lovers is an unresolved question mark at present, and might be one Millington mystery that has been lost to time, given that Mountain is known to have hired several different filmmakers to shoot the Impact Double X Home Movies for them. The only person whose name has ever been brought up in relation to these films is Ken Williams, who possibly directed the films that make up Emmanuelle and Friends, something which puts him in the frame for having helmed Wild Lovers too. Williams was a glamour photographer turned 8mm filmmaker in the Harrison Marks/Russell Gay tradition. A close personal friend of Marks, Williams was actually married to former Marks model Gina Graham (aka Chris Williams). The idea that Wild Lovers was the work of a glamour photographer is given credence by the fact that its lounge setting appeared in several glamour magazine shoots in the early 70s. Williams’ connection to Harrison Marks could be key to explaining why a number of Marks’ female models- not to mention male regulars like Peter Vernon and Howard “Vanderhorn” Nelson- often turn up in these Impact Double X titles as well.


The re-discovery of Wild Lovers was a tale in itself, and was chiefly played out during a frantic weekend that saw lots of scheming taking place between myself and several other excited aficionados over the best way of going about acquiring a copy of the film. This was followed by a few weeks of suspense and speculation about whether Mary would turn out to be in the film or not, since Mountain were known to illustrate the Impact Double X 8mm boxes with stills that didn’t always correspond to the films themselves. During quieter moments in this period my thoughts inevitably drifted to Mary Millington herself and what her reaction would be to all these antics. Personally, I’d like to think Mary would be equally flattered and amused that she still gets to be the centre of attention once in a while, not to mention the fact that -all these years after her death- she still has such dedicated male groupies!!!

Special thanks have to go to Sgt.Rock who has been crucial in bringing Wild Lovers back into circulation and is currently selling copies of the film -and various other 8mm smut he has helped rescue from obscurity- on ebay. The likelihood is that none of these films would have seen the light of day again were it not for Sgt. Rock being the driving force in transferring them from 8mm to DVD, so if this sort of thing rocks your boat, the Sarge’s efforts are well worth your support I’m also indebted to “Muswell” whose prior research into Mountain Films and encyclopaedic knowledge of all things 8mm I’ve drawn on for this review. Hats off to both you two good eggs, let’s hope it’s not long before another Mary 8mm film is resurrected from the British sex film boneyard.

Millington rarity ‘Wild Lovers’ resurfaces

Two years after ‘Special Assignment’ another previously thought lost 8mm film starring Mary Millington has been traced and transferred to DVD.

‘Wild Lovers’ centres around a game of spirit of the glass, however rather than feeling an otherworldly presence, the players of this game, including a bearded guy, Mary and two other girls just end up feeling each other.
This 8mm epic wasn’t made by any of the usual suspects like Harrison Marks or John Lindsay, and its origins are very obscure but I’ll try and do a bit of research into the film and get working on a more detailed review of it soon.

Review: The House of Orchids (1982, Derek Ford)

The House of Orchids aka For Members Only, Sexo Intimo, High Society Club (1982)

The House of Orchids was one of several films born out of Derek Ford taking busman’s holiday trips to Europe after the bottom fell out of the British film market at the end of the seventies. Ford’s initial foray into European filmmaking was Erotic Fantasies (1978) aka Symphony of Love, a wild mishmash of scenes shot by Luigi Batzella and scenes shot by Ford- all scored to out of copyright classical music-and resulting in a film that almost defies description. Later in 1985 Ford got a gig in Sweden working as assistant director on Blood Tracks, a horror film cheapie that also features Ford in a Hitchcockian cameo, popping up as a location scout for a heavy metal band.

The House of Orchids is the only Ford film from his European period that he had total directorial control over, and one of the least seen of this bunch. Theatrically screened in Italy in November 1983- and later released on video in Italy and Germany- the film looks to have never made it to English language territories, despite an English dubbed version being advertised in Variety in the early 1980s and later shopped around for distribution under the saucy re-title “For Members Only”. Ford actually shot the film in 1981/82, in-between having to relinquish the directorial reigns of Riding High in 1981 and being fired from Don’t Open Till Christmas in 1984.

The House of Orchids sees Ford swap his usual haunts of Soho and Maldon, Essex for Venice, Italy. The scenery might be noticeably different, but Ford’s song remains the same and The House of Orchids features all the usual Fordian themes of swinging, respectable middle-class types being tempted into leading hedonistic double-lives and the moral repercussions of such a move.

The “House of Orchids” of the title turns out to be a swing club catering to the well-to-do women of Venice. The mysterious club issues invitations to selected women that include a code to open the club’s electric doors. Entirely run by futuristic movie type mod con devices, The House of Orchids appears to have no staff or any occupants bar the invited females. Once inside the club, pre-recorded messages encourage the women to strip off, bathe in the club’s pool and recount their problems, which begets sexually themed flashbacks. The reoccurring theme to the women’s tales of woe is male figures that have gradually become the bane of the women’s existence. Dena is a meek bookshop owner whose life is controlled by her ill, bullying father who issues verbal abuse from his deathbed and makes her life miserable. Susie Randall is a vivacious sex bomb frustrated by her relationship with a Howard Nelson type bodybuilder who prefers pumping iron than anything else and barely bats an eyelid when she interrupts his weightlifting by parading nude in front of him. Sandra Ross is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who is fucking his secretary. A phone call between Mrs Ross and her husband ends with her screaming “bastardo” down the phone. Out of all the Orchid women Marisa has it worse, a flashback finds her making love to a stud whilst being watched by an elderly creep who is hidden behind a two-way mirror. Afterwards the old man forces her to grip money between her teeth, then in a shocking moment punches her straight in the face. Susie- the most inquisitive of the bunch- begins trailing the other women home from the club and doing her own investigation into their problems. Hooking up with Dena, Susie lures her away from her dull bookshop job and her evil father, and takes her on a gondolier ride of sexual discovery.

Catching the eye of a shop assistant, Susie enjoys an impromptu sexual encounter with the man in a backroom of the store while Dena watches on. Initially shocked by this type of behaviour Dena soon loses her inhibitions leading to a memorable scene in a glass making factory, where Dena ends up nude on a table and having a glass replica made of her bust by the factory’s only too willing to help male workforce.

Evidently Ford shot the film around the time of the Carnevale di Venezia (indicating a late February shooting schedule), an event akin to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Whether or not this was merely just good timing or pre-planned, Ford takes full advantage of the atmosphere with long shots of the festivities acting as great spectacle, giving the film the appearance of a bigger budgeted production than it probably was. The on-going festivities also add unexpected character to nothing-special dialogue scenes, in which revellers casually walk around in the background wearing face masks, dressed as clowns or sporting skull faced spectre disguises. Compared to the exquisite Venice exteriors the House of Orchids club itself is a tacky wonder to behold. Essentially just a sauna boasting an ugly 1980s colour scheme and excessively decorated by fake plants, it resembles a bargain basement garden centre rather than a sex hang-out for the very wealthy. In fairness one scene in the film does find Susie complaining about the overkill of plastic plants in the place, indicating that the cheapness of the club set was an intended effect.

Inevitably The House of Orchids club changes the lives of all the women who enter through its doors. For Sandra there is a positive outcome, when Susie coerces Sandra’s husband into watching Sandra stripping behind Marisa’s two way mirror, reigniting his long dormant passion for his wife and saving their relationship in the process. For others there is a tragic price to pay for entertaining this world, including the blood-splattered demise of one of the women.

The House of Orchids is the long lost Italian cousin of Ford’s earlier films Suburban Wives (1971) and Commuter Husbands (1972), in which Ford’s sympathies rested entirely with his female characters, and whose narratives generally saw sexist men having the tables turned on them. Male characters are notably side-lined further in The House of Orchids and either serve the purpose of one scene sexual encounters or only register on account of their vileness, the sickly father, the adulteress husband, the old fart who punches Marisa in the face. Even a more traditional male love interest for Susie- introduced towards the end of the film- makes little of an impression compared to the deepening bond and sexual tension between Susie and Dena which remains the film’s real focus.

These unusual takes on gender roles, especially coming from a male director working in the sexploitation field, is likely due to the influence that Ford’s wife Valerie M. Ford had on his career. An active collaborator in Ford’s on and off screen sexploits, Valerie participated in both Derek’s swinging activities as well as acting as wardrobe mistress, make-up lady and assistant on his British films. While Valerie doesn’t appear to have been directly involved in The House of Orchids, their relationship no doubt gave Ford a female perspective on the sexually offbeat circles the Fords moved in, lending a touch of authenticity to the female characters and their encounters with the dare club environment that is depicted here. Ford displays a good eye in regards to his casting. His stars- Sonia Otero, Marina Miller, Ibis Gardner and Elisabeth Ray- are all stunningly beautiful women and good enough actresses to cause you to emotionally invest in their characters’ mixed fortunes. Quite an achievement, considering that Otero was mainly known as a nude model for the likes of Playmen and only had a couple of Italian exploitation films under her belt, while the other three leads appear to have never acted before or since.

At the same time The House of Orchids does offer further fuel to the theory that the more Derek Ford’s career went on the more he began to treat the cinema as his own private swing club, with the resultant films being a means to document and play out his off-screen fetishes. The swinging concept at the centre of The House of Orchids certainly appears to have fired off Ford’s imagination and none of the sex scenes in the film are what you would call vanilla in tone. Aside from her glass making excursion, Dena enlivens a dinner for Susie’s male friends by stripping off, being blindfolded by Susie and laying naked on the dinner table, offering herself up as the main course. By far the funniest scene in the film is allocated to Sandra who finds herself being tied to a bed by a male admirer. When her husband calls her up on the phone both she and her male friend take it in turns to casually chat to her hubby whilst they make love. His rage on the other end of the line only adding to their passion. The fact that the Ford oeuvre wouldn’t have been that well known in Italy gives him the opportunity to indulge in a bit of self-plagiarism here as well, by revisiting scenarios from his earlier films. Susie steals the show at a swinger’s party by performing a spirited dance/striptease routine that recalls a similar exhibitionist’s display at a party in Groupie Girl. Sandra gets dirty phone calls from an unseen man- a la the masochist housewife in The Wife Swappers- who encourages her to go with passing men. Plus, in a charming throwback to the days of the sex education film, Ford opens the film by having its plot related to a bunch of bored students by their professor. A man whose blackboard explanations and scholarly appearance invite obvious comparisons to The Wife Swappers’ inept, cue card reading host.

In retrospect The House of Orchids seems like a crossroads in Ford’s career, on one hand the ample female nudity and sex scenes make this a logical extension of his earlier British films. On the other hand, having female characters as the leads and shooting the film from their perspective points the way forward to Ford’s later career as an author of books aimed at a female audience. Ford’s books Panic on Sunset (1988) and The Casting Couch (1990), clearly being targeted at an over 40s bored housewives demographic with their sub-Jackie Collins mixture of sex, scandal and Hollywood gossip.



Ford remains something of a tragic figure of the British sex film era, never finding critical acceptance or reaping great financial rewards during his prolific career. Going off the memories of friends and associates, as well as the Hollywood preoccupations of his books, it looks to have been a point of frustration for Ford that his career never progressed to A-List films. Ford’s friend retired porn actress turned erotic illustrator Paula Meadows is of the opinion that deep down Ford was a disappointed man who felt he’d never achieved his full potential. Passing away in the mid-1990s Ford never lived long enough to see his forgotten films dusted off, screened at the NFT and tentatively embraced by the intelligentsia, accolades currently being bestowed on such fellow travellers as Stanley Long, Pete Walker and Arnold Louis Miller.

Perhaps it is just as well then that The House of Orchids and Ford’s demented horror opus “Attack of the Killer Computer” (1989) have recently resurfaced on the film collector’s circuit. Viewed together they represent a real return to form from Ford and make the case that he wasn’t quite the spent force that the below-par “What’s Up” films or the hackwork nature of the majority of his 1980s and 1990s output would suggest. For all his mainstream aspirations both these films offer up evidence that Derek Ford was at his most entertaining as a filmmaker when working in unabashed exploitation mode and –like the heroines of The House of Orchids- pursuing his obsessions for good or ill.

Naked(er) as Nature Intended

I recently managed to get hold of the US version of Naked As Nature Intended (1961), and was pleasantly surprised to find a very different version of the film than the one I’d previously encountered on video in the UK. In fact it turns out the film was completely re-worked for its American release by Crown International. Not only was the narration re-voiced for the American market, but the US version also draws on ‘stronger’ takes than appear in the UK version, and more tantalizingly includes all of the footage cut from the film’s British release version by the censor John Trevelyan in 1961. Material that was generally thought of as being lost, since the film’s original negatives-which are held by the BFI- were cut, and the censored footage was also missing from subsequent UK video releases.


Officially the only BBFC cuts made to the film, re-printed in and quoted here from John Hamilton’s book about Tony Tenser, were:

“Reel 5
Remove all shots of girls on beach when they are seen front view, naked or virtually naked, full length.
Remove shot of Pamela posing on the edge of the water, with a filmy scarf in her hair.

Reel 6
Remove all shots of girls, both before and during the game with a ball, when they are seen naked front view, full length”.

Of course this doesn’t really tell the whole story, since back then allot of censorship took place at a script or post-production stage, and its been well documented that even before the ‘official’ censorship began, Trevelyan nixed a couple of scenes from NANI. Trevelyan seems to have been especially fixated by the idea that the film was “really” about lesbianism, and on the basis of the material cut from the UK version but reinstated for the American release, he seems to have been more concerned with removing that perceived aspect to the film rather than the nudity itself. Its very hard not to turn Trevelyan into a figure of fun in all of this and portray him as some kind of doddery old fool, shifting through nudist films for any lesbian subtexts and accidental full frontal shots. In fairness we are talking here about a film in which two of the main female characters work as petrol pump attendants, don’t appear to have boyfriends and go on nudist holidays together, so maybe Trevelyan was onto something. Also according to one of my more colourful sources of info for that era there was a bit of chatter within the industry about someone connected to the film (in a none directorial capacity). Now whether “those rumours” about this person were true or not, if this gossip did reach Trevelyan’s ears it would explain why he was so on the look out for any lesbian leanings to the film.

Anyway these are the differences I’ve been able to spot by comparing the British and American versions.


-The US opening credits are different to those in British version, no doubt this was mainly done to accommodate a re-title (the American version is merely known as ‘As Nature Intended’, somewhat ironic that a version with more nudity should remove the ‘n’ word from its title). The American version of the credits also drops the narration credit for Guy Kingsley Poynter, and presents GHM’s ‘directed by’ credit in standard bold lettering (the British version uses a reproduction of his signature.) The American version also shortens Pam’s long, pre-title walk to the camera.

-In the UK version the opening scene showing Petrina working as a secretary is missing close-ups of her legs and shots of her boss trying to cop an eyeful of them. This presumably was originally meant to visualize the line in the British version “that reminds me of that definition, even a girl who can’t add up can certainly distract” but of course the shot got cut from the UK version and the line re-voiced for the American version.


-The “shower scene” is cut out entirely from the UK version but remains in the US release. Originally meant to appear in the film in-between the scene of Bridget and Angela leaving the petrol station and the scene of Pam and Petrina picking up Jackie at her parent’s house, it basically consists of Pam emerging from a shower (demonstrating the same quick use of a towel to cover herself that also comes in handy during the later beach scenes) and chatting with Petrina over tea about their upcoming holiday. Trevelyan’s justification for cutting the scene was that it features nudity outside of its ‘proper’ nudist camp context, and since the two girls are shown living together; “there could be a connotation that they’re lesbians” Trevelyan is said to have told GHM. Something that clearly went over the head of the American narrator who seems more amused by the tea drinking (“very British… those British”) and uses the scene as a platform for sexist wisecracks about women being unable to read maps.

-In the US version the scene with Bridget and Angela undressing in a field shows both women topless, albeit briefly. In the UK version the shot of Angela cuts away just as her top is about to come off, while the shot of Bridget taking her top off pans down just as her top is coming off (the US version uses a stronger version of this shot which sees Bridget go topless before the camera pans down.)


- The “payoff” at the end of the scene in the boat, in which Jackie Salt falls overboard, gets rescued then is dried off by Pam and Petrina, is different in the two versions. In the UK version the two women dry her off while, absurdly, she still has her clothes on. On the other hand the US version uses a take in which Jackie is topless and Pam and Petrina are rubbing her breasts. Something that no doubt gave further ammo to Trevelyan’s theory about the characters being lesbians. Even Marks’ production manager had doubts whether this scene would pass the British censor, reportedly telling Marks during filming “They won't wear it, George, women rubbing each other down!”. Presumably they filmed clothed and unclothed versions of the scene in the (correct) belief that the censor would refuse to pass the unclothed take.


- The scene on the beach prior to Pam meeting Bridget and Angela, originally includes a shot of Petrina with her top off, which is in the US version but is cut out of the UK one. Presumably this shot was removed by Trevelyan because it once again shows nudity outside of a nudist camp.

- Given the amount of cuts made to the film before the characters even reach the nudist camp, its quite surprising then to find that the scenes on the nudist beach and in the camp itself seem to have been mostly passed uncut. Confusingly all of the material the BBFC’s records suggests was cut (“shots of girls on beach when they are seen front view, naked or virtually naked, shot of Pamela posing on the edge of the water, with a filmy scarf in her hair.. Etc, etc”) is still in the UK version, suggesting that those cuts were either never made or appealed at some point? The only cut made to the film during the nudist camp sequences, effects the shots of Pam riding nude on a swing, which is briefly seen in the UK version, but goes on allot longer in the US version and from angles that show more than Trevelyan was clearly prepared to pass in 1961.


While NANI is never likely to be regarded as the most exciting film ever made, the added bits and bobs of nudity do give the film more of a pulse. Plus the sustained nudity throughout makes the film play more like a typical American nudie of the era, as opposed to the British version which keeps its audience in suspense with around 40 minutes of travelogue before showing nudity of any kind. What really distinguishes the American version from the British one however is the narration. Whereas the UK narration comes across like something out of a Pathe news reel with a couple of GHM’s old music hall one liners thrown in, the American narration is far more obvious in its sexploitation motives.

In particular there is lots of leery ‘carrot on the stick’ type comments to the audience, during the nothing special opening scenes showing the girls working 9 to 5 jobs, emphasizing that the girls will end up taking their clothes off at a nudist camp.. eventually. The unnamed American narrator actually soon becomes bored by having to talk over all the British travelogue footage and “introduces” his British friend Cedric to chat through several sequences, at which point the narration actually reverts back to the original Guy Kingsley Poynter narration. Even so our American narrator cant help but occasionally chipping to take the piss, remarking “Oh, thats a good one” after one of the film’s bad puns and “I’ll treasure that information” after some Kingsley Poynter titbit about Cornwall which is of bugger all interest to Americans.

Given the American narration track was put together by Crown International rather than Marks himself, this version can hardly be considered true to Marks’ original vision, and I suppose a ‘Director’s Cut’ version of the film would include the UK narration track and all of the censored material put back in. Still at least the American version has preserved the material cut from the film, and its existence suggests that they might be versions of other 1960s British horror and sexploitation films existing overseas that managed to sneak back in footage cut from the UK releases. We can but hope.

Sue Bond in Titbits (1975)

Sue Bond interviewed in Titbits magazine (no. 4550, April 24-30th 1975), waiting for the call to do Bond or Chekov, in-between her day job of “character” parts in sitcoms and pantos.