Jamie Dodgers (short story)

 

The latest issue of Penicillin magazine contains my short story 'Jamie Dodgers' in which the memory of a sexy sea siren called Jamie threatens to disrupt an amateur dramatics group...a cure for rabies is also involved. Penicillin 222 can be downloaded here, or alternatively you can read the story below.  Don't have nightmares.
 

Jamie Dodgers by Gavin Whitaker.

The Village Hall had seen better days, smelling of the unholy threesome that was damp, dust and digestive biscuits, still no one but Nigel Bagshaw seemed to notice. It was 1974 and amateur dramatics group 'The Players most Priestley' had spent weeks transforming the space into a 1940s airfield: sandbags stacked like graves, a mock Spitfire wing splintered from balsa, and a battered wireless crooning Vera Lynn between scenes. Tonight was the premiere of the play "The Brave who did not Bend” their earnest tribute to those who fought in the second world war, penned and directed by Aubrey Hargreaves, who had never forgiven history for rejecting him before he could even play a role in it. Aubrey had been eighteen in 1940, slender and sharp-featured, with a high voice that commanded second looks. When he presented himself at the recruiting office, full of patriotic fervour and a secret longing to be among men in uniform, the medical officer had taken one look, and said "I'm afraid you're too light on your feet for the service, old chap" sarcastically adding "why don't you try to help the war effort in another way, like taking up knitting".

What an absolute bitch, Aubrey had privately thought, his papers had been marked “unfit" and Aubrey knew why. The army didn’t want men who loved other men, didn't want queens even if they were willing to die for their King. The rejection burned deeper than any wound he might have earned in battle; resulting in a lifetime of directing village plays, mainly about young men in uniform and the heroism Aubrey was never allowed to share.

However Nigel Bagshaw—postman by day, thespian by delusion—carried his own ghosts from a different era. In 1960, during national service his commanding officer, Captain Ivor Dodgers, had made his life a living hell: endless punishments, verbal floggings, and nights scrubbing decks until his hands bled. All these years later Nigel could still hear Dodgers' voice bellowing "get on parade, you great big, useless turd", "dirty sod, you'll go blind doing that or end up in a mental asylum" and "Bagshaw, you're only fit to sweep the bleeding streets". The Captain’s paranoia had grown worse after he began to suspect his young wife, Edna, of infidelity. Dodgers fixated on Nigel, convinced the quiet, watchful rating was secretly rogering Edna. Nigel knew better. He had never had the pleasure of Edna —never even been alone with her—but he had overheard the whispers in the barracks, seen the knowing smirks. Edna was a right goer, a bloody nymphomaniac in fact. She had been entertaining two, sometimes three of the other lads at once, wild, laughing matings in the married quarters while Dodgers was away on exercises. Nigel kept silent, but silence was enough to feed the Captain’s jealousy. That dark, stormy night off the Cornish coast, when Dodgers insisted on he and Nigel setting out to sea in a small boat—just the two of them—Nigel was certain the Captain meant to kill him. He saw murder in Dodgers’ eyes, felt it in the way the man’s hand lingered near his coat pocket. Nigel struck first. As thunder cracked and waves lashed the hull, he seized a rusted fish knife, tackled the Captain from behind and slit Dodgers’ throat in one ragged stroke. Blood sprayed hot across Dodgers' face, black in the lightning flashes—thick arterial ropes that painted the gunwale and dripped into the sea in steaming ribbons. Nigel heaved the twitching body overboard, watching it vanish into the churning foam. He panicked; he hadn't really thought this through at all. Would the sea keep his secret like a trusted mistress? or would Dodgers' corpse incriminate him by washing up on shore a few days later? Suddenly the sea turned red around the small boat, multiple crimson bubbles rising to the surface as something feasted below. Sharks? wondered Nigel...no surely we don't have sharks in Cornwall, perhaps Piranhas...no, don't be such a silly sod, Nigel told himself. He had to know what beast or beasts had come to his aid, then he saw them clearly for the first time, horror set in as shapes rose from the depths. Several sea sirens, their scales iridescent and jagged, swarming around Dodgers' corpse. Blimey, they're starkers, Nigel thought, totally bleeding naked. Sure, he'd seen a girlie magazine before, even copped a feel of Doreen in the back row of the local fleapit, but these birds were something else. Truth be told, Nigel had never seen a woman totally naked before, nor had he seen a woman tear into male flesh with needle teeth, ripping it in bloody chunks. Nor had he seen a woman tear a liver free, shred lungs into pink froth, or pluck out a still-beating heart and devour it in glistening bites.
I clearly still have allot to learn about women, Nigel thought.

A mixture of fear and arousal overcame him, as could only be expected from a man who suddenly found himself surrounded by naked birds who were also bloodthirsty cannibals. He ran to the opposite side of the boat and retched into the sea. Then he saw her—perched on a jagged rock amid the storm. Her pale skin glistening with saltwater sheen, shoulder-length, reddish-brown hair with soft curls framing her face, a strong jaw line, full breasts heaving with each sultry breath, nipples hardened against the cold wind. Her curves were hypnotic, hips flaring wide in invitation, the promise of ecstasy and ruin.
'My name is Jamie'... he could hear her seductively say that in his head, though he wasn't sure if she had actually spoken those words in person. Her eyes like shattered peridot fixed on him, lips curved in a lascivious smile that parted to reveal sharp, pearl-white teeth. She called out in a voice that pierced the gale: “Murderer… Murderer… Murderer…”
Over and over, her laughter mingling with the sirens’ feeding frenzy below. Her throaty, erotic moan stirred unwelcome heat in Nigel’s loins even as terror gripped the rest of him. He rowed away, leaving behind a bloodbath of apocalyptic proportions, but the sea siren's accusation haunted him through the decades. He imagined her whispering to him in rain-slicked streets, saw her nude form flickering in steam-fogged pub windows, then there was the odd looks he'd gotten from birds over the years, when, during sex, he cried out the name 'Jamie'. The memory of her full breasts threatened his sanity, thoughts of her hips grinding in slow, teasing circles, mentally branding him anew each time with a mix of lust and dread.

The Village Hall was packed. From behind the stage curtains, Aubrey smiled, peeking at a large crowd, some members of the audience had even travelled from as far away as Scunthorpe to see the play. There were old men in blazers pinned with tarnished medals, their wives in wartime coats frayed at the hems, grandchildren fidgeting about, brought against their will for “a bit of culture.” Aubrey hoped that an encounter with amateur dramatics might steer the younger members of the audience away from watching too much television, mugging old ladies or taking up glue sniffing. Backstage, Nigel tunelessly wailed away in an infuriating and loud fashion, for not only did he fancy himself as a masterful actor, but he also thought he had what it took to be a great singer as well. "Mark my words, one day I'll be as big as Barry Blue and Zenda Jacks" was something told to all of the Players most Priestley, and believed by none of them.
"I bet you didn't know I could sing like what they do in opera, Aubrey" said Nigel as he walked past the fey, limp wristed theatre director, not waiting for a reply.
"Well, I sure knew you weren't a fucking actor" Aubrey muttered to himself.
The lights dimmed. The curtain shuddered upward. The play demanded atmosphere, and Aubrey was determined to give his audience some showbiz razzmatazz. To evoke a battleground, the Players Most Priestley had borrowed a fog machine from a shuttered pantomime troupe. Aubrey had also been delighted when in the basement of the Village Hall they had discovered a sealed military drum, the perfect prop for his play. Unbeknownst to the Players most Priestley was the fact that the sealed drum contained a deadly gas, the discarded result of a long forgotten attempt by the government to find a cure for rabies.

Onstage, Squadron Leader Alistair Thorne (Nigel in a cardboard helmet) built to his big speech about a fallen comrade, which in the context of the play he had come to deliver to the truelove of Thorne's decreased friend. Nigel had rehearsed the words in his head many times over “They found him at first light, expired on the battlefield. Poor Digby. He was killed by a German paratrooper". Nigel's eyes flicked to the audience, anticipating the big dramatic moment in the play when they discovered Digby's tragic fate. Nigel scanned the dim rows. There—third row centre, amid the sea of grey hair and horn rimmed spectacles—a figure that shouldn’t be there. Pale skin glistening like wet kelp, her body arched mockingly in a pose of raw seduction, full breasts thrust forward, nipples erect and begging for his touch, dripping with an otherworldly allure that made Nigel’s pulse throb with forbidden desire. Eyes glowing faintly green. Jamie. Totally bare...the shameless hussy...worse still she was dripping water all over the floor of the Village Hall. Jamie leaned forward, lips parting to deliver the words only he could hear: Murderer… Murderer…Murderer—her voice a husky whisper that caressed his ears like velvet, promising pleasures that would drown him in ecstasy. Nigel’s throat seized. Panic flooded him, the storm’s chill resurfacing in his veins, mingled with a shameful arousal. Then, fighting against what the audience assumed was stage fright, Nigel said the words...“They found him at first light, expired on the battlefield. Poor Digby. He was killed by a German parrot.”

Laughter erupted, sharp and unwelcome from an audience hit directly in the funny bone with the mental image of an evil parrot, driven by Nazi ideology, squawking 'Heil Hitler' before flying kamikaze style at poor Digby. An elderly, former wing commander rose in his seat, shaking his fist at the stage, “What disrespectful rot this is!” But Nigel stared, transfixed, as Jamie’s nude form dissolved into shadow, her whisper lingering: Murderer... Murderer… Murderer—her imagined touch ghosting over his skin, fingers trailing fire down his spine. Nigel stumbled around the stage, accidentally knocking over the sealed drum. Yellow-green vapour billowed from the stage, thick and oily, cascading into the stalls like a tidal wave of rot. At first, the crowd thought it theatrical flair, as they'd come to expect from Aubrey Hargreaves. Then Mrs. Prudence Protheroe in row three convulsed, her spine arching until her vertebrae cracked audibly. She clawed at her throat, nails gouging bloody furrows through wrinkled skin. Her mouth gaped in a silent scream before a geyser of blood-streaked bile erupted, followed by her stomach and intestines—slick, glistening ropes that slithered out in pulsating loops, splattering hot across her neighbours’ laps. Her husband beside her inhaled the gas and his face began to melt: skin bubbling and sliding off in translucent sheets, exposing raw muscle that twitched and wept crimson. In blind agony he dug his fingers into his own cheeks, ripping downward in long strips, peeling his face away to the bone in wet, sucking sounds, teeth clacking as the lower jaw hung by threads of tendon. Panic ignited. The former wing commander clutched his abdomen as his intestines burst through the wall of his belly in a sudden, wet explosion—coils of purple-grey bowel spilling over his medals in steaming heaps, blood pumping in rhythmic spurts from severed vessels. An old woman nearby shrieked as her eyes liquefied and burst, thick yellow fluid mixed with blood spraying in arcs; she raked her nails across her own scalp, tearing away hair and skin in bloody handfuls until skull gleamed white. Children screamed as beloved grandparents disemboweled themselves—fingers plunging into softening abdomens to haul out livers and spleens in quivering masses, arteries severed and fountaining dark red across the seats. Faces disintegrated under frantic claws: eyelids shredded, lips torn to ragged ribbons, tongues lolling in shredded mouths as victims tried to scream through collapsing throats. The floor became a slaughterhouse —gallons of blood, bile, and liquefied organs mingling into a viscous lake that lapped at ankles. Bodies slumped half-eviscerated, ribs cracked open like wet cages, hearts still fluttering weakly amid exposed cavities. Thinking fast, Aubrey made for a cardboard box containing gas masks for the play, distributing them to the Players most Priestley as they scarpered around backstage. Aubrey then yanked the fire alarm; it wailed like a siren’s call. The curtain went down, trapping the audience in a fog-shrouded tomb. By the time the fire brigade breached the doors, forty lay dead, bodies twisted in grotesque tableaux: torsos flayed open, entrails draped like garlands, faces reduced to glistening skulls half-covered in hanging meat, pools of blood and viscera inches deep across the floorboards.

Hours later, amid the flashing lights and the stench of death, Nigel sat on the edge of the stage, gas mask in his lap, nearly catatonic. Over and over he repeated: “German Parrot… German Parrot…Murderer....Murderer...Murderer”.
The siren...her call...Nigel's memory returned to that night, recalling details in more clarity than ever before. Long forgotten, long hidden memories. Captain Dodgers had brought aboard a crate of rusted drums marked with hazard symbols, the leftovers from an attempt to find a cure for rabies. Dodgers had taken a backhander to ensure they met with an illegal, deep-sea disposal.
“Get rid of them, do it bloody well now Bagshaw,” Dodgers had barked. “No bleeding questions. No bleeding records.”
They had heaved most overboard, the heavy drums vanishing into the black water with hollow splashes. Neither man could have suspected that their actions would cause gross offense to a sisterhood of sea sirens. Nigel, convinced the whole exercise was a ruse to isolate and murder him, had waited until only one drum remained. Then he had struck—slitting Dodgers’ throat in one ragged stroke. In the panic of escape, Nigel had forgotten about the final drum. He rowed to shore, hid it in the basement of the Village Hall under a pile of old hymnals, and buried the memory of the drum as deep as the captain’s body. He never thought of the drum again—until tonight. Why tonight, of all nights had Jamie and Dodgers decided to haunt his memories. It was if Dodgers had risen from the grave to thwart Nigel's acting career...aided and abetted by that trollop from the sea.

A young constable named Harris approached cautiously, notebook in one hand, a packet of biscuits in the other—pilfered from the neighbouring tea room where Aubrey and the rest of the Players most Priestley were being comforted.
“Mr. Bagshaw? Nigel? Here, have one of these" he produced a packet of Jammie Dodgers "Might settle the nerves a bit.”
He held out the biscuit, red jam glistening in the middle like fresh blood.
Jammie...Jamie...Dodgers!!!
The names collided in Nigel’s shattered mind, the captain’s bloodied throat flashing before him, the secret he had kept about Edna’s real lovers, Jamie’s naked accusation rising with it—her body writhing in his visions. Murderer… Murderer…With a guttural cry that echoed through the ruined hall, Nigel lunged. His fist drove upward in a savage arc, connecting squarely with the policeman’s groin. Harris doubled over instantly, a high-pitched wheeze escaping him as he crumpled to the floor, knees drawn up in fetal agony, hands clutching protectively over his bollocks. His mind overwhelmed by fears of never being able to achieve fatherhood. Nigel didn’t look back. He vaulted from the Village Hall, shoving past stunned paramedics, and vanished into the fog-shrouded night. The government inquiry predictably covered up the rusted drum and it's deadly contents. Nigel was never found. Three nights later, on a moonless tide, a lone figure walked the shingle at Priestley Cove. Nigel, barefoot and coatless, waded into the black water until it reached his waist, his chest, his throat. The cold no longer bit; it welcomed him like an old friend. Jamie rose first, naked and radiant, her voluptuous form undulating with predatory grace—breasts full and swaying, nipples taut with hunger, drawing him in with a siren’s primal allure. Her sisters circled beneath like pale shadows, their own nude bodies twisting in eager anticipation, tails flicking sprays of foam. She smiled—no longer accusing, but ravenous, her tongue darting out to taste the air, lips plump and parted in a moan of desire. They had waited decades for this meal, patient as the sea itself. Dodgers had been an appetiser, snatched too quickly. Nigel was the main course: guilt-marinated, tenderised by years of torment. He did not struggle as webbed claws raked his clothes away and needle teeth sank into living flesh. Skin tore in long strips from his back and thighs; muscle parted with wet, sucking sounds as chunks were ripped free and devoured. Blood poured into the water in thick clouds as arteries were severed—femoral, brachial, carotid—each bite sending fresh gouts spiraling into the dark. His abdomen was split open, intestines hauled out in steaming ropes and fought over, liver torn free in a hot, slippery mass. Ribs cracked like kindling as they burrowed to the heart, still beating, still trying to pump what little blood remained. Jamie’s mouth latched onto his throat, her breasts pressing hot against his chest in a final, twisted embrace, her body writhing against him in ecstatic feeding, the line between consumption and carnal union blurring in the bloody froth. He was worth the wait.

Sex and the Other Woman (1972)

 

I've always regarded Sex and the Other Woman as one of those second division Stanley Long titles, which like Bread and On the Game, was sandwiched in-between the standout Long productions of Groupie Girl and Eskimo Nell. Revisiting it via Melusine's Stanley Long box set though, I've gotten along allot better with it this time around. Full disclosure, I did have some involvement with that box set so my opinion isn't without bias, but seeing Sex and the Other Woman looking so damned perfect definitely improves things. Previous releases of this film having looked particularly ugly. I think I'm right in saying that this release also marks the first time Long's original version of the film has been seen in America. The Salvation DVD from the 2000s being the American re-edit of the movie, which shuffled the segments around, used an alternative title sequence that chopped down Felicity Devonshire's name to 'Felicity Devon' and replaced most of the DeWolfe music with generic disco tracks.

Sex and the Other Woman comes across like Antony Balch's Secrets of Sex made for more straight-laced punters and by a more straight-laced director. While SOS had an Egyptian mummy telling us tales of woe from the battle of the sexes, in Sex and the Other Woman the rather less scary Richard Wattis is on hand to introduce saucy stories that feel straight out of the Sunday tabloids, as opposed to the horror movie, Burroughs and Scientology influences that fuelled the Balch movie.

I do wonder if Sex and the Other Woman lacks a woman's touch that earlier Long productions had benefited from. The Wife Swappers likely having had input from Derek Ford's wife Valerie, and Groupie Girl having been written by Suzanne Mercer. Sex and the Other Woman feels like male chauvinism has taken over the reins, with female characters here behaving in a way that I'm sure no woman has ever behaved outside of the imagination of sexist men. Exactly how much of Stanley Long's personal life wound up in this movie will likely remain a question mark. I detect some possible autobiographical elements to the first story.  Reggie, the ill fated married man in that segment sharing Long's love of aviation and like Long has his own Penthouse. I assume the light aircraft and the penthouse in the film belonged to Long himself. On the basis that if you were making a low budget film that required an aircraft and a penthouse, why would you pay to use anyone else's if you owned your own. So, it is likely that we're here getting a peek at Long's pad whilst he was living high on the hog, thanks to the proceeds from The Wife Swappers and Groupie Girl.

Speaking of locations, the staircase in the house belonging to Maggie Wright's gold digging character is the same staircase that James Beck makes an appearance on in Groupie Girl. It also pops up in the pad the heroine shares with two other girls in Pete Walker's The Four Dimensions of Greta. Such is the small world of British sex films.
The original soundtrack of the film in this segment also treats us to a couple of blasts of the funky DeWolfe track 'Highway Song' by the marvelously named Herman Bender. Come to think about it, had he not been a real person, Herman Bender would have actually made for a great character name in a British sex comedy. The bewigged photographer in this segment proving that if you're looking for realistic and non-stereotypical portrayals of gay men in 1970s British culture, you might have to look beyond the sex comedies. Those with a keen ear might also detect a brief soundtrack appearance of the DeWolfe track 'Eye Level' at the end of the Felicity Devonshire segment, which soon after would become famous in the UK as the theme tune for the TV series Van Der Valk. Even if you stripped Sex and the Other Woman of the DeWolfe music and replaced it with more modern music, as the American distributor did, on a visual level this film couldn't have come from anywhere other than early 70s Britain. A point emphasized by Melusine's high end transfer, which really does breath unholy new life into those early 70s fashions and interiors.

The leading lady in the first segment, Maggie Wright, wasn't to Long's fancy, and might have been cast at the insistence of co-producer Barry Jacobs, since she'd also featured in his movie The Love Box. The American distributor was evidently in agreement with Long, since the US version switches her segment with the Jane Cardew one. The US version presenting the Jane Cardew segment upfront...as if Jane Cardew wasn't upfront enough. Sex and the Other Woman does see Long and Jacobs offer up something for all straight male tastes. The Cardew segment for men into big bust fetishism, the Wright one for those with a taste for the older woman, while the Felicity Devonshire one is err... possibly for the man who -to quote the song Mr. Iceberg by S. Gainsbourg- "likes his little girls in socks". My history with Sex and the Other Woman began with the Salvation DVD but I do remember reading in an old edition of Elliot's Guide to Films on Video that there had been a UK VHS release of the film in the late 1980s that had suffered 9 minutes and 30 seconds of cuts, which certainly piqued my interest in seeing the film. It could have been a mistake on Elliot's behalf, but odds are that if there was a segment in Sex and the Other Woman that would have provoked such heavy BBFC censorship it would have been the Felicity Devonshire one. Stanley Long at his most 'morally ambiguous' it sees a middle aged man (Raymond Young) fall 'victim' to the sexual desires of his daughter's school friend Sarah, played by Devonshire. The daughter's reaction to discovering about her father's affair with her schoolgirl friend- she basically tells Sarah she can't blame her and admits she'd sleep with him herself if he wasn't her own father- is a prime example of what I was saying about women in this film behaving like no woman ever has outside of the imagination of men. Still it must have done wonders for the ego of actor Raymond Young. While Young was no stranger to British exploitation cinema, he's also in Secrets of a Superstud and The Flesh and Blood Show, he didn't usually get to be the subject of such rock star like adulation.

By the time of Sex and the Other Woman, you're definitely witnessing the bar being raised in terms of the quality of female acting in British sex films, at least compared to the films from just a few years earlier, which mostly had to make do with nude models who could barely get a line out. We're also beginning to see a 'star system' emerging with actresses like Cardew and Devonshire destined to become regulars in these types of film, their fame largely playing out within the genre. Not everyone was happy to be associated with this film though. Actor Paul Greenwood, whose character succumbs to Jane Cardew's seductive charms, goes tellingly uncredited in the film. He returned to British exploitation a few years later to play the boyfriend in the Pete Walker film Frightmare, and allowed them to use his real name on that film...then again he didn't bare his arse in that one.

Sex and the Other Woman ends with the biggest piece of propaganda for triangle relationships you're likely to see outside of Tintorera, as a married couple weather the scandal of moving the husband's mistress in with them. In many ways it feels like a throwback to The Wife Swappers with its swinging themes and largely unknown cast, yet its a reflection of how British sexual mores had moved on that Long got away with a laid back and comedic attitude towards this situation. A far cry from the finger pointing approach he was forced to adopt with the Wife Swappers, where such behavior would no doubt have resulted in blackmail, ruination or a mental breakdown. The ending anticipates where the British sex film was heading with the husband (Max Mason) breaking the fourth wall and giving a blokeish wink to the audience.

Having seen this genre dismissed for years as nostalgia proof and a forgotten embarrassment, it is quite gratifying to see movies like Sex and the Other Woman get the deluxe treatment on disc, as well as the British sex film's unexpected dominance of late night British television at the moment. A phenomenon that began with the relatively obscure TV channel Together TV, who despite apparently being run a hard left collective, hit upon the brainwave of filling their nighttime schedules with 1970s British horror and sex movies till the wee hours. Quite how such movies fit in with their ideology is anyone's guess; I very much doubt their politics align with the politics of Pete Walker and Mary Millington. Still such programming must have done well for them, since other channels have since taken notice and followed suit. Talking Pictures TV has been slipping a few Confessions and Adventures movies into their schedules. More recently, nostalgia channel Rewind TV has also jumped aboard this unlikeliest of bandwagon. 

Just to document the sex mad state of late night TV in Britain in 2026...Rewind TV has recently shown Virgin Witch, Secrets of Sex, For Men Only, Confessions of a Sex Maniac, The Ups and Downs of a Handyman and Sex and the Other Woman. Talking Pictures have shown The Best of the Adventures and Confessions from a Holiday Camp. While Together TV have shown Cruel Passion, Girls Come First, Got in Made, Come Play With Me, Groupie Girl, Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair, On the Game, I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight and The Playbirds. It's almost as if...y'know...people actually like watching these movies. A turn of events that has left me feeling vindicated for flying the flag for British sexploitation cinema all these years, and smugly ahead of my time...now that the unbelieving scum have come around to my way of thinking.

It would be remiss of me not to also mention Jane Cardew's memorable and highly suggestive usage of a cigar in Sex and the Other Woman. "Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar" Freud once claimed, but it sure as hell wasn't in this blooming well case.

The Farm (1984, Laurence James)

 

Laurence James is an author who I'm probably guilty of overlooking. Partly because he was best known for hippie era SF, which isn't really my thing, and partly because he used so many pen names. It's easy to forget that 'Mick Norman' who wrote all those Hells Angels novels, is also 'James Darke' of the Witchfinder General inspired 'The Witches' series, as well as 'Jonathan May' of the rival Confessions book series. Whatever name he was using that week and whatever genre he was working in though, I’ve found that you're always in entertaining hands with Laurence James.

Here James steps into the guise of 'Richard Haigh' and gives the likes of Guy N. Smith and James Herbert a run for their money with this prime piece of 1980s paperback horror in which an isolated farmhouse in Wales comes under attack from carnage loving pigs. Not willing to put all his eggs in the one basket, James expands this from being a mere killer pigs vehicle. Since The Farm also trots out lethal dogs, cannibalistic rabbits, malicious goats, cows seeking martyrdom and suicidal geese. All putting aside their differences to gang up against the human race and seek revenge after their water supply was contaminated by dangerous chemicals.

Speaking of Guy N. Smith, I suspect this book was doing a little bit more than encroaching on his literary territory. In fact there seems to be a fascinating, hidden layer of Guy N. Smith references in this book. The main protagonist Paul is a city boy who was made the dramatic lifestyle change of decamping to a farm in rural Wales- as Guy N. Smith had done in real life. Paul's brother Richard works in a bank- an occupation Smith had held prior to becoming a full time writer. Richard's wife is called Jean- which is the name of Guy N. Smith's wife. Jean and Richard have two children, a boy and a girl who are in their early teens- and did the Smiths (technically they actually had a boy and two girls). Paul is also harbouring the secret that he used to write erotic fiction for top shelf magazines- as did Guy N. Smith back in the 1970s. It's way too much to have been a mere coincidence. Smith did lend a front cover quote to James's horror novel Paradise Lost "mind blowing terror from a talented new horror writer". So I assume those two were mates, and these clandestine GNS references should be interpreted as a good natured poke in the ribs.

Although it has never really attained the iconic status of The Rats, Night of the Crabs or Slugs, in many ways The Farm is the absolute embodiment of the 1980s British horror paperback. It's simplistic, relatively short on page count, delivers crowd pleasing scenes of people falling foul of bloodthirsty animals and is shameless in its perversity. If you think Guy N. Smith was often guilty of inserting troubling sexual elements into his horror books, then Laurence James wants you to hold his beer. Come for the killer pigs, stick around to be disturbed by the behavior of an underage Welsh nympho called Gwyneth, who is anyone's for a top up to her pocket money. I dare say that after meeting a girl like Gwyneth, a Welshman need never look longingly at a sheep again. For some reason James chooses the scene in which Gwyneth and another character break the sexual taboo of incest, to go overboard not only in terms of sexual descriptions but also in terms of product placement. I doubt The Mirror newspaper, Robertson's Marmalade or Toyah Willcox were grateful for having their wares plugged in that context.

It could be argued that back in the morally bankrupt 1980s, books like this were being passed around the playgrounds by boys who would have been roughly the same age as Gwyneth, to whom she'd no doubt have been something of a fantasy figure. Still the Gwyneth aspects to the book are pretty sordid even for that era and don't exactly show James's character in the greatest light, for a while there it really does feel like he's writing jerk off material for Jimmy Savile. In another example of this book time stamping itself to the era, it is such a quintessentially British and 1980s thing for the unnatural relationship in this book to get discovered thanks to a trade union dispute (you'll have to read the book yourself to discover how, it's priceless). Perhaps that was another of James's Guy N. Smith in-jokes, trade union activity being one of Smith's bete noires.

Laurence James always comes across as being a little bit more hip and in touch with popular culture than your average paperback writer back then. I seem to recall his Hells Angels books including Michael Moorcock references, name checking Roger Corman and general having a satirical, underground sensibility to them. As we venture into the 1980s, The Farm proves that James still had his finger on the pulse when it came to what the kids were into. James needle drops songs by Madness, Fun Boy Three and Ian Dury into these pages. I especially liked that when it came to Dury, James didn't go for the obvious 'Reasons to be Cheerful' or 'Hit Me with your Rhythm Stick' and instead has a character listening to 'Spasticus Autisticus' on the radio. Which might be another example of Laurence James pulling our leg, since the BBC ban on that song probably meant that Spasticus Autisticus didn't actually receive much radio airplay back then.
We also get a Famous Five reference, which initially seems quite old fashioned in that company, but I suspect James was actually alluding there to the Comic Strip's 'Five Go Mad in Dorset' parody. Especially as he quotes the famous "lashings of ginger beer" line. Which was echoed throughout playgrounds after Five Go Mad in Dorset went out, along with the heavies' blah-blah-blah speeches. I suppose a blah-blah-blah version of The Farm's plot would go ... blah-blah-blah chemical spillage... blah-blah-blah government cover-up... blah-blah-blah Welsh jailbait... blah-blah-blah killer pigs.

James's approach to horror can at times be as unconventional as his choice of Ian Dury songs. He has an eccentric habit of ending chapters on a cliffhanger then jumping forward at the start of the next chapter and only eventually revealing important plot details anecdotally. Something which takes a bit of getting used to. After a literally explosive opening that sees James gleefully reduce schoolchildren, nuns and a chickenhawk photographer to bloody pulp, the book then teases us with a few false starts, slips into darkness with it's jailbait fixation before pulling it's mind out of the gutter and unleashing the swine. Once it gets going through, the book comes out with all guns blazing and The Farm lives up to it's reputation as a better than average example of the paperback equivalent of the Video Nasties. It's the type of book that thrived during the late 70s and early 80s, only for public to grow tired of this sort of horror novel when an influx of below average books flooded the market at the end of the eighties. My suspicion is that had the Video Nasties been left alone they'd have met with a similar fate and the public would eventually have just gotten bored and jaded with an overkill of cheap horror movies on video. However, because the Video Nasties were taken away from us they've achieved legendary status and enjoyed a healthy cult afterlife. Whereas their book equivalents, lacking the allure of forbidden fruit, have tended to fade into obscurity.

Saying that, The Farm was recently republished by Valancourt's Paperbacks from Hell imprint, followed by the news that James's follow up The City (1986) is being republished by a new company called Cardboard Coffin Press. News that is something to squeal about, since buying original copies of those books at the moment seems impossible without remortgaging your house or taking up bank robbing. I can't help but be amused though that in a recent interview one of the Paperbacks from Hell people ruled out republishing Pierce Nace's Eat Them Alive on account that it "veers on the side of bad, bad taste" and is "super duper rapey" (note: that book contains no rape whatsoever) yet they're perfectly happy to republish Welsh incest porn. Kudos to them for putting The Farm back in circulation, but there's some peculiar double standards going on there.

Guts for Garters (2015, Linda Regan)

 

Watching Linda Regan in an old episode of Minder, reminded me I needed to jump back down the rabbit hole that is her later career as a crime writer. Whereas Regan's acting career generally played out in light comedy -she's probably best remembered in that capacity for the sitcom Hi-De-Hi- her writing career walks a different path, one that veers towards heavy duty exploitation. Full of bad language, degrading sex and brutal violence, Guts for Garters is about as removed from Hi-De-Hi as you can get, unless I've missed an episode of Hi-De-Hi that opens with Ted Bovis torturing someone with a machete for selling crack at Maplins.

Guts for Garters sees Regan tackle the subject of girl gangs, although she wasn't the first female author to walk that beat. Back in the heyday of New English Library, Maisie Mosco wrote Gang Girls (1978) but as that book is now rare and commands high prices, Regan here is on hand to provide a more modern and less prohibitively expensive alternative.

Guts for Garters centers around female hard cases 'The Alley Cats' who've decided to take the law into their own hands, after rival gang the SLR (South London Rulers) try to seize control over the Aviary estate. Queen of the Alley Cats, Alysha Achter, ain't standing for that on her patch, and immediately proves herself to be a force to be reckoned with by torturing SLR member Burak Kaya for selling drugs in the community. When Burak is later found murdered, the SLR vow revenge on the Alley Cats, who in turn try to place blame for the killing on in fighting within the SLR. Another killing on the estate -a girl is beaten over the head with a hammer, falls in unfortunately close proximity to some dog shit, then is set on fire- further exacerbates the gang fighting, as well as opening up the possibility that a serial killer is loose on the estate.

Guts for Garters was meant to be the first Regan book to elevate Georgia Johnson to main character status, having previously appeared as a supporting character in Regan's earlier books Brotherhood of Blades (2011) and Street Girls (2012). A black Detective Inspector, Johnson's career in the police force is motivated by her having been raped as a teenager, giving her an affinity with The Alley Cats, whose members have similarly been dealt a bad hand in life. It has to be said though that Johnson doesn't leave much of an impression here, and gets overshadowed by both the antics of the Girl Gang and her sex mad colleague DI Stephanie Green who proudly boasts to having slept with most of the men on the force. Stephanie was so named by her parents in tribute to their cockney background, Stephanie Green being a play on Stepney Green. As an adult, her name has taken on a saucy double meaning, since like Stepney Green Tube Station, Stephanie Green is easily accessible to most Londoners (Regan's joke, not mine). I suspect Regan was trying to subvert gender roles by giving Stephanie the type of characteristics that you'd more associate with the alpha male cops of yesteryear. That is to say, that when Stephanie isn't bedding members of the opposite sex, she's drinking heavily and stuffing her face with junk food.

Guts for Garters is also part of an expanded universe, the Reganverse if you will, and works in two characters from her DCI Banham book series. Namely the aforementioned DCI Paul Banham and his colleague/lover DI Alison Grainger. I must admit that my heart sank when those two were introduced, since they are the dullest elements of their own books, and don't exactly add much here. Banham's most notable characteristic is his habit of vomiting at violent crime scenes, the result of his wife and child being killed by a mad axeman 14 years earlier. It appears that his PTSD issues are catching, since in this book Alison Grainger starts fainting at crime scenes, due to having seen a work colleague being burnt to death. Alison also has trouble unscrewing the tops off bottled water, and manages to trap her hand in her own car door at one point, apart from that she is perfectly competent at her job. What with Banham vomiting all over the place, Alison fainting and Stephanie more concerned with her horizontal pleasures, its no wonder the residents of the Aviary estate have no faith in the police force. Even Georgia comes across as a bit of a mug, paying out cash to Alysha for information that generally turns out to be useless and of course always exonerates The Alley Cats from any wrongdoing.

Guts for Garters has the mentality of a Kray Twins apologist. In the same way that certain people jump to the defense of Ronnie and Reggie, and eulogize them as good lads who loved their mum, did allot for their own community and never hurt their own, Guts for Garters fully subscribes to idea of the noble criminal with a social conscience. Good girls at heart, The Alley Cats care about the old folk on the estate, want to keep kids away from drugs, only sell firearms and machetes outside of South London and have their hearts set on rebuilding the children's playground. This book does have an unfortunate tendency to reiterate the same plot points, if I had a pound for every time I had to read about the Alley Cats' plans for the playground, I'd have enough money to pay to fix the sodding playground myself.

The contractions of The Alley Cats is something to behold. The Alley Cats sell drugs, but only to people who already use drugs, and always encourage them to stop using drugs. Alysha's goal is to open a community centre, a hair and nail salon, and lest we forget rebuild the children's playground. All of which she hopes will keep the kids away from drugs and prostitution, even though she plans to fund these schemes from the proceeds of drugs and prostitution. "I love that we're together an 'ave got plans to make the estate a good place an 'elp the kids to 'ave a chance wiv life" claims one of the Alley Cats, yet when it comes to society's ills, they seem to be spreading the disease in order to come up with the cure. Despite that, The Alley Cats believe that one day people will build statues honouring them, and they'll be as revered as Winston Churchill.

In contrast their male equivalent, the SLR are utterly without conscious, want to get all the kids hooked on crack, mug old ladies and demean their girlfriends by punching them in the face and making them pull a train. They can't be faulted when it comes to inclusivity though. While the hierarchy, like SLR leader Harisha Celik are all young Turks, the rest of the gang includes Pakistanis, mixed race kids, whitey and even the Chinese. Harisha believing that the Chinese are naturally superior to everyone else when it comes to growing cannabis and wielding samurai swords, even though those are actually Japanese weapons. Regan largely avoids race hate elements, although we do get some rather random anti-Chinese racism towards the end. One of the Alley Cats contemplates whether or not to "beat the shit out" of a Chinese rival, and the gang vow to start setting fire to Chinese restaurants in the East End if the Chinese vandalize the Alley Cats' community centre. This presumably is setting up another Johnson and the Alley Cats novel... hopefully the Chinese won’t attack the Children's playground with their Japanese swords.

Make no mistake this is a proper exploitation novel, regardless of its typically uninspired 2010s book cover and the relatively mainstream acting career of its author. Had Regan been a regular in British gangster movies or Pete Walker films -the hammer murder here brings to mind Walker's Schizo- then Guts for Garters would make sense. As it is there is nothing in Regan's career to suggest it was building up to books like this. She's isn't totally unique in this respect. Candy Davis -who also pops up in an early Minder episode - was another actress who reinvented herself as a crime novelist. Maybe there is a case for having appeared in Minder warping the minds of these bubbly blonde comedy actresses, which manifested itself years later by them writing crime books for those with strong stomachs. Regan certainly doesn't shy away from violence against women here. There are graphically described rapes and a gangbang, as well as a rebellious Muslim girl being burnt with an iron for being seen in public without her Hijab. At the same time Regan doesn't let men off the hook, with males depicted as an abusive or creepy bunch within these pages. Even DCI Banham, who is usually sympathetically portrayed in his own books (he did after all lose his wife and child to an axe murderer) gets pulled up a few times for his chauvinism. At one point, Banham makes derogatory comments about women drivers, annoying Stephanie, not of course to the extent that it puts her off wanting to have sex with him 'she watched him aiming his key at his car door and wondered what he would say if she offered him a blowjob'.

As much as Guts for Garters is in many ways the heir apparent to the nasty NEL youthspoitation paperbacks of the 1970s, Regan does self consciously try to make it a product of the 2010s. There is an influx of pop culture references that probably made this book seem hip and topical for a few months in 2015, but aren't aging well. One character is compared to Amy Winehouse, DI Johnson guesses the password on a deceased girl's laptop by typing in the names of One Direction band members and Alysha wonders 'what it was like to be famous, be someone like Rihanna, and have everything you wanted in life'. Winehouse's early death might mean that she still resonates in the public conscious, but many of the other pop culture references here now just provoke a response of 'who' or 'I haven't thought about them in years'. Such is the fickle nature of fame.

I can't fault Regan's choice of name for her head gang girl though. Since I did actually go to school with someone called Alysha, who years later resurfaced in the papers having been sent to prison for running a drugs den, and was last heard of opening a hair and nails salon. So, for an ex school chum of mine at least it seems that life really does imitate Linda Regan novel.

The Naughty World of Stanley Long

 

 

Very honoured to have contributed to this upcoming Melusine release, which exclusively features the XXX footage shot for Groupie Girl, Naughty and On the Game, with the additional option of hearing yours truly talk all over the top of it!!!

From nudies to roughies to ultra weird regional curiosities, the sexploitation world welcomed any filmmaker working in any genre, so long as the limits of nudity and sex on screen were pushed as far as they could go - but never all the way. DISTRIBPIX, one of the legendary names in the genre (and whose extensive library will be the backbone of this line), will offer single, double, and even triple feature Blu-rays highlighting works from every corner and crevice of softcore smut, from the dawn of nudie cuties to the all-but-hard 70s, with plentiful lost and never on disc films along the way.

Few names are more synonymous with the British sexploitation business than Stanley Long. For close to two decades, Long produced nearly two dozen blockbuster nudies, often working with notorious filmmaker Derek Ford, while pushing the limits of the British Board of Film Censors. Presented here are a quartet of his most ribald and rebellious efforts, all newly restored in 4K by Distribpix, from their best surviving film elements.

In THE WIFE SWAPPERS, a stern-faced doctor hosts a series of case studies focused on the often unsettling world of swingers. Director Derek Ford and producer Long’s first international hit played British cinemas for months, and helped to usher in a more permissive era in the country’s film industry. Featuring James Donnelly (Scum, Crown Court).
A small-time rock band and their young female admirers-cum-lovers embark on a cross-Britain tour in GROUPIE GIRL, and the girls discover the darker side of the musicians they adore. An earnest and sobering examination of groupie culture, director Derek Ford works from a strong screenplay co-authored by regular Long collaborator, Suzanne Mercer. What happens when a man isn’t satisfied with only his wife for a lover?
A series of light-hearted vignettes expose SEX AND THE OTHER WOMAN. Long takes on directing duties in this more farcical, upbeat comedy which piles on both high jinks and non-stop nudity. Featuring Maggie Wright (Twins of Evil) and Jane Cardew (The Flesh and Blood Show).
ESKIMO NELL tells the tale of a first time director trying to make a “serious” art film, who finds himself in over his head as each of his financial backers demands a very different, and far sexier, final product. A hilarious meta-comedy about the state of the British exploitation film industry directed by Martin Campbell (GoldenEye), co-scripted by and starring Michael Armstrong (Mark of the Devil), and starring veteran comedian/actor Roy Kinnear (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory).
directed by: Stanley Long
starring: James Donnelly, Suzanne Mercer, Maggie Wright, Jane Cardew, Michael Armstrong
1969, 1970, 1972, 1974 / 87 min, 87 min, 88 min, 86 min / 1.37:1; 1.66:1 / English DTS-HD MA 1.0
Additional info:
•2-Disc Region Free Blu-ray
•THE WIFE SWAPPERS (87min), GROUPIE GIRL (87 min), SEX AND THE OTHER WOMAN (88 min) and ESKIMO NELL (86 min) are newly restored in 4K from their best surviving film elements
•Never before seen “Continental Sequences” for The Wife Swappers and Groupie Girl
•Bonus “Continental Sequences” for Stanley Long’s films Naughty and On The Game
•Audio commentary tracks for all four “Continental Sequences” by British film historian Gavin Whitaker
•Original theatrical trailer for Groupie Girl
•Archival image gallery
•Double-sided artwork
•English SDH subtitles

The Naked Light (1970, James Moffatt)

 

One of the unintended effects of the Manson family murders at the end of the 1960s was to bring together the Canadian writer James Moffatt and British publisher New English Library. NEL wanted a quickie cash-in on the Manson phenomenon, and the fast writing hack Moffatt delivered 'Satan's Slaves'. A book so hastily written that Manson and his followers were still on trial by the time Moffatt completed it. Since Moffatt didn't really have enough material on Manson to fill an entire book, he padded Satan's Slaves out with exposés of other phoney gurus and religious conmen operating out of California. Moffatt also made several stabs in the dark about Manson's then unclear motivations. Something which managed to get Moffatt's publisher in hot water, when Moffatt used Satan's Slaves to link Manson with the Church of Scientology "Will it confirm that Manson got his start with them?". This resulted in the Scientologists taking legal action against NEL, eventually settling for an undisclosed financial sum and the agreement that Satan's Slaves was withdrawn from circulation.

Perhaps wisely, for their next Manson inspired book 'The Naked Light' Moffatt and NEL decided to drop the factual approach of Satan's Slaves and go the semi-fictional route. The Naked Light offers the unique spectacle of seeing the murder of Sharon Tate used as fodder for a Canadian author who was playing to a readership of conservative, bigoted Brits.

Our initial protagonist, greek drug dealer Stefanos Nikasnos is 'sweaty, hot and irritable' (a mood Moffatt may himself have been in when he wrote this book) as he navigates the LA traffic. In the first of many attempts to play to a patriotic British audience, Moffatt has Stefanos take pride in cutting in front of two German made cars "he had no love for the Teutonic bastards...he remembered what they had done to Greece during the war". Stefanos insists on only driving a superior, British made car.

Stefanos' client is Chloe Young, a hedonistic, heavily pregnant Hollywood actress...who in no way, shape or form is meant to remind you of Sharon Tate. Currently out of the country is Chloe's husband, Americo Batelli, a European filmmaker who is obsessed with witchcraft...who in no way, shape or form is meant to remind you of Rosemary's Baby director Roman Polanski. Stefanos just wants to deliver some drugs to Chloe's party, but gets talked into participating in a black mass and ends up porking the heavily pregnant actress on an altar while jaded Hollywood types gather round to chant the praises of Lucifer.

In yet another attempt to endear himself to a British audience, Moffatt then introduces us to Richard Boston, a darn decent British actor who has come up against a wall of xenophobia in Hollywood. Boston is regarded as a 'work stealing limey' and with his British reserve, struggles to fit in with new Hollywood what with all its stoned, rebellious, long haired, method actors. Hoping to make the swinging scene, Richard shows up at Chloe's party only to find that the only thing swinging is Chloe herself, hung from a rope with satanic symbols adorning her naked body. Five of her friends have met a similar fate, leading the cops to the conclusion 'a sick mind had been at work here. A mind tortured by witchcraft. A pornographic mentality twisted out of all reason on a bender of violent death'.

There are moments in The Naked Light where I wondered if Moffatt's inspiration for Richard Boston may have been Edmund Purdom. Although Purdom was long gone from Hollywood by the late sixties, there are quite a few similarities there. Both had come to Hollywood with the idea of appearing in big budget, biblical epics, only to suffer career setbacks due to an antagonistic relationship with the American press. Moffatt even gives Boston's love interest the name Lucy Christian, near identical to the woman Purdom effectively gave up Hollywood for... Linda Christian.

Having had their fingers burnt with Satan's Slaves, Moffatt and NEL discovered with The Naked Light that you can be as libelous and offensive about famous people as you like, as long as you write about them as if they were fictional characters. In that respect, The Naked Light leans more towards an example of Tate-spoitation, rather than Manson-spoitation. Moffatt could be a cold blooded bastard in his writing, but The Naked Light is exceptionally callous even by his standards. Keeping in mind that his main focus of hate here was a pregnant woman who had just been killed in a horrendous fashion and would have barely been cold in her grave when Moffatt cranked this out in 1970.

The Naked Light adopts a similar format as Moffatt's 'J.J. More' sex paperbacks like The Massage Girls and The Walk-On Girls, in which a character embarks on an investigation into a salacious topic. Eventually settling on the aforementioned Lucy Christian as his main protagonist, the bulk of The Naked Light is taken up by Lucy -a publicist for a movie company -talking to various Hollywood oddballs who knew the Sharon Tate proxy character and receiving an overwhelmingly damning verdict. Some of the opinions including "that girl was a bitch from the word 'Go'. She reeked sex and evil" as well as "Chloe deserved to die. I feel sorry for Americo. He's got to live with the disgrace she's left behind". I'm not sure if even the people who actually killed Sharon Tate hated her as much as Jim Moffatt does in the pages of The Naked Light.

Geographically, the Hollywood setting of this book might be thousands of miles away from the working class London of Moffatt's skinhead novels but his bitter, hateful tone is as distinct as ever. Moffatt might have inadvertently nailed his own writing style when he claims of one character 'every sentence held it's venomous poison'.

Lucy acts as both Moffatt's conservative mouthpiece -our girl hates draft dodgers, pornographers and homosexuals, but loves her Governor Reagan- while at the same time being the object of Moffatt's less conservative lust 'when she was naked under the sheets, she would perform with the agility of a snake, the passion of the demented and the urgency of a spinster'. In her attempts to uncover the truth about Chloe, Lucy's gets the dirt from Mrs. Wilmott, Chloe's devoutly catholic housekeeper who got fed up with cleaning up the used contraceptives and dead cats (sacrificed to satan). While Axel Sturm, a Swedish playboy shocks the Victorian minded Miss Christian with his open bisexuality (classic line: "Do I seem like a man who would permit buggery?"). Lucy also chats with Mala, a lesbian and Anglophile who dines out at a mock English pub. A setting that allows Moffatt to work in his obligatory plug for the Seagram's company...it seems no Hollywood lesbian would be seen dead without a glass of 'Seagram's V.O.' in her hand. As with the lesbian character in Skinhead Girl, Moffatt appears, if not exactly tolerant, then a little more relaxed with gay female characters than a gay male ones.

Speaking of which, by far the most explosive of Lucy's encounters is with 'Mish-Mash' a gay radio DJ who has jumped on the hippie bandwagon and encourages his listeners to appose the Vietnam war and call for Governor Reagan's resignation. For a homophobic author Moffatt sure could write like an old bitch at times, of poor Mish-Mash, Moffatt has this to say 'his listeners could not see his face. Nor his flabby body. Nor his feminine features and the balding head'. While Lucy can tolerate all manner of trash talk about Chloe from straights, Mish-Mash's homosexual misogyny "Chloe Young was an immoral bitch...she used her cunt..to gain fame" proves to be the straw that breaks the Christian's back "remember I'm a woman with one of those things between my legs" she barks back.

At one point, Moffatt just decides to start writing what appears to be a completely different book and indulges in his passion for 1930s Hollywood gangster movies. Suddenly we get Mafia goons trying to smuggle Chloe's killer to Canada, and the secondary character Captain Jim Herschfeld transformed into a Dick Tracy type figure. Right down to Herschfeld acquiring a young boy as a sidekick -akin to Tracy's 'The Kid' character- who Herschfeld decides to adopt on the spot and take into his home. This despite the fact that the boy isn't even an orphan. Herschfeld's rationale there being that since the boy's father beats his mother, the mother makes loud noises during sex, and the boy's sister is a prostitute, the boy is therefore the ideal choice for helping him solve sex murders. Life experiences having given the boy 'relatively advanced knowledge of manly affairs'.

Never shy of voicing his opinions, Moffatt is like Mount Vesuvius here, spilling all that hot lava on decadent, soulless Hollywood, permissive actors, non-virgin actresses, police corruption, kitchen sink dramas, sex clubs, the type of Fish and Chips that is served in LA (inferior to the British version of Fish and Chips, of course) and just about everything else under the evening sun. Oddly the same soapboxing about Hollywood being the new Sodom and Gomorrah that renders Satan's Slaves such a pontificating bore, is what makes The Naked Light such a wild ride. Wallowing in sex, drugs and witchcraft almost as much as he does warning about the dangers of sex, drugs and witchcraft. Here an angered Mr. Moffatt makes for an entertaining Mr. Moffatt for a change...and I'm sure NEL raised a glass of Seagram's V.O. to the fact that at least he didn't manage to piss the Scientologists off this time.