Skinhead Girls (1972, James Moffatt)

 

Skinhead Girls has a reputation for being one of James Moffatt’s more shambolic books, and it is a reputation that is well earned.  I wouldn’t say this is Moffatt’s worst book –Satan’s Slaves and Dragon Skins are much more of a chore to get through- but you can never make a case for Skinhead Girls being a textbook example of how to write a book.  A sort of side-sequel to Moffatt’s ‘Skinhead’ series –on account of their anti-hero Joe Hawkins receiving a few name checks here- the title Skinhead Girls is a bit of a misnomer.  Moffatt’s focus is on just one girl, Joan Kerr, and she’s only really affiliated with a skinhead gang for a few of the early chapters.  For the majority of the book, Joan is a newly re-married woman, works in a supermarket and spends her free time as a Suedehead.  Then again Skinhead Girls is the type of title that sold books, rather than the more accurate ‘Homemaker, Shop Assistant and Part Time Suedehead’. 

Moffatt kicks off Skinhead Girls in a characteristically vicious mood, as Joan and her skinhead friends travel to Brighton with the express purpose of beating up hippies.  Armed and dangerous, Joan makes the trip with a knife hidden in her bra and a tyre iron stuck up her skirt.  Both of which come into play when there is a savage ruckus on Brighton Beach that sees the hippie men being kicked in the balls and beaten over the head with the tyre iron, while the female hippies predictably fall victim to the rape-ready skinhead men.  “She didn’t give a damn what the blokes did to the hippie birds but she did object to the way they had acted like Stallions with a king-size urge”.  The straw that breaks the Skinhead Girl’s back comes when Joan’s skinhead husband Ian insists that the missus participate in the rape of one of the hippie girls.  “The memory of ineffectual matings blasted holes in the fabric of their relationship and she suddenly wanted to run...anywhere...get away...escape this degenerate scene”. 

Skinhead Girls then makes the misstep of jumping forward several years, and finds Joan re-married, struggling to make ends meet, and holding down a succession of dead end jobs.  Reading about Joe Hawkins, who is back in the news due to having escaped from prison, sends Joan on a trip down memory lane to a time when she was wild and out of control.  This anecdotal format ensures that Skinhead Girls is never dull, there’s aggro, a gang bang and numerous eye watering descriptions of below-the-belt violence “her fingers were shafts of burning fire, twisting, squeezing, clutching at his testicles”.  If only Moffatt’s plot could grab your attention with the same effectiveness that Joan grabs a guy by the bollocks.  Unfortunately no amount of sleaze or ball busting incidents can hide just how mundane and uninvolving Joan’s present day circumstances are, and Moffatt was never great at feigning sympathy with the unfulfilled working class youths that his writing became synonymous with.  Finding people Moffatt actually liked can be a needle-in-a-haystack like task in his books, but Skinhead Girls manages to put forward at least two candidates for this extremely exclusive club, namely Vincent Price and Edward Woodward.  Price receiving a positive name check when Joan and husband number two, Brian, go to a double-bill at the local fleapit “Vincent Price’s in the big picture...I dig him, don’t you” asks Joan.  The big Vincent Price film at the time Moffatt was writing this would have been The Abominable Dr. Phibes, although that bears no resemblance to the film within a book described in Skinhead Girls.  When it comes to the small screen, there can only be one man for Joan, Edward Woodward in Callan, a show Moffatt does write about here with genuine enthusiasm. 

Moffatt’s books weren’t known for being nice to people though, and Skinhead Girls is yet another of his books that gives the author a chance to bash Pakistanis, Gays, Jews, Hippies and Trade Unionists in print.  As well as add a new group to the Moffatt hate list, his main gripe here being with the Greek community.  Ferdie, the Greek owner of Joan’s local greasy spoon cafe, exists in these pages merely to be insulted.  “I wasn’t in the mood for catering to bloody foreigners who came over here and took over our Caffs” seethes Joan.  In that sense at least, Moffatt definitely wasn’t into Greek. 

As per usual for Moffatt, sexuality leads us into dark, morally murky waters in Skinhead Girls.  Moffatt continues his troubling obsession with underage sex.  Joan being yet another Moffatt heroine who begins young- aged just 14- with Moffatt displaying no qualms about delving into that for the purpose of intended titillation.  “Frequent handling had filled out her breasts better than any bust-developing cream.  Delightful nights spent behind Centrepoint flats had worked wonders for thighs, hips, buttocks”. 

Characters struggling with their sexuality is another reoccurring theme in Skinhead Girls.  One of the skinheads, Colin, has an unspecified problem when it comes to ‘relaxing’ around women, but although Moffatt is adamant that Colin ‘wasn’t bloody bent’, it is difficult to reach any other conclusion, especially with follow on lines like “being without a bird was akin to having a priest tell a bloke he was doomed to limbo with a bunch of queers”.  Joan too initially struggles with fears that she might be gay, fleeing from the rape of the hippie girl after she finds herself being unexpectedly turned on by it “her mind burned as she ran...was she?...wasn’t she? The heat of the hippie girl’s body against hers had been delectable.... ‘I’m not queer’ kept running through her mind”.  Later on in the book, we get a bona fide lesbian character called...what else... Butch, who dresses like a dandy and speaks like a luvvie “you get better looking every day, dawling”.  While Butch is paraded around like a sideshow attraction for Moffatt’s audience, she is surprisingly a force for good in the book, and there is none of the violent hostility Moffatt has for gay male characters “Her ‘disease’ wasn’t one of those to make me squirm and shy away. Providing I kept her outside grope length I felt comfortable in her company”.  For a book that was written by a homophobic author, and was aimed at a straight male audience, Skinhead Girls sure bangs on about the erotic appeal of Edward Woodward allot as well “He was fabulous. A sex-pot.  A real He-man” swoons Joan “God, how I’d have done whatever he wanted me to do”. 

Skinhead Girls marked the end of Moffatt’s association with Laurence James, who’d been Moffatt’s editor at New English Library, as well as a published NEL author in his own right.  James later cited Moffatt’s drinking, extreme right wing views and unreliability as the reasons for the split, and why he pasted the job of editing future Moffatt books onto others.  After reading Skinhead Girls you can understand why James jumped ship.  There is no doubt about it, Skinhead Girls is a messy piece of work, which looks like James was just able to salvage.  The book alternates between being told in the first and third person.  Then there’s that confusing, unannounced time jump early on in the book that sees Joan suddenly go from being married to a skinhead called Ian to a suedehead called Brian.  The fact that Brian is virtually the same character as Ian makes Moffatt’s decision to fast forward the story by a few years seem even more unnecessary.   For reasons known only to himself, Moffatt also sets himself the task of writing a brand new character into just about every other chapter, giving highly detailed back stories to people who have little bearing on the main plot.  Do we really need to know what appears to be the entire life story of George, the local butcher, who after all the build up doesn’t even turn out to be the butcher Joan chooses to shop at!  Likewise, we get nearly a whole chapter documenting suedehead Karl’s journey from Cheltenham to London,  only to discover that his only purpose in the book is to show up at Joan’s local, finger her (in the rude sense) then get kicked in the balls for his troubles.  Which was hardly worth him making the journey for, nor us having to read all about it in detail.  Perhaps most damaging of all is Skinhead Girls’ ending...or rather that is doesn’t have one, and simply stops dead in its tracks.  Did Moffatt intend to write more? It certainly feels that way, with the last chapter hinting at a confrontation between Joan and her new neighbours, teasing the return of Joe Hawkins, and setting up the mystery of why red smears keep appearing on Brian’s belly.  However, whatever was on Moffatt’s mind, he failed to get it down on paper.  Leaving you to wonder if Moffatt’s inability to finish Skinhead Girls was the final nail in the coffin between him and Laurence James.  I am told Moffatt did write another Joan Kerr novel called ‘Smoothies’ in 1973, which given that it has the potential to tie up all these loose ends is likely to be my next destination on the Moffatt trail.  

Skinhead Girls has the feel of a book that Moffatt was making up as he went along, and sadly wasn’t getting struck by too many flashes of inspiration.  What with the majority of the skinhead nastiness relegated to flashbacks, the rest of the book is all rather soap opera-ish, mainly centred on Joan’s attempts at keeping potential love rivals away from her husband, and day to day dealings with her dullard boss and tarty female co-workers.  The latter at least giving Moffatt the opportunity to lust after the type of woman he was into, I believe the word I am searching for is....trollops.  “She had big, brown eyes, jutting breasts and buttocks like over-filled udders constantly shifting weight inside her tight skirt”.  On that level, Moffatt has his moments here, even finding a kindred spirit in Toby, one of the skinheads “he loved them big and titty.  He couldn’t content himself with short-assed birds.  The old adage ‘the bigger the better’ was the epitaph he wanted engraved on his lonely grave”.

Undoubtedly the most psychologically revealing aspect to Skinhead Girls is how Moffatt turns himself into a secondary character in the book.  ‘Victor Carlyle’ is a chain-smoking, heavy drinking newspaper hack, who has been fired by the majors, rejected by paperback companies, and hopes to salvage his career by writing a series of trashy articles about football hooligans.  Remind you of anyone?  Moffatt even used one of the proposed titles for Carlyle’s piece ‘Terrace Terrors’ for one of his own books, a couple of years later.  While these meta elements to Skinhead Girls would have been lost on audiences of the time, ‘Carlyle’ offers much insight into Moffatt’s own character.  Moffatt captures all of his own lechery, racism and cynical contempt for his subject matter, as Carlyle views writing about youth cults as his means of escaping them “only bigger and better success stood between him and a country home far from this sickening mob”.  Moffatt had in fact already decamped to Sidmouth, Devon by the time of Skinhead Girls, and holding on to that exclusive address was a strong motivating factor in him writing like a madman during this period.  Be prepared to be rendered temporarily deaf, when Moffatt loudly blows his own trumpet at one point, by having Joan cite her two favourite books as “Richard Allen’s Skinhead and Justice for a Dead Spy by James Moffatt.  That Silas Manners was fifty times better than James Bond”.  Saying that, Moffatt clearly poured his own bitterness, pain and career frustrations into the Victor Carlyle character.  At one point Moffatt even seems to be apologising for the poor quality of Skinhead Girls, by having Carlyle admit to writer’s block “the harder he thought, the worse his efforts became”.  If you are reading Skinhead Girls and it ever crosses your mind what motivated a person to write books like this, the answer can be found hidden away in its own pages.  “Of late, he had taken knocks to his inflated ego.  Like those novels that had been rejected.  Like being fired.  At the moment he rode a wave’s crest with these articles.  And he was bloody well determined to keep surfing on high”.  If I was a betting man, I’d wager that Moffatt secretly wished he could have used Carlyle’s way of signing off articles, as his own author’s dedication for this book “To all the rotten little bastards- my love”.    

The valuable life lesions that rotten little bastards can take away from Skinhead Girls include... life is too short to settle for short-assed birds, beware of Greeks bearing Full-English breakfasts, and most vital of all for men...your balls are not safe around a woman from Plaistow.

Under the Counter (2022, Oliver Carter)

 

I highly recommend this book ‘Under the Counter – Britain’s Trade in Hardcore Pornographic 8mm films’, which has proven to be an absolute goldmine of information about British blue movies.  Beginning with the primitive b&w efforts of the 1960s and taking the story up to the censorship axe coming down in 1984 in the form of the video recordings act.  In the process Oliver Carter’s book pieces together a gripping tale of police corruption, porn entrepreneurs, live sex shows, taboo breaking 8mm films, obscenity trials, and leaves no stone unturned when it comes to Soho in its sex driven heyday. 

Those early hardcore loops (referred to at the time, and in this book, as ‘rollers’ ) have often left inquisitive souls, whose interest in them goes beyond the masturbatory, to ask ‘who made these movies, and just what was their story’.  Questions that get an answer in Under the Counter, which puts names to those anonymous filmmakers, explains how they came to be involved in the porn trade, the difficulties faced by these often untrained filmmakers, how the films were distributed around Soho and the inevitable cash payments slipped to bent policeman in smoky pubs, which guaranteed they stayed in business.  The collusion between corrupt members of the Obscene Publications Squad and the London underworld, which allowed hardcore to flourish in Soho under their watchful eyes, is the main theme of Under the Counter.  Meaning that this book is equally at home in the true crime section as it is in the halls of academia.  When it comes to tales of criminality, there is no shortage of explosive moments in Under the Counter.  Quite literally in the case of ‘Fat’ Bill Hicks, a bookshop owner who upon being shaken down by gangsters, responded by reaching below the counter, not for the expected wad of cash, but for a hand grenade.  Then there is the case of the unfortunate shoplifter, whose attempt to steal from a shop belonging to ‘Godfather of Soho’ Bernie Silver, resulted in the thief being hustled upstairs by Silver’s henchmen, hung from the ceiling then ‘stripped and cut down his back with a bayonet’.  Even in such an environment, pornographer Mike Freeman stands out as this book’s wild card, as well as its most compelling and terrifying character.  Freeman’s lifelong hatred of the law, and devil-may-care attitude to pornography (his casting call extending to three underage schoolgirls) gradually made him a liability in an environment where pornographers were expected to be on cosy terms with crooked cops, and not draw outside attention to their activities.  Freeman’s inability to work within such a system resulted in him being essentially blackballed from the dirty bookshop circuit, and if his self mythologizing is to be believed, marked for death.  Freeman comes across like British porn’s version of Bobby Beausoleil, a man who feared nothing, and like Beausoleil ended up with blood on his hands.  Infamously killing an associate in 1969 by stabbing him to death ‘in self defence’ 89 times.

As the story moves on into the 1970s, it sees the rise of the celebrity pornographer, with ‘membership only’ cinema owner David Waterfield and Scottish blue filmmaker John Lindsay appearing on TV and in the media.  A far cry from their shadowy, publicity shy, porn forefathers.  Both men portrayed themselves as sexual freedom fighters and anti-censorship campaigners, the ideological opponents of the likes of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford.  An image that in Waterfield’s case appears to have been genuine, he did lend his support to several counter culture groups of the period.  Whereas Lindsay’s claims to be motivated by a social conscience feels a bit more contrived and questionable.

The amount of research in this book is exemplary, there are stories told here about the blue movie trade that I’d feared had been lost to time, and characters brought to life who I’d only heard of passing.  Like the mysterious Ivor Cook and German porn smuggler turned producer Walter ‘Charlie Brown’ Bartkowski.  Under the Counter even manages to bring new material to the table when it comes to comparatively well documented figures like Freeman and Lindsay.  Among the many, many revelations in this book is that both are now deceased, their deaths receiving little, if any, public acknowledgement until Under the Counter’s publication.  Freeman passed away in June 2021, while John Lindsay died way back in 2006.  Which now explains why all attempts to track down and interview Lindsay during the last decade have never met with any success!  Under the Counter also takes the opportunity to correct misinformation that has been allowed to slip out about British hardcore, providing evidence that the Mary Millington loop ‘Miss Bohrloch’ couldn’t have been made prior to the Watergate scandal (you’ll have to read the book to find out why).  Meaning that Bohrloch likely dates from around 1972-1973, rather than the often cited 1969 or 1970 production date.  It also retells the story of the BBC’s ill-fated attempt to film John Lindsay at work- as part of the Open University strand of programming- with more much clarity and accuracy than the account given in Stanley Long’s autobiography.  Although Long’s portrayal of Lindsay as an untrustworthy character (Lindsay invited the BBC to Long’s penthouse and filmed pornography there without Long’s permission) is certainly validated by this lengthier account of the incident.  Which suggests that Lindsay mentioning about it in the newspapers is what first got the BBC in trouble with the law, the broadcasters’ woes added to when Lindsay then sold his side of the story to the News of the World tabloid.  

John Lindsay (1935-2006)

The appendix of this book alone –which documents around 1000 blue movies shot in Britain from 1960 to 1980- singles out Under the Counter as a ground breaking work in terms of film research.  Offering a tantalising glimpse into an underbelly of the British sex film that exists beyond the pleasantries of Confessions of a Window Cleaner and 8mm glamour films, with perverse, yet oh-so-British titles like: The Carpet Fuckers, Prick Layers, Up Your Kilt and Vicar’s Fantasy.  In another apparent first, Under the Counter shines a light on the comparatively small, but historically important, gay side of British hardcore, represented by Hard Dollar Hustler (Alan Purnell, 1977) thought to be Britain’s first feature length gay hardcore movie.  As well as ‘Dial a Guy’ and ‘What a Gay Day’ by the seemingly up for anything Mike Freeman, who for all his unsavourily reputation did commendably refuse to take his gay movies off the market, ignoring legal advice to the contrary.  

Under the Counter also wins personal approval from me for helping propagate the bizarre legend of ‘A Schoolgirl Dreams of King Kong’. A hardcore short made by British filmmakers for a German distributor, in which a young lady fantasizes about being tied to King Kong’s penis, eventually causing the giant ape to ejaculate over the New York skyline.  Trust me, that one really does belong in the ‘has to be seen to be believed’ category. 

22 year old Jennifer Eccles rides Kong's penis in 'A Schoolgirl Dreams of King Kong'   

Under the Counter ends on a downbeat note (or upbeat note, depending on your point of view) with the idealistic hopes of 1970s pornographers being thoroughly crushed by the arrival of the Thatcher government and the censorship stranglehold on the video industry.  Comments from a 1986 interview with John Lindsay reveals a defeated and deflated man compared to the one who, only a few years before, had victoriously walked away from court claiming he had all but legalised hardcore pornography in Britain.  A second volume of Under the Counter, restarting the story in the mid-1980s and taking it up to the modern day, is planned, but volume one alone is a considerable achievement in the field of British sex film archaeology.  Others, from newspaper hacks to writers of speculative fiction, have attempted to penetrate the subject of home-grown hardcore, but Under the Counter has finally succeeded in gaining access to ‘the back room’ of this hitherto clandestine part of British history.                 

Sorts (1973, James Moffatt)

 

Sorts does pretty much everything, but what it’s meant to on the tin.  Canadian writer James ‘Jim’ Moffatt hit pay dirt in 1970 with the novel ‘Skinhead’ written under the name Richard Allen.  The huge success of which caused publisher New English Library to immediately commission the hard working writer to pen sequels and further ‘Richard Allen’ books documenting similar youth cults.  Moffatt had already covered skinhead culture from a female angle in 1972’s Skinhead Girls, and by the time of Sorts in 1973 was drifting off topic, reducing the heroine’s association with skinheads to mere back-story.  Moffatt straying from the skinhead path could produce hit and miss results.  1975’s Dragon Skins, which has a similarly tentative connection to skinhead culture, manages to be dull and lifeless, despite a plot which pits ex-skinheads against a crooked kung-fu master.  Fortunately Sorts finds Gentleman Jim Moffatt firing on all cylinders.  If you can forgive Sorts the sin of having very little to do with skinhead culture, this is a Pandora’s box in which Gentleman Jim unleashes all manner of 1970s unpleasantness, from hard drug use to police brutality, hippies being kicked in the balls, children being kicked in the balls, murder, blackmail, a leery look at the ‘problem’ of teenage hitchhikers, as well as Devon’s answer to the Manson Family.  Sorts is actually a rare example of New English Library underplaying the contents of a book.  NEL’s cover, featuring a dour faced skinhead girl loitering about a doorway, suggesting a miserablist working class drama to slit your wrists to.  This, in no way prepares you for the wild ride you’re about to be taken on, one powered by Moffatt’s alcoholism, tabloid like sensationalism and bigotry.  Step right up, Folks...but be forewarned.  Moffatt being Moffatt, there’s more racism in Sorts than you can shake a burning cross at. 

Sorts centres around troubled youth Terry Hurdy, who has recently gotten knocked up by randy local lad Wilf Thompson.  Forced to give up their baby for adoption, Terry finds herself tormented by reminders of Wilf and their child, the dirty looks of her neighbours and the guilt of being a source of embarrassment to her decent parents.  “What did they know about fads and the need of a young girl to express herself under a man’s driving loins”.  The fact that Terry is just 17 doesn’t cause Gentleman Jim to reign in his dirty old man tendencies.  We’re not even out of chapter one before he has her admiring her naked body in a mirror, a tactic he also used to ogle a female character in 1977’s Knuckle Girls.  Having honed her seductive skills during a bus ride “she smiled, teased him by letting her duffle coat fully open. The tightness of her sweater showed her pouting breasts to advantage”, Terry decides to take to the road and hitchhike around the country.  Moffatt’s writing brings to life a rarely complementary, but believably on the money, landscape of greasy motorway cafes and monotonously samey stretches of roads, populated by vulnerable runaways, horny truckers, and unhappily married motorists “how many of the men would have stopped if it wasn’t for the risk of venereal disease or blackmail”.  Terry acquires a scam-sister in Rose Clague, a fellow runaway who has taken to selling herself on the road like a duck to water.  Rose is introduced coming on to a potential trick “she was getting bored shaking her leg. It wasn’t enough for the bloke to see her knickers under her short skirt”.  Expecting a sexually inexperienced guy, Rose is put out by his extensive sexual demands, and ends up lashing out at pornography for giving menfolk too many ideas “he must have read every dirty book aimed at a pervert market”. 

Moffatt might be willing to perv over Terry, but Rose appears to have been more of his ‘type’, Gentleman Jim’s books displaying a preference for the flesher, curvier woman...but having big hands evidentially ruins the job for Moffatt.  “I’ve got big tits, big arse and big hands. That’s what’s wrong with me...those big hands” frets Rose.  Big hands might be a turn off for Gentleman Jim, but presumably come in handy when thumbing a lift on the road.  At Rose’s insistence, the two hitchhike their way to the ‘Siddlecombe Folk Festival’ in Devon, a land of...if not milk and honey...then “guys galore and a chance of a social security handout” as Rose puts it.

"hey girls, fancy a ride to the Siddlecombe Folk Festival?"

In Moffatt books its common to find him lose interest in the young tearaways he was meant to be writing about, and instead switch his allegiance to characters which he would have found more relatable and agreeable.  Inevitably these tend to be older, male characters, always seen dressed in suits, who adhere to old fashioned values, and lash out in anger at a changing world that is leaving them behind and flashing them the ‘V’ sign in the process.  The opportunity for Moffatt to jump ship presents itself in the form of Kevin Lilly, a 52 year old ex-major, who runs an elite, gourmet food store catering to the upper classes.  Lilly is a sworn enemy of the Siddlecombe Folk Festival, and the longhairs it attracts to Devon “his entire being was geared to destroying this ‘scum’ that blighted his Colonel Blimpish Britain”.  On the surface, Lilly appears to be the perfect Moffatt protagonist, yet Moffatt resists the temptation to transform Sorts from the Terry Hurdy story to the Kevin Lilly one.  The likely reason for author putting distance between himself and this character being that behind his fist shaking, respectability, Lilly is also a sex beast with a taste for young hitchhikers and a history of sexually harassing female employees.  One that leaves this pillar of the community frequently open to blackmail.  Still, the similarities between Lilly and Moffatt are difficult to ignore. Both are roughly the same age, residents of Devon, publically criticise hippie culture, and like his creator Kevin Lilly likes big butts and he cannot lie “his eyes fastened like headlights on a cat’s eye stud on a fog bound road as the girl’s buttocks shifted sensually under her store uniform”.  Did Moffatt see elements of himself in Kevin Lilly?  The two men both had their sexual secrets to keep.  Moffatt being primarily known in Devon as a writer for local newspaper ‘The Sidmouth Herald’ yet had this secondary career as ‘Richard Allen’, his Mr. Hyde, whose books regularly required Moffatt to dream up youthful hooliganism and letch after young girls in print.

Lilly might shake his head at the parade of hippie blokes he sees hitchhiking along the motorway- vindictively showering one of them with gravel as he drives by- but is more receptive to Rose and Terry.  Offering the duo a lift, in spite of the fact that Rose has big hands!!  The mood quickly turns sexual with Terry barely in the car before Lilly is pawing her thighs, causing Rose to get the scent of a rich, sexually desperate, mark.  Sexual bartering takes place, with Lilly managing to talk the girls into a lay-by threesome in return for a ride to Siddlecombe.  Only to seal his fate by letting slip that he has a successful business in the town, causing the ears of conniving Rose to stand on end.

Fellow writers in the trash fiction field, such as Guy N. Smith, may have adopted a celebratory attitude to sex. Jumping on the freedoms afforded by the age of permissiveness, and writing about intercourse in lengthy and often ridiculous detail.  Moffatt though comes across as far more uptight and Victorian about S-E-X.  Sorts is a book that constantly sets up sordid sexual encounters, but is a case of all sizzle, no steak, with Moffatt sparing the blushes of his female characters by gentlemanly refusing to go into the finer details.  There is much build up to the lay-by bacchanal, with Lilly getting hot under the collar while trying to find a suitably discrete spot for the bunk-up, and in need of reassurance from the girls that yes...they are going to get naked for him, yes...both of them.  Only for Moffatt to write around the incident itself, allowing only hints at the unprintable depravity that takes place in Devon lay-bys.  What with even the promiscuous Rose admitting she’s not used to getting naked with another girl, and mentions of Lilly committing “deeds not in keeping with his wartime decorations”. 

Sorts offers a rare opportunity to see Moffatt write about a place he loved, his adopted home of Devon, as opposed to the usual council estates, high rise flats and football terraces which were the usual settings of his youthsploitation novels.  When it comes to Devon, Moffatt’s writing rises above the hack level, as affectionate descriptions of “miniature stately homes in landscaped grounds protecting their privacy” and “the number of classy outlets, the attachment to ‘times past’” flow off the pages.  Setting Sorts so close to home however, only makes Moffatt see red...blood red...when it comes to the folk crowd blighting his own, personal landscape. 

Terry might be smitten by cosy, old fashioned Devon, but all this long hair, pot smoking and multiculturalism rubs our headstrong young bigot up the wrong way.  Sending Terry scurrying back to cherished childhood memories of hanging around with racist, football hooligans.  “Crissakes, you lot are nothing compared to the skins. At least they bloody work for a living” hollers Terry at the two main representatives of hippie culture in the book, Englishman Jack White and Scotsman Jock Macauley.  This being a Moffatt book, Jack and Jock turn out to be drug addicted layabouts who live off social security handouts, like scaring old ladies and gleefully anticipate an eventual communist takeover of Britain.  Communal living is cynically depicted as a scam, with the two hippies insisting on Terry and Rose handing over all their cash to them.  Claiming it will all go on commune living expenses, Jack and Jock instead blow it on a pot and heroin binge.  Despite Terry having trouble written over her, Jack decides to take her under his wing, reasoning that skirt is skirt and “being stuck up there on the windy hill with Jock didn’t satisfy his lusty nature.  Some things he did not experiment with and one was men”.  Moffatt’s unnecessary insistence that the two men aren’t gay, does lead you to wonder why he felt the need to point that out in the first place.  The disclaimer in itself conjuring up a mental image of Jack and Jock getting up to gay fella business.  A similar, potentially revealing moment occurs in Mod Rule (1980) where Moffatt’s main character contemplates a homophobic attack “Joe wanted to bash the bastard.  He hated queers with a virile youth’s fear of turning into one”.  Did Gentleman Jim have a closet in need of liberating?  Was the homophobia in his books motivated by a deep rooted, self-hatred?  It’s a theory worthy of consideration, however momentarily, even if evidence to the contrary is strong.  Moffatt had been married at one point, and his books come on forcefully, nay predatorily, heterosexual.  Still, Sorts is another Moffatt book whose sexual content, and writing from a female perspective, sees the author having to erotise the male body in print.  “Sweaty, broad shouldered, strong armed.  The type with muscles on top of muscles.  A he-lion who would brook no refusal when he started getting down to the nitty-gritties”.

Terry aside, there’s nothing in Sorts that flatters the female of the species.  Big handed Rose is “a little bitch! A road-screwing whore” according to Kevin Lilly.  While a female employee of his, who Lilly has been sexually harassing, decides that the blackmailing rewards of giving in to his sexual demands outweighs the indignities, vowing she’ll “have the bastard over a barrel for keeps”.  Mrs. Lilly herself turns out to be an all fur coat and no knickers social climber, who secretly wishes her husband dead so she can get her hands on his money and live the life of luxury. 

Moffatt’s sexual disgust at women goes off the scale in Sorts.  “One of the girls laughed, lifted up her skirt, lowered her knickers and pee-ed” writes Moffatt of an unnamed hippie.  Elsewhere the author feels compelled to inform us that Rose prefers multi-hued knickers to white ones “She seldom wore white these days.  Too much trouble keeping them clean between trips”.  However, the King-of-too-much-information’s  piece de resistance when it comes to crudity in Sorts is the use of the term ‘flushing the loo’ as a euphemism for the female orgasm.  After Jack and Jock have had their wicked way with Terry and Rose respectively, Rose insists on comparing notes.  Boasting that Jock flushed her loo five times during the night.  A clear victory for Scotland over England, as Terry concedes that Jack was only capable of flushing her loo twice. 

The young folk being pitted against older establishment figures was a key theme in early 1970s British culture, you’ll find it in Horror Hospital, House of Whipcord, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (the Arthur Kennedy character in that film could have easily written a book like this).  Sorts isn’t one to buck a popular trend, but Moffatt treads a less well travelled path when it comes to also pitting young people against young people.  Terry being ideologically at odds with just about everything Jack and Jock stand for.  Sorts is a reminder that not every youngster in 1970s Britain was swept along by flower power, with Terry endlessly getting in the faces of Jack and Jock accusing them of being Longhairs!!! Scroungers!!! Communists!!!  The girl can’t help it.  Secretly Terry longs to be a housewife and mother, as well as marrying a decent man who enjoys kicking hippies in the bollocks as much as she does.  It is on matters of race that Terry feels most at odds with the hippies, inflammatory opinions that Moffatt is only to keen to put into print.  “Recently, she’d almost forgotten what it was like to be the butt of every do-gooder’s loathing for trying to keep Britain white... if only Enoch was Prime Minister, she thought”.  That’s James Moffatt books for you, all subtlety and understatement.   

Considering the publishing phenomenon that Moffatt’s skinhead and related youthsploitation novels had been, it comes as a surprise that their popularity didn’t spill over into the cinema.  British exploitation filmmakers were always quick to capitalise on a headline making subject, be it suburban swinging (The Wife Swappers), wife beating (The Brute), artificial insemination (Who’s Child Am I), the occult (Secret Rites) even a real life killer (The Black Panther).  Youth gangs and race relations though were hot topic subjects that UK exploitation filmmakers generally preferred to side-step.  Maybe the threat of a backlash from the censors, the public and the youth gangs depicted, lead the likes of Pete Walker, Stanley Long and Lindsay Shonteff to the conclusion that the fucking they’d get, wasn’t worth the fucking they’d get.  There were a few rare exceptions, the support feature ‘The Contract’ (1975) offers the surreal sight of Coronation Street actor Ken Farrington as a coke snorting, white supremacist biker, playing Russian roulette and hurling racial expletives around.  However, the only significant British exploitation filmmaker to tackle race-relations in his movies was volatile maverick Donovan Winter, whose treatment of the subject in Some Like It Sexy (1969) and Escort Girls (1974) would lead you to believe that Winter was anti-racist.  An image you’ll have shattered for you, if you ever have the dubious honour of reading his autobiography ‘The Winter of My Discontent’, which revealed the filmmaker to be very much Moffatt-minded.

Bad vibes abound at this point in Sorts, when will Terry’s confrontations and bickering with the hippie guys result in violent or sexual retaliation.  Moffatt ups the tension by playing the Manson card.  “Had she inadvertently walked in on a pair of Manson-painted blokes” asks Moffatt of the reader.  It is a testament to just how widely felt the shock waves were from the Manson case that they even registered in Devon.  Charles Manson was a godsend for Moffatt, both validating his worst fears about hippies, and spurring him on to portray them as drug-crazed psychopaths.  Still you suspect that when it came to matters of race, Gentleman Jim and Charlie would have gotten along just fine.  Moffatt sure got his money’s worth out of Manson and his family, they provided inspiration for Moffatt’s non-fiction expose of satanic sex cults ‘Satan’s Slaves’ (1970) published under the name James Taylor.  As well as his 1970 horror novel ‘The Naked Light’ (tagline ‘black magic slayings in the Hollywood Hills’).          

The Manson influence makes its presence felt in Sorts when Jock shoots up “that’s the big ‘D’ man, Satan’s flames and that shit” becoming a drug crazed madman who embarks on a killing spree.  Tripping out, Jock believes he is actually slaying sea creatures “that’s what he’d speared a bloody mermaid, look at those tits, god they shifted so easily, but where was her tail”.  For all of the hippie hating to emerge from Moffatt’s poisoned pen, it comes as a surprise that when the Manson family type characters show up in Sorts, they are ‘kind of’ the good guys.  Jock’s murderous antics being spied upon by a hippie commune, lead by an American draft dodger, who decides his ‘family’ should hunt Jock down and kill him.  The type of behaviour that technically should win Moffatt’s approval (elsewhere in the book he is very supportive of police brutality) but hippies were never going to get an even break in a Moffatt novel.  The ‘Family’ might be doing society a favour by taking the law into their own hands, especially as Moffatt has Jock cackling to himself that liberal ‘do-gooders’ will come to his defence if he is ever caught, but Moffatt is always on hand to remind us that hippies are in fact evil and disgusting.  The revolting highlights of the book all belong to the family.  At one point the Manson figure name drops Jesus into the conversation, prompting a female follower to squat and urinate on the ground, urging him to “walk on my water”.  This leads to all the commune urinating, creating a pool of piss for the Manson figure to prove his messianic qualities by walking on.  Who’d be a hippie cult leader, eh?  A common form of abuse in Moffatt’s books is for characters to wish others to be shit upon “shit on her”, “shit on you”, “shit on this place”, but Sorts is the only book of his I’ve read where this insult is put into practice. “Shitting on him” remarks one horrified policeman of the Family’s handwork “that’s bottom of degeneracy”.  It’s one of many moments in Moffatt’s books which cause you to step back and ask yourself ‘how did we end up here’.  A book which begins in the territory of a kitchen sink drama, with its teenage pregnancy plot taking place under a grey slated working class rooftop, ends up trespassing into the land of ‘I Drink Your Blood’ with all these drug crazed hippies running around the countryside.  

Moffatt is noticeably reluctant to give his Manson character a name, building up the man’s mystique by simply referring to him as ‘the American’ and heavy handily stressing the Manson comparisons “the Manson curse hovered upon him...the similarities were astonishing”.  Only towards the end of the book does Moffatt let slip the man’s surname ‘Golightly’ a name hardly likely to strike fear into the hearts of men.  ‘The Golightly Family’ sounding less like a bloodthirsty hippie cult, and more like a forgotten TV sitcom. 

The last act of Sorts is an absolute shambles, but at least it is an entertaining shambles.  Moffatt loses sight of Terry, reducing her to a side character, and instead introduces us to what appears to be the entire Siddlecombe police force.  Worse still, the fuzz here are a rather interchangeable bunch and it becomes difficult to keep track of who’s who.  Of the force, Constable Allen only stands out for offering Terry an olive branch back to straight society.  Sgt Tom Elford is another mouthpiece for Moffatt’s anti-drug rhetoric “he wanted to vomit, to curse aloud.  To horsewhip every bastard he caught pushing the filthy stuff” and racism “people here don’t realise what’s been happening in England.  Half the towns belong to Africa and India”.  For a change of pace, their chief Inspector hates famous people, losing his rag with “showbiz personalities sporting outlandish fashions in an effort to please their theatrical chain masters”.

Sorts’ ending shows signs of being equally padded and rushed.  As the police investigation takes precedence, Moffatt pointlessly serves up police interviews with Terry Hurdy and Jack White, presented in the manner of a transcribed Q&A session. Which only recaps the story we already know.  Moffatt sets up a courtroom battle finale, with a villainous do-gooder barrister attempting to discredit Terry by bringing up her skinhead past.  Only for Moffatt to realise that he’d either reached the required page count or that the pubs were opening soon, so skims through the trial, effectively telling the reader that it was a fairly boring affair and they didn’t miss anything “none of the excitement associated with stage, television, motion picture trials”.  Before he hits the bar though, Gentleman Jim at least sticks around long enough to write a heart-warming ‘reader, I married him’ ending, as well as an epilogue in which a contemptible female character gets her comeuppance in the form of rough, degrading sex with an uncouth lout.  Thus ensuring that both romantics and misogynists walk away happy from Sorts. 

In his intro to the book Moffatt describes and defends Sorts as ‘a source of reference for future students of our violent era’, and... well here I am writing about it in 2023, so Gentleman Jim called it right in that regards.  Sorts hasn’t just become a document of the era’s violence, but also its prejudices, on account of Moffatt practicing nearly all of them.  The man’s hate list was nothing if not astronomical...he had it in for Blacks, Gays, Jews, Trade Unionists, Hippies, religious do-gooders, the Irish, Americans, French, Germans, greyhound dogs, the National Front (yep, he even hated the people who hated the people who he himself hated).  Not to mention...women with big hands.  Taking into account stories of his alcoholism, his reputation for being increasingly unreliable, along with the colossal weight of bitterness, anger and bigotry he dragged around with him, and you have to ask whether James Moffatt could have lead a very happy life.  Even before the end of chapter one he has Terry inwardly scream “God, what a bloody rotten world it was”.

Still, to give the man credit, Sorts is an exploitation novel that truly delivers.  On that level Sorts is a classic (of Sorts) successfully playing to the most basest, violent and prejudicial instincts of a 1970s’ audience.  The passing of time generally robs cultural artefacts of their controversial status.  Once verboten movies like The Exorcist, Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange play on TV these days, even the Video Nasties have become gentrified and socially acceptable now, but the Moffatt books still prowl around the cultural naughty step like demented banshees.  If anything their shock value has only snowballed over the years, particularly when it comes to Sorts’ attitude towards sexual harassment and race relations.  It is an overused expression that something or other will ‘make you want to take a shower afterwards’, but a James Moffatt book really will make you feel that unclean.  Make sure you flush the loo afterwards.  Moffatt’s voice is a shriek of the mutilated, one that echoes throughout the decades “God, what a bloody rotten world it was”.     

Claudia Jennings – An Authorized Biography

 

Surprisingly this book marks the first successful attempt at publishing a biography of Claudia Jennings, nee Mary ‘Mimi’ Eileen Chesterton, the Playboy playmate who achieved success as a drive-in movie actress, before tragically dying in a car crash at the young age of 29.  My feelings towards this book are similarly to that of ‘The Sci-Fi Siren Who Dared to Love Elvis and Other Stars’, the recent biography of Angelique Pettyjohn. In that these books’ flaws become all the more frustrating, given that their subjects are so niche it’s unlikely another, superior biography is likely to come along anything soon. 

For what was without doubt an obsessive labour to love, this book sure has a tendency to get distracted from its subject matter.  Expect to read a book about Claudia Jennings?  Well, you do get that here, but you are also signing up for lengthy asides about the history of the grand guignol theatre, the cultural influence of Grant Wood’s painting ‘American Gothic’, the socio-political subtext of Attack of the 50 foot Woman, and just about everything else under the sun.  Claudia Jennings- an authorized biography sets out its stall with an overview of America as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, a time of racial tension, the war in Vietnam, the threat of the Soviet Union, and where a right wing backlash against 60s liberalism would eventually put “men in power that the vast majority of the nation would eventually regret”.  All of which would be appropriate if this were a biography of Huey P. Newton, Malcolm X or a member of the MC5, but Claudia Jennings was hardly a radical figure, and appears to have been immune from the turbulent issues of the period.  If Jennings was a political animal, then her views were never publically aired, nor do they go recorded here. 

As its title implies, the book was written with the co-operation of her family, who hold firm to the belief that appearing in Playboy was morally beneath her, and that her acting career suffered as a result of her association with the magazine. A cause that this book picks up and runs with “her modest background and feelings of inadequacy were being soothed by the unrealistic and irrational world of Hugh Hefner”.  The revelation that her relationship with Hefner quickly went from professional to sexual is greeted with the finger pointing accusation “what went on between Mimi and Hugh Hefner is nothing less than sexual harassment” only to contradict and retract that statement a few sentences later with “there is nothing to suggest Mr Hefner coerced Mimi into having sex”.  There are elements of the Jennings story that don’t reflect well on Hefner, including allegations that pressure was put on her to make return appearances in the pages of Playboy, leaving her feeling as if she owed him and the magazine a debt for her acting career.  However the book doesn’t really convince you that he was the Svengali it is so desperately trying to paint him as.  Hefner’s behaviour hardly strikes you as that of a monster, he installed her in his mansion, gave her an entrance into a world of fame and money –both of which she clearly craved- and offered her a luxurious escape route from what appears to have been an increasingly troubled home life.  In one of the most heartbreaking moments of the book, it quotes a letter she wrote to her parents “I know I am a first-class pig, as Daddy said.  I know I am no help around here.  I am crying right now as I am writing this to you because I am sorry for all the trouble I have caused.  The whole thing was all my fault”, at which point the book cuts short her words ‘out of respect for the privacy of the Chesterton family’.  Now, surely the role of biographer should be to shed light on its subject, rather than act as gatekeeper to information that might be key to understanding her.  The book might be willing to sweep anything that embarrasses the Chesterton family under the carpet, but it doesn’t extent the same courtesy to Hefner, with the book casting its net further afield to find mud to throw at the gates of the Playboy mansion.  Thus the book spends time on a lengthy retelling of the life and murder of Dorothy Stratten, as well as engaging in what comes across as schadenfreude when it comes to documenting the decline of the Playboy brand, the Playboy mansion, and Hefner’s own death.  None of which took place during Jennings’ lifetime.  Had she written a letter like that to Hefner, rather than her parents, I’d be more inclined to jump onboard the anti-Hef agenda here, but she didn’t, nor did he ever call her a first-class pig. 

When we get to the movies is when in theory this book should take flight.  Instead it is the point in which Claudia Jennings- an authorized biography develops an identity crisis, drifting away from its biographical intent and increasingly becoming a series of film reviews and home for the author’s personal opinions of her movies.  While you’d expect anyone reading a book about Claudia Jennings to be au fait with her film career, evidentially this book thinks otherwise, and provides very long, blow by blow, virtually scene by scene walkthroughs of their plots.  The synopsis for Unholy Rollers (1972) talking up nearly six pages alone.  As for the type of film criticism on display here, it’s not as room clearingly pretentious as Rob Craig’s books on Ed Wood and Larry Buchanan (which share this book’s publisher) but it has its moments, with Gator Bait (1974) praised for its ‘sub-proletarian individualist and non-conformist’ heroine, an aspect which surprisingly wasn’t used to sell it down at the drive-ins.  For some reason the book also feels compelled to give a potted history of exploitation cinema, again something you’d expect anyone reading a book about Claudia Jennings to be well versed in.  It’s another detour the book takes, which allows the author to give his thoughts on A Clockwork Orange, The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Serbian Film, Bloodsucking Freaks and other films that don’t have Claudia Jennings in them.  Although the author outs himself early on in the book as a fan of horror and B-movies, citing being recommended The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976) on Youtube as a motivating factor in writing this book, the snarky and condescending tone towards such movies here hardly supports this.  Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is trashed ‘the dialogue and acting make even Roger Corman’s weakest efforts look like Hamlet’.  As for Jennings’s own output ‘although I adore Claudia’s films, we’re not reviewing Citizen Kane, The Godfather or Spartacus’, he sneers before reaching the conclusion ‘I am comforted by the fact Claudia never ventured into the darker fringes of Exploitation cinema’. Which begs the question, why the book itself ventures into the darker fringes of Exploitation cinema, when Jennings did not.  Given the eagerness to throw accusations of sexism and exploitation at Playboy’s door, it comes as a surprise though to find that the author is so enamoured by Bloodsucking Freaks.  Described here as ‘a misogynistic gem’ and the subject of the confused write-up ‘it is a good example of an exploitation film that is also a cult classic.  Of course not all cult films are exploitation movies, such as those by the Coen Brothers, and by the same token, not all exploitation films are cult classics’.  Got that?

As for the lady herself, who after all this book is meant to be about, few have a bad word to say about Claudia Jennings.  She is remembered in these pages as a sweet soul, a loyal friend, who liked to buy people presents, and is much missed.  All of which is nice and reassuring to know.  However it doesn’t make for especially compelling reading, instead giving the book the feel of an aggressive PR exercise, designed to combat the often tawdry depiction of Jennings in the media as an out of control party girl, who slept around Hollywood, did lots of drugs and died young.  Trouble is, the book often comes out swinging at even the slightest bit of criticism of her.  When an early boyfriend remembers “as soon as school ended, she moved on. She broke up with me on the night of the prom”, the book feels the need to interject “this statement sounds bitter, but since it’s a jilted lover’s expression, one can comprehend that (he) wouldn’t be inclined to judge Mimi fairly”.  Likewise the hint of sexual promiscuity on her part, gets shot down with “the word is a anachronistic term for a double standard that dishonesty shames women for multiple partners, yet idolizes men for the same behaviour”.

Jennings had few detractors, but the ones who have spoken ill of her over the years are vilified for it here.  An unnamed stuntwoman, who worked on Deathsport (1978), is dismissed as “very jealous of Claudia, and was fairly spiteful towards people in general”. While Deathsport director Nicholas Niciphor is portrayed as an incompetent, bullying, nam vet who “would talk about his days in Vietnam and speak graphically about the atrocities he witnessed”.  Tensions between Jennings and Niciphor come to a head, when he pulls her off a bike during the filming of a scene and ‘appeared to be ready to kick or strike her’.  Just to give both sides of the story, something this book isn't prepared to do, Niciphor himself once claimed in Psychotronic Video Magazine "she was drunk, she was 'coked' to the gills and she was headstrong...I did in fact try to physically remove her from the bike, but I did so for her own safety...mad as I certainly was that her drug trip was ruining my movie, it was for her safety that I did in fact attempt to force her off that motorcycle". It seems that when it comes to the making of Deathsport, recollections may vary.

At around the halfway point Claudia Jennings- an authorized biography, does manage to become unintentionally entertaining, due to the high level of sycophancy to be found within its pages.  Sure, a biographer should be grateful to people for lending a quote or two, but did virtually every quote in this book need to be preceded with ‘such and such a person generously and/or graciously shared their recollections of Claudia’.  Likewise referring to people by title ‘to Ms. Peeters’ credit’, ‘Ms. Kirkland has appeared in over 140 movies’, but the fawning highlight has to be affording one participant the over the top introduction of ‘she is one of the most extraordinary Americans to grace our time’.  Say what you will about this book, it sure knows how roll out the red carpet for invited guests.  The two notable hold-outs when it comes to participating in this book are singer/songwriter Bobby Hart, who absence is compensated by liberal quotes from his autobiography 'Psychedelic Bubble Gum'. As well as the Brady Bunch's Maureen McCormick, who formed a hell raising double act with Jennings for a while. McCormick’s autobiography comes under fire here for "ignoring all of Claudia's virtues and instead focused on one primary vice" and "if felt that there was a sub-current of feminine jealousy throughout". All of which makes you want to run out and see just what McCormick’s book says about Jennings. While mentions of their friendship are disappointingly brief, it is actually a pretty funny, no filter account of the craziness those two got up to. “Claudia and I became instant best friends after discovering both of us had a great capacity for snorting coke”, “Claudia and I got close to the movie's cinematographer Gary Graver...for a brief time, the lucky guy shuttled between the two of us".

As the 1970s roll on, Jennings’ life becomes one increasingly lived in the fast lane.  There’s a cameo appearance from Bowie, Jennings goes on tour with the Rolling Stones, reportedly saving Keith Richards from a drugs OD, then there’s a coke binge with James Caan and Tony Curtis (wouldn’t you have wanted to be a fly on the wall during THAT get-together, even if there was a possibility you’d accidentally get snorted up a famous nasal passage).  The impression you get is that there is a true story of sex and drugs and rock n’roll excess to be had here.  The book’s aversion to going down a tabloidish route might be admirable, and I doubt any fan of Claudia Jennings would want to read a gutter level, hatchet job. However Claudia Jennings- an authorized biography, goes too far in the opposite direction, leaving us with a bland echo-chamber of people queuing up to generously/graciously remind us... ad infinitum... that Claudia Jennings was... a sweet soul... a loyal friend... who liked to buy people presents...is much missed, etc, etc.

After Jennings’ death, the book descends into madness...a long, undisciplined, freefalling rant that rarely comes up for breath.  Randomly touching on subjects like Russ Meyer movies, comparisons between Jennings and Cybill Shepherd, comparisons between Jennings and silent movie stars, the author’s annoyance at what a Deathsport crew member had written about her online ‘besides being full of outright lies, the article is scatological and crude’, the IMDB ratings for her movies, the initial critical response to Jodorowsky’s El Topo, a top ten list of Claudia Jennings movies, the author’s annoyance at a fellow writer confusing the word ‘sexpot’ with ‘sex symbol’...and so it goes on and on and on.  It’s the literature equivalent of being locked in a room with a crazy fan who insists on pontificating about their favourite subject until they are either rendered hoarse or you take your chances and jump out of the nearest window.  In the early 2000s, the same publisher Midnight Marquee press pulled a blinder with ‘Tuesday’s Child’ a superb biography of British actress Imogen Hassall. If only for Jennings’ sake, I had hoped that this might have been its equal, but I have to be honest, this was an unholy mess of a book, and I couldn’t wait to be done with it.                   

Preacherman meets Sex and Violence and Black Jesus

Clive, Nick and me discuss Preacherman (1971) Black Jesus (1968) and Sex & Violence (1978)

 

Since we recorded this video, I've discovered there was also a stage version of Preacherman, performed in New York by the Saint Bart's Players in early 1975. At the time the Saint Bart's players were run by Joe Sutherin, who had acted in a few of Viola's earlier New York skinflicks. It sounds like the Preacherman play was an unhappy experience though, Sutherin was later quoted as saying "(Viola) came to do the role he did in the movie and treated everyone very poorly".

Preacherman (1971)

 

Preacherman is the magnum opus of Albert T. Viola, a fella who went down to North Carolina to write and direct the movie, as well as star in it under the name Amos Huxley, which also happens to be the name of his character in the film too.  Ol’ Amos is a phoney circuit preacher who is out to fill his pockets with the money of other men, and fill his bed with the wives and daughters of other men, all the while pretending to preach the word of the lord.  When we first meet Ol’ Amos, he already in the process of doing somebody wrong, by making out with the Sheriff’s daughter in a hayloft.  For that bit of loving Amos gets run out of town and beaten up by the no good Sheriff Zero Bull, and his dim witted deputy Leon.  Amos is down but not out, and lands back on his feet when he is picked up at the side of the road by Judd Crabtree, a simple farmer, who lives with his daughter Mary Lou, a little hussy whose nympho tendencies make her an awfully popular gal with the local boys.  She’s the type of fallen angel that Amos Huxley is only too happy to take under his amorous wings.  Masquerading as ‘The Angel Leroy’, Amos gets to have his wicked way with Mary Lou on a nightly basis, while sending her father out to stand in a field yelling ‘Leroy...Leroy...Leroy’ all night. Pretty soon, Amos has the entire community wrapped around his little finger, and running moonshine for him, under the pretext of raising money to build a church.

Albert T. Viola in Preacherman is a perfect example of what Bill Landis talks about in the Sleazoid Express book, when he points out that exploitation films can often surprise you with performances by ‘relatively unknown but brilliant actors’.  Viola is a force of nature in this film, an extremely confident, born performer.  You can well believe Viola could have successfully pulled off this phoney preacher routine in real life, possibly travelling around the South both swindling and seducing was a fantasy of his, but when push came to shove he chickened out, and went for the safer option of playing it out in a movie instead.  Another important character in the creation of the film was W. Henry Smith, who also plays the one-armed Brother Henry in the film.  Smith had met Albert T. Viola in New York, where Viola had been involved in stage plays and directing skin flicks.  Between them they cooked up the ambitious idea to create a film industry in North Carolina, and formed the Preacherman Corporation, with an idea of making movies that would play to the good ol’ boy sensibilities of the Southern Drive-In circuit.  The cast of Preacherman did include a few out of towners, including Brooklyn born Ilene Kristen, who plays Mary Lou and is the big success of Preacherman in terms of having had a lengthy acting career.  There’s some confusion over whether Viola himself was from Brooklyn or San Antonio.  In early publicity for the film it was announced that a New York actor called Patrick McDermott, who’d played the junkie boyfriend in ‘Joe’, had been cast in Preacherman.  Evidentially, that didn’t work out as McDermott isn’t in the film, and stayed in NYC to appear in an obscure, little known film called The French Connection (saying that, he didn’t do much else). For the most part however what you are seeing are local stage actors, technicians and musicians, the financing was also kept local, with the moneymen for the film mostly being people who owned movie theatres and drive-ins.  An aspect to the production that generated allot of good publicity in the North Carolina press, and snowballed into goodwill for the Preacherman Corporation to succeed.  In true regional filmmaking fashion, Preacherman was mainly shot at a pig farm in Monroe, the Grover C. Baucom farm...should you ever want to go on a Preacherman themed pilgrimage.  It was made in sixteen days, and reportedly didn’t come without its fair share of off-screen drama.  It’s said to have rained continually for nine days of the shoot, necessitating that several scenes be moved indoors.  There was also an incident when a car full of drunken guys showed up on set and demanded to play roles in the film.  As they had guns and weren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer, the quick thinking Viola pretended to turn the camera on them for several minutes, which apparently pacified them.  The rain and the hassle all turned out to be worth it however, as Preacherman was a phenomenon at the Southern Drive-Ins.  I’ve seen the budget for the film quoted at around 50 to 200 thousand, and it’s said to have made around 7 million in its first year of release.  Preacherman played the Drive-Ins with a re-issue of Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers (1967), a wacky comedy starring country music stars.  It also headlined a double-bill with ‘The Body Shop’ (1973) another North Carolina production, written and directed by J.G. ‘Pat’ Patterson, who was also the production manager on Preacherman, the world of low-budget North Carolina filmmaking being a small one indeed.  The Body Shop also featured actor Bill Simpson, who played Sheriff Zero Bull in Preacherman, as a Sheriff who is chasing down moonshiners, providing a case for The Body Shop and Preacherman being part of a shared cinematic universe. 

Such was the popularity of Preacherman, that it created a demand for a family friendly version of the film.  As there have been uncut and cut versions of the film in circulation over the years.  Unfortunately when Preacherman was committed to videotape, it was the censored version...which removes all of the nudity and the swearing...that was released on VHS in America by Paragon.  The cut version was also the one released on video in the UK, and it doesn’t look like the full version made it to tape until the mid-1990s, when Troma released it on video. 

Given the runaway success of Preacherman, its surprising that the 1973 sequel ‘Preacherman Meets Widderwoman’ didn’t have the same staying power, and has all but dropped off the face of the earth...because if you do manage to track down the sequel, it really is just more of the same, and doesn’t divert from the formula, they even do the ‘Angel Leroy’ routine again.  The only difference between Preacherman meets Widderwoman and its predecessor is that the sequel is a PG, with one of the producers making a point of mentioning that it didn’t contain any nudity, violence or profanity.  Which may have caused some damage at the box-office.  Such is the obscurity of Preacherman meets Widderwoman, that for years people speculated that the sequel was never made, never released or was simply a re-titling of the first film.  The only place in the world that Preacherman meets Widderwoman was released on video was in the UK, by a company called A.T.A.  It’s one of those cases where you do have to wonder just where those UK video companies were getting hold of these movies.  Preacherman meets Widderwoman only had a limited release in the Southern states of America, so how did a copy of the film end up in Surrey, which is where A.T.A were based, and sure is a long way from North Carolina. 

Viola jumped ship after Preacherman meets Widderwoman, but W. Henry Smith kept the dream alive of creating a film industry in North Carolina for many years.  Following on the two Preacherman films with likeminded Southern Drive-In fare ....Hot Summer in Barefoot County (1974), Trucker’s Woman (1975), and Redneck Miller (1976).  The first Preacherman and Hot Summer in Barefoot County eventually made it out of the South when Troma picked up the rights to those two.  Preacherman belatedly showed up on 42^nd Street in January 1982, where it played at the New Amsterdam as the co-feature to Troma’s sex comedy ‘Squeeze Play’.  A Double-bill that Troma simultaneously rolled out at theatres and drive-ins in the New York area.  It also played in Jersey City for a time as the bottom half of a double-bill with Russ Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. 

In the Sleazoid Express book, Bill Landis talked about how the tropical locations of Blind Rage (1978) worked a treat on an audience watching it at a chilly grindhouse during a New York winter, and I suspect the North Carolina locations of Preacherman may have had a similar appeal to a 42^nd street audience.  If you’re living cramped up, New York style, drowning in sleaze, and surrounded by miserable junkies, homeless people and streetwalkers, then the allure of the simpler life, wide open spaces and fresh country air of North Carolina must have felt like a world you’d be happy to get lost in for 90 minutes or so.   

Although it is dominated by horndog humour and Southern stereotypes, there is a real personality and heart to Preacherman.  The irony of Amos Huxley is that he does inadvertently enrich the lives of the people he’d set out to scam.  He gives Judd back a purpose in life, the community prospers by his restarting of the moonshine operation.  Despite his best efforts he leads Mary Lou in the direction of monogamy and true love, and he also deters men from having unnatural relations with chickens...cottonpickin’ chickenfuckers.  Amos Huxley does accidentally do allot of good, and that combined with Viola’s extremely likeable performances, generally succeeds in winning over the audience, and has them rooting for Amos to get away from the law at the end.

In the Sleazoid Express book, Bill did enter a few pieces of bad information into circulation.  He claimed the film came out of Long Island, and credits it with featuring a ‘sizzling, slutty cameo’ from Jeramie Rain, who doesn’t show up until the sequel Preacherman meets Widderwoman, and its more than just a cameo. She plays the Widderwoman’s daughter, the sequels’ equivalent to Mary Lou.  Bill also thought the film features a last minute appearance from Roxanne Brewer, a famous big bust model, of Russ Meyer worthy proportions, as the mysterious ‘Lady in Red’ who helps Amos out at the end.  A role that is actually credited to an actress called Colleen McGee.  I can see where Bill was coming from, there is a resemblance between Brewer and McGee.  What leads me down the path of thinking that they weren’t one in the same is that Roxy Brewer’s acting career was entirely played out in LA skinflicks.  Would they have flown her out to North Carolina on two separate occasions, because the lady in red also appears in Preacherman meets Widderwoman, which resumes the Amos Huxley story literally seconds after the first film ends.  Roxy Brewer was also a famous nude model, and surely a horny, red blooded production like Preacherman would have capitalised on this by getting her neekid in these films, whereas the Lady in Red gets to keep her clothes on in both Preacherman movies.  I suspect the idea of Roxy Brewer being in Preacherman, was just wishful thinking on Bill’s part.

Colleen McGee and Roxanne Brewer

As tends to be the case with any form of successful low-budget cinema, be it kung-fu, blaxploitation or slasher movies, the major studios eventually took notice and cashed in.  There’s a convincing case that the likes of Preacherman and Hot Summer in Barefoot County laid the railroad for Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard.  It’s always surprised me that the success of Preacherman didn’t open doors for Albert T. Viola acting wise, you could imagine him bringing his Preacherman shtick to The Dukes of Hazzard or Burt Reynolds movies.  Instead he took a different path, and went into teaching.  By the end of the 1970s Viola was teaching drama at Fort Worth Country Day School, where rumours have it that he got into hot water for hitting on female students and may have been quested by the po-lice over allegations that he was embezzling funds from the school. Saying that, Viola did spend over twenty years in the independent school network, while you’d think that a scandal would have curtailed that career... so maybe it was the Angel Leroy who did all those bad things...and never question the habits of angels, brothers and sisters.  Personally, I would be disappointed if there wasn’t a little bit of Amos Huxley in Albert T. Viola.  The impression you get from Preacherman, was that he was the guy you could trust for some good time, down-home entertainment, but perhaps not the guy you’d trust with your womenfolk and life savings.  “Spread the word, and spread the liquor”.