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.

TWEMFEST (Cliff Twemlow screening)

The Cliff Twemlow rarity Moonstalker aka Predator: The Quietus (1988), is due to be screened as part of this year’s Salford Film Festival, along with the behind the scenes footage of Twemlow’s aborted film version of his book The Pike.

I’ve never seen either Moonstalker or the Pike footage, so will definitely be attending this. If anyone else is interested in this free screening, here is the publicity blurb and contact information….

“TWEMFEST - A Celebration of Cliff Twemlow

is proud to present

MOONSTALKER

plus Documentary Short - THE PIKE

SUNDAY 14 NOVEMBER - 2pm

at the Kings Arms, Bloom Street, Salford, M3 6AN
0161 832 3605

Admission Free

CP Lee
c.lee@salford.ac.uk
0161 295 6058”

Tom, Michael, George and the Yarmouth Branch of the Women’s Institute

A quick heads up for this Peeping Tom documentary on Radio 4 next week:

“Tom, Michael and George
Tuesday 02 November11:30am - 12:00pmBBC Radio 4
To mark the 50th anniversary of the notoriously controversial British thriller Peeping Tom, Toby Jones examines the effect of this disturbing tale of glamour-photographer-turned-serial-killer on the careers of two people - director Michael Powell and real-life glamour photographer George Harrison Marks. With contributions from the director's son Columba Powell, actress Shirley Anne Field and director Michael Winner, himself no stranger to controversy.”

Some of Marks’ 8mm films starring Pamela Green are also due to receive a screening by the Yarmouth Branch of the Women’s Institute!!!
("We'll show the two 'tamest' first and leave it up to the ladies if they want to watch more")
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/hampshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9134000/9134461.stm

Cover Girl Killer revisited

In the wake of the recent DVD release of Terry Bishop’s 1959 film Cover Girl Killer (on a double-bill with another Bishop film ‘Life in Danger’, starring Derren Nesbitt), here are a couple of thoughts on this former late night TV favourite.

I can’t actually recall reading any take on the film written in recent times which doesn’t make the comparison between Cover Girl Killer and the later, more explicit Mary Millington vehicle The Playbirds. I’m guilty of this myself, opening my IMDB review of it in 2000 with “Nineteen years before Mary Millington crossed paths with a misogynist murderer bearing a grudge against bust models in The Playbirds, B-movie actress Felicity Young (Play it Cool) had to deal with the late Fifties counterpart in this enjoyable Butcher's Film Distributors programmer.” In reality, given that no one involved with The Playbirds seems to have ever even heard of Cover Girl Killer, and also bearing in mind that some of the characters and incidents in The Playbirds are based on real life, the similarities between the two films do seem to be merely a coincidence. Still British cinema’s closet obsession with the murky world of pornography can probably be traced back to late 1950s B films like this, as well as The Shakedown and The Flesh is Weak.

I first encountered Cover Girl Killer back in the 1990s, when ITV were pretty much showing it and a bunch of other films made by “Butchers Films” in rotation. Butchers productions were cheap, homegrown, crime themed efforts, shot in the late fifties and early sixties, and with ideal second feature running times of just over an hour. Viewed on a weekly TV basis like that, allot of those Butchers films do now tend to blur together in the memory. No doubt due to Butcher’s reoccurring stock company of British character actor types plus a token American or Canadian actor in the lead, as well as plots which always seemed to feature a hero who was a journalist, have at least one scene that takes place in a sleazy nightclub, and whose villains were either London gangsters or for a touch of cold war era flavour Russian spies.

Cover Girl Killer and Life in Danger remain though standout efforts by director Terry Bishop, albeit for somewhat different reasons. Life in Danger is a rarity in the sense that its storyline goes beyond being your typical Butchers film fodder and actually has something important to say about the dangers of small town prejudice and reactionary attitudes (unfortunately its a little difficult to say how without giving too much of that film’s plot away). Cover Girl Killer on the other hand sticks in the memory for having its feet firmly on the peddle of sensationalism, and is rich in bold, lurid dialogue like “surely sex and horror are the new gods in this polluted world of so called entertainment” that would seem more suited to adorning an exploitation film poster than emerging from the mouths of actors. It would be nice to see more of Bishop’s filmography, if only to judge which of these films’ approach is more typical of his career. The socially concerned one of Life in Danger or the tabloidish route of Cover Girl Killer. Either way a peek into his filmography suggests Bishop never escaped the low-budget rut. Upon his death in 1981, he had spent most of the previous decade directing health industrials, and it seems helming episodes of ITC series like Danger Man and Sir Francis Drake in the early 1960s was as good as his career ever got.

Cover Girl Killer opens with its titular character, a scheming porn hating psychopath, loitering outside a strip club and clearly up to no good. Dressed in the dirty mac attire of a raincoat, pebble glasses and a cheap wig the Cover Girl Killer is played by future Steptoe and Son star, Harry H Corbett who remains unrecognizable here from his later TV incarnation. Motivated by the “unsavoury obsessions of his twisted mind” and a need to “give back man his dignity to free him from the prison of lustful images that foul his mind and his sanity” the puritanical psycho initially poses as ‘Mr. Spendozer’, a supposed TV series director, in order to bump off models who have appeared on the cover of “Wow” a cheesecake magazine. Canadian born Spencer Teakle plays his unwitting nemesis, John Mason, a fish out of water innocent who has recently inherited a Windmill theatre type night club and the magazine Wow, from his uncle, both of which form the source of the Cover Girl Killer's rage against smut.

After initially suspected of being the murderer himself, Mason helps out the police who are being constantly outwitted by `The Man' (as Corbett’s character is billed in the credits). While the police actively encourage Mason to publish his cheesecake mag in order to lure the killer out into the open, unbeknownst to them the killer is actually working his way through Wow back issues in order to find his next victim. Still sporting his bewigged Spendozer guise, the Cover Girl Killer lures bikini model Joy (Christina Gregg) to a studio by posing as a Sun Cream commercial director, but when she peels down to a bikini the Cover Girl Killer can hold back his disgust no longer, complaining that “your nudity means nothing to me” before strangling her.

Eventually showgirl June (Felicity Young), who Mason has been trying to woo, agrees to pose for the cover of Wow in order to lay a trap for the killer. Not that the Cover Girl Killer has done with tricks to fool the police yet. His final, most devious scheme, involves him posing as a film producer and going to a showbiz agent with plans to make a movie version of his own killings. This results in a casting call during which a down on his luck actor, who has turned up for the audition dressed as the Spendozer character, is nabbed for the murders by the police, allowing the real killer a chance to get at June.

Its easy to forget these days that prior to Steptoe, Harry H Corbett enjoyed a reputation as an up and coming method actor and at the outset of his career was even being heralded as Britain’s answer to Marlon Brando. Unfortunately such was the popularity of Steptoe that he quickly became completely identified with the role, and forever typecast as a comedy actor, something which as we now know was a source of bitterness for the actor throughout the rest of his life. His early reputation is something you almost have to take on good faith these days, given that most of his acting triumphs were won on the stage, and that there are few films that showcase him very well as a serious actor. Of his earlier films, his performance as a gangster in The Shakedown is noticeably over the top, and his northern accent in Muriel Box’s adaptation of Charles Dyer’s Rattle of a Simple Man is to these manucian ears at least, pretty ropey to put it mildly. Cover Girl Killer could of easily been just another one-note psycho killer role for Corbett, thankfully the film makers were clever enough to turn the character into quite the master of disguise. Something which also allows Corbett room to pull off a number of memorable character turns within the one role. The superbly creepy Mr. Spendozer soon gives way to the outwardly more respectable looking, but equally dodgy film producer guise of “Mr. Spiller”. In an even more audacious twist the killer also pops up at police headquarters at one point posing as “Mr. Fairchild” a bowler hat wearing toff, who tries to throw the police off his trail by giving them an ID of the killer based on the Spendozer guise. Whilst allowing Corbett to flex his acting muscles this host of bizarre characters the Cover Girl Killer wheels out also introduces an intriguing guessing game to the film as to which, if any, of these personas are closest to the
nameless killer’s real identity.

Just like its psychopathic master of disguise the film itself seems to be comprised of several different, contradictory personalities. At times the film seems to have quite a sense of humour about itself, and could almost be described as a black comedy. Check out the scene in which the lead detective, commenting on a bikini clad victim initially suspected to have been a suicide case, asks the pathologist “Doc, if you were to do yourself in at 1 O’clock in the morning, would you put on a bikini”. A line that regular Butchers player Victor Brooks somehow manages to deliver straight-faced, but which its hard to believe wasn’t written by someone with a slight smirk on their face. At other times however Cover Girl Killer seems to suffer from delusions of grandeur, as if its makers considered themselves worthy of greatness and a film like this beneath them. The script is full of cheap quips about the supposed illiteracy and -nudge, nudge, wink, wink- poor eyesight of readers of cheesecake magazines like Wow, as if the makers of films with titles like Cover Girl Killer had the right to look down on anyone. At its most moralizing the film introduces scenes whose sole purpose is to paint unflattering portraits of the victims’ husbands and fathers- who inevitably are revealed to be sad ineffectual men, a drunk husband living out a bed sit existence whose wife left him to pursue a modeling career, and a wheelchair bound father who let his daughter go into girlie magazine modeling to earn some extra cash for herself. At these moments the film seems to take on the guise of a chauvinistic public information film, pointing the finger at these weak men and citing their inability to control the women in their lives as the reason for their loved ones’ demise.

Even more intriguing than the film’s mood swings from saucy humour to tut-tut moralizing, is its fixation for turning the camera round on the cheap film world that the film itself sprung from. The supporting characters all have an air of being taken from real life about them. All are very much the sort of characters you’d expect to have had to rub shoulders with in the British B movie world of the late 1950s, from Gregg’s talentless bikini model who pathetically prides herself on being “Miss Torquay 1959” to the unscrupulous showbiz agent who comes across as the prototype of Eskimo Nell’s Benny U Murdoch and proclaims “I'm all for the good old X-certificate if you can get it”. Most touching of all is the nobody actor who turns up at the fake audition only to suffer the double humiliation of not only being mistaken by the police for a killer, but also failing to be recognized by them as an actor. “I haven’t worked for six months” he pleads with the police, trying to explain away why his face isn’t familiar to them, before going on to try and regain some hurt pride by claiming “I worked for two years at the Old Vic”

Its particularly ironic then that a film which paints such a self-loathing picture of the British B movie world as a place of depressed nobody actors, talentless starlets and X certificate fixated filmmakers, should now stand as one of its most entertaining and most seen examples. Don’t let this put you off though, if anything these candid insider elements make Cover Girl Killer even more fascinating now, given that the times and places these lowly characters inhabited have now long gone. Its contradictory attitude of distain and fascination for the burgeoning market in cheesecake magazines and films with ‘the good old X certificate’ slapped on them, now can be seen as reflecting the anxiety of those pre-permissive society times, and the “sex and horror are the new gods” quote entirely accurate given that the rise of nudist films, Hammer horror, the Profumo affair and the critical crucifixion of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom lay just around the corner.

For what is essentially a cheap B movie, Cover Girl Killer really has had a amazingly long shelf life, from a regular late night TV attraction during the 1980s and 1990s (Back in 2000 I wrote that “The Cover Girl Killer now enjoys a second life as a stable of late night television, guaranteeing that the Ghost of the Cover Girl Killer will haunt insomniacs and the curious for many years to come” ) to now being back for a third time to haunt these insomniacs and the curious on DVD as well. As the Cover Girl Killer himself might have begrudgingly noted, surely sex and horror are the new gods in this polluted world of so called DVD entertainment as well.






















Cover Girl Killer poster from
www.wrongsideoftheart.com/

A Fistful of 8mm Glamour Films

Birthed in the late 1950s the 8mm British glamour film was the logical extension of the popular nudie magazines of the time. Its no real surprise then that the films themselves mostly emanated from the same source, with many of the key pioneers of the nudie magazine, Harrison Marks, Russell Gay, Stanley Long and Ken Williams laying down their photographic cameras and becoming rookie filmmakers to turn out countless examples of these short b/w films of their models undressing. Several DVDs worth of new (to me anyway!) examples of the genre came my way recently, and while they span the 1960s and 1970s and were the work of different filmmakers they warrant I feel a collective write-up, offering as they do a loose history of 8mm titillation and a peek into the changing face of what was socially acceptable in adult material during these eras.

The earliest examples of 8mm films by Marks, Gay, Long and Williams are if truth be known little more than filmed documents of one of their magazines' photo-shoots with models undressing and posing in the nude and whose main historic interest now lies in their capturing famous models of the era -like Pamela Green and June Palmer- on film. Because these films kept firmly within the acceptable standards set by these filmmaker’s own magazines, which emphasized boobs and bums but avoided full frontal nudity, these 8mm short films soon became common sights in newsagents in the West End and even more unlikely places “the market was vast because all the photographic shops stocked these things” remarked Harrison Marks in 1997 “Dixons were my main customers”. Of course real pornography did exist in Britain at the time, Ivor Cooke turned out numerous raw, taboo themed stag films throughout the 1960s, and some sources even have it that Harrison Marks himself was directing hardcore on the sly during the early sixties. Such productions however were totally illegal and therefore filmed and shown in the most cloak and dagger circumstances possible and certainly never allowed to intrude on mainstream sensibilities in the way that the 8mm glamour film would….. nor would they ever be sold in Dixons!!.

As the craze for these short black and white films of women undressing began to take off, many companies like Top Hat, Herald, Ultima and Windmill Films sprung up to cater to this new niche for the nude. Titles like PENTHOUSE STRIP (Unique Films), BED BOOK AND CANDLE (KLF ) and NIGHT CLUB QUEEN are fairly listless examples of the early glamour film, and in spite of the location specific title of the latter were all filmed on basic sets.

With comedy and sex being so deeply intertwined in British culture via Max Miller, George Formby and Donald McGill, its no surprise that when the 8mm glamour film finally started to develop its own personality it generally chose to serve up titillation whilst tickling the funny bone. PEEPING TOM (circa early 60s) nicks its title from Michael Powell and proves that years before Robin Askwith took up the mop and bucket a window cleaner was the No.1 occupation for getting an eyeful of a stripping housewife. Not to mention an invitation to comedic trouble as befalls the peeping window cleaner here, who gets caught by her husband and then falls through his ladder whilst trying to make a quick get-away. HONEYMOON NIGHT (Playtime films, late 60s) features glamour model Samantha Bond as part of a just married couple spending their honeymoon in a hotel and much of the running time taken up by Bond undressing in the bathroom while her husband waits in their bedroom. In a scenario used in countless sit-coms and stage farces Bond then forgets which room number she is in, goes into the wrong room and gets in bed with a weirdo who chases her about the hotel before being punched out by her hubby. Bond, a stunning redhead who would go onto to appear in Lindsay Shonteff’s Permissive, now runs her own model agency and has the dubious honour of being the woman who discovered Jordan- we all have our crosses to bear.

Other 8mm films eschew any basis in reality and come across as equally dirty mac daydreams sprung to life and unintentional surrealist filmmaking. NUDE COCKTAIL features a naked barmaid serving drinks to a clothed female customer who upon discovering she has left her purse at home pays for her drinks with her clothes. Bunny Blue Belles films whose logo was a rudely suggestive drawing of a rabbit (it actually looks like an ejaculating cock) contributed USE A HOT IRON to the surrealist 8mm glamour film genre in which a woman loses her clothes while attempting to do the ironing, then in a scene that should come with its own “don’t try this at home” warning, runs an iron over her breasts to test how hot the iron is!!

The female lead in Use a Hot Iron clearly had a bit of a career in these things and also pops up in several other Bunny Blue Belles productions like “Dreamy Plaything”. If truth be known though only a handful of actress/models from these films ever progressed to much more beyond further sexploitation gigs. One who did was Sue Bond, now best known for her three year stint on the Benny Hill Show and her subsequent sitcom and panto roles. Sue had a background in the late 1960s glamour scene, modeling nude for magazines like “Terrific” and acting in several Harrison Marks 8mm films. “It came as quite a shock the first time I realized a director had selected me for my profile than my portrayal” she complained to Titbits magazine in 1975 “after all its not exactly what your dreams are made of”, today Sue is reportedly even more guarded about this side of her career, even going so far as to deny her participation in such material. Just as well then that we have AUDITION NIGHT (Expo Films) which conveniently serves as a visualization of Sue’s humble nudie beginnings, and sees Sue-who is billed on the 8mm box under the name ‘Heidi Kessler’- auditioning for a disinterested magazine publisher. As well as a showcase for Ms. Bond’s assets, Audition Night also sees the filmmakers both simultaneously play up and parody the public’s image of smut peddlers. The blokish magazine publisher Sue shakes her boobs at is made up like a caricature of a soho sleazebucket, chain smoking his way through several cigarettes, hiding behind dark glasses and barely acknowledging Sue in favour of reading a copy of ‘Men Only’ much to the annoyance of S.B. Its only in the film’s closing moments do we discover the reason for his apathy towards her. As Sue suddenly notices a curtain twitching in his office he quickly springs into action attempting to shoo her out of the room before the curtain comes down revealing several photographers who have been snapping away during her nude audition.

While Sue may well have progressed beyond 8mm films and been given an entry into sitcom and panto land, such later career achievements pale in comparison to the mainstream successes of Margaret Nolan, who after a brief two year glamour modeling stint as “Vicky Kennedy” would enjoy roles in big budget films featuring The Beatles and James Bond, be immortalized as Dawn Brakes in Carry on Girls and unlike Sue Bond could also lay claim to have been taken seriously as an actress with roles in Last of the Summer Wine and Crown Court that were far removed from her glamour and even Carry On image. Two of Margaret’s early 8mm glamour film calling cards to the industry -Dawn Brakes’ early breaks if you will- were SEXATIONAL and the aptly named PRESENTING THE FABULOUS VICKY KENNEDY (Star Films). The latter is immediately of collector interest as it is in colour, whereas most of the filmed footage of Margaret’s glamour period is in black and white. A pity then that its so indifferently filmed and poorly lit, and on the basis of the film it would seem that Star Films were one of the more low-rent of the 8mm glamour outfits. The film itself which follows Margaret in and out of a shower and ends with her posing nude on a bed, even includes full frontal shots, albeit briefly and probably the result of filmmaking incompetence rather than any serious desire to challenge the status quo on the use of full nudity in 8mm films.

Sexational, likely to have been filmed by Russell Gay, is in black and white and similarly limited in terms of onscreen action, yet is infinitely superior, and goes to show the difference an established glamour photographer behind the camera can make. Gay uses a variety of imaginative costume and set changes, as well as a generous amount of long shots, pans and close-ups to draw out Margaret’s looks, personality and allure on camera. The result is an 8mm glamour film whose natural sexiness has held up well through the ages and the successful marriage of a model with sex appeal by the bucket load and a photographer who knows how to utilize it. Like many of the girls captured in these films Margaret was also a smoker and signs off the film by producing a cigarette, being given a light off screen (likely by Gay himself) and blowing smoke seductively at the camera. A memorable reminder of a time when fagging it onscreen was seen as a sexy and glamorous thing to do, and lending an obviously post-coital feel to the films closing moments.


Future horror filmmaker Pete Walker also began his career in the world of 8mm glamour films, shooting an estimated 400 to 500 glamour shorts in the mid to late sixties and boasting that none of these films took more than half an hour to make. Watch some of these films today and you’ll be amazed it took Pete as long as half an hour. Still as his 8mm glamour career continued there are slow signs of -if not exactly a cinematic great in the making- then some interest in filmmaking beyond shooting simple stripteases. This transition is reflected in TOP MODELS OF THE YEAR, a self-produced compilation of Walker’s 8mm films which also displays Walker’s tenancy for billing his models with “Miss” before their names as if they were being introduced at a high society ball rather than about to take their clothes off for an 8mm film. Clips from “Miss Britt Hampshire” and “Miss Yvonne Bennett and Miss Maria Thomas” suggests routine glamour films, on the other hand “Miss Donna Marlowe” uses some primitive stop motion effects to undress Miss Marlowe (Walker’s real life girlfriend at the time). Every time she plucks a flower, part of her clothing magically disappears, still embarrassed as she is by this the girl just can’t stop plucking. Even funnier are clips from Walker’s “Aeronautical Nude”, starring Miss Ann Walker as a pilot who somehow manages to perform a striptease while supposedly flying and landing a light aircraft. The film ends with Ann awkwardly emerging from the plane backwards (obviously in order to avoid any full frontal shots) and with a royally puzzled expression that suggests someone waiting for her director to yell cut and get her down.


For Walker the 8mm films seem to have been at best a means of making money and a way of learning the basics of filmmaking in order to progress to better things. He is famously quoted as later saying “I didn’t want to be known as a tit man…. I didn’t want to be Harrison Marks”. Marks on the other hand was clearly in the sex industry for the duration and would fully inject his own personality and drunken memories of his music hall forefathers into his productions. Marks’ ROSE’S BUSTIN' OUT ALL OVER (circa 1964), contains the sort of double-entendre in its title that Max Miller would have been proud to deliver. Rather than featuring anyone called Rose the film actually stars model Maxine King, who while attractive is hardly busting out all over. Only as the film progresses does the title make any sense as Maxine goes for a nude walkabout in a garden to admire the roses in bloom, hence Roses busting out all over!! Marks’ sense of humour is even more in evidence in STRICTLY FOR BACHELORS (1968). Coming across as a piss take on TV advertising and cookery shows aimed at women, Strictly for Bachelors purports to show women how to bake a Christmas cake, and casts topless model Cindy Neal as a sexed up Fanny Cradock wannabe following onscreen advice and making a royal hash of it. A caption asking her to “take two cherries” has her pointing cluelessly to her nipples while another asking her to add a dash of napoleon brandy to the mix results in her drinking brandy while dressed as Napoleon. Neal is actually a real find, not only able to hold a candle to any of Marks’ greatest models in the looks department but also proving herself to be game for a laugh and a good comedienne here. There is a real sense that Neal and Marks had lots of fun making this, with Neal throwing eggs and flower around her mock kitchen set (it was actually filmed at Marks’ flat in St John’s Wood) and Marks throwing in some very rude visual gags like Neal kneading dough with her bum and the cherry topped cake eventually expanding to resemble a giant tit before exploding covering Neal with a sticky white substance. You get the impression that Marks may have worried he’d gone a little too overboard with the comedy here, since after the exploding cake gag the film ends on a more conventional, calmer note with Neal filmed posing nude amidst such bachelor pad essentials as a TV set and a Frank Sinatra LP, the film was after all Strictly for Bachelors.

As the sixties gave way to the 1970s the 8mm glamour film began turning towards soft core rather than mere nude posing. Harrison Marks first tested these waters with 8mm films like Tutti Fruit and Hot Teddy which feature off the wall stand-ins for sex acts with the former depicting Sue Roberts suggestively eating a banana while the latter sees Sue Bond madly humping a giant teddy bear. Marks finally made the transition to soft core shorts featuring real people with titles like PENNY AND PAUL a no-frills recording of a sex session between the busty Penny and a longhaired stud who’d go on to bonk his way through several more of Marks’ soft and hardcore shorts during the 1970s.

As with his early 8mm glamour films Marks’ soft core shorts quickly became more elongated affairs often running around 12-15 minutes and with elaborate plots that were an outlet for Marks’ comedy inclinations. By the time of Marks’ GOODNIGHT NURSE, which was filmed in 1972 and released in January 1973, Marks was shooting both b/w soft core versions of his films for the UK market and colour hardcore versions for Tabu’s Charlie Brown to distribute in Germany. The colour hardcore version of Goodnight Nurse which is called “The Happy Nurses” was written up by me back in June, and the soft version keeps pretty close to it in terms of plot, only with the action kept soft core and a few cast changes. Having entrusted the role of the doctor to a ubiquitous hardcore actor in The Happy Nurses, Marks himself steps into the role for Goodnight Nurse. Also present and correct is Howard Nelson, who reprises his role as a blacked-up fez wearing patient from The Happy Nurses. As this was a non-sex role Howard is soon wheeled away allowing Doctor Marks to have a quick fumble with one of the nurses. At the same time a patient who resembles a young hippie version of Marks, is checked in and soon becomes a target for the randy nurses. As in the Happy Nurses the patient is eventually revealed to be the new ward porter, news that the nurses react to by emptying a fruit bowl over him.


According to a 1972 interview with Marks, Goodnight Nurse was inspired by his own hospitalization that year which predictably caused his mind to drift onto the subject of naughty nurses (tellingly he also wrote the script for Come Play With Me around this time as well). “The first week or two I didn’t pay much attention, I was too groggy to think about sex” he claimed “but when I felt a bit better, the old urge came back. I started to think about a bit of crumpet again”. Unfortunately for Marks the reality of the situation was rather less erotic than the film it inspired with the day nurses Marks was lusting after always replaced at 8’O Clock by “a pair of right dragons”. While one of the nurses did it seems go after Marks she wasn’t exactly Mary Millington, rather she was, in Marks’ own words “built like a brick built shithouse” and kept Marks up till 3am in the morning talking about sex until he eventually shooed her away by complaining “I am a bit tired”. One suspect she must have been really rough on the eye for him to turn down an offer of sex, and in a way its a testament to Marks’ overactive imagination that such an un-erotic sounding encounter could be turned into the randy farce that is Goodnight Nurse.

This in mind its tempting to speculate whether the chronologically final Marks’ films on the discs, BLOWJOB and NIGHT DREAMS have a similar basis in real life incidents that Marks sexed up in his imagination and then put on film. BLOWJOB features a punter contacting a prostitute from the back pages of a sex magazine and both of them going down on each other in scenes shot on Marks’ couch at his flat. In the comedic punch line the punter then rewards the woman with two one pound notes and she in turn offers him some green shield stamps!!! NIGHT DREAMS is Marks’ mock horror film which opens once again on his couch, and with a woman flicking through a book on horror films, with particular emphasis on pictures of Lugosi’s Dracula and Karloff’s Frankenstein. After this not so light reading she retires to bed only to suffer a nightmare, symbolized in the film by Karloff’s face superimposed over her tossing and turning in the nude. At the same time a mysterious stranger, initially seen only by shots of his gloved hands and feet, creeps around her apartment. Its all shot in a manner to suggest we’re building up to a full on horror outing, with lots of stereotypical horror imagery like a clock striking midnight, before the film reveals itself to have been a bit of a tease. Since when the woman wakes up she is greeted not by the sight of Dracula or Frankenstein but Harrison Marks himself, stripping off and jumping into bed with her, no doubt in order to offer her some “comfort” after her bad dream. A scene that also allows Marks to display a whole new side to his talents- his backside !!!


With titles like Blowjob the norm and even Marks himself flashing his Harris onscreen, the old style nude posing 8mm glamour film was clearly a thing of the past by this point. Some, such as original glamour girl Pamela Green may have felt that much of the artistry went out of the window in the 8mm glamour worlds’ clambering for a more upfront approach to sex. But with nudity by then common place in the tabloids and mainstream films as well as John Lindsay making blue movies more publicly visible thanks to his regular appearances in the tabloids and in court the 1970s were clearly marching to a more saucier beat. Changes that left the surviving 8mm filmmakers like Marks, Russell Gay and Ken Williams now free to depict the sort of explicit scenarios that a generation raised on the likes of Nude Cocktail and Use a Hot Iron had had to make do with merely visualizing in their minds as coy images of nude women serving cocktails or ironing in the all together flickered onscreen.

THE END !!!