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Post by dem bones on May 30, 2015 11:51:05 GMT
Simon Sheridan - Keeping The British End Up: Four Decades Of Saucy Cinema (Reynolds & Hearn, 2007: originally 2005) Blurb: The British tradition of 'saucy postcard' humour is perhaps best exemplified by the work of Benny Hill and the long running Carry On movies. But there is a forgotten cinema of saucier X certificate films.
Lynda Bellingham, Joan Collins, Gabrielle Drake and Joanna Lumley were among those who appeared in such films. Most famously, Robin Askwith, Fiona Richmond and Mary Millington became seventies superstars in movies that put boobs on screen and bums on seats.
Simon Sheridan traces the history of the British sex film from its coy beginnings in Nudist Paradise through to its boom years with, the 'Confessions' series and its demise in the early eighties.
In this new and updated edition of Keeping the British End Up Sheridan includes a definitive filmography and coaxes the facts from previously reclusive and reluctant interviewees. The story that unfolds is often funny and sometimes tragic, but undeniably revealing.My first, and to date, only exposure to home grown skin flicks came when pre-poverty porn era Channel 5 aired a retrospective some years ago, and can't say I found them particularly stimulating. But, as is so often the case, reading about them proves an altogether more enjoyable proposition, so you can imagine my joy when a dear friend and long time Vault regular (whose identity shall remain strictly confidential), whipped out a copy of Keeping The British End Up in my local, slapped it on the table and said "it's yours!" It's clear from the first that film-maker & author Simon Sheridan - whose literary output to date includes The Complete Abba, The Complete Kylie, The A to Z of Classic Children’s Television and Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington - has an encyclopaedic knowledge of lowbrow cinema's top tits and todgers. The book reads like a lifework and when he tells us, "Put simply, Keep It Up Jack! is director Derek Ford's attempt to re-stage Charley's Aunt in a knocking shop," or that sex-fi epic Outer Touch is Norman J. Warren's tribute to Fire Maidens From Outer Space , I reckon we can confidently take him it as gospel. The Author's suitably ribald commentary is laced with chortle-some anecdotes from several star performers. Gay Soper was appearing in Godspell at the Wyndham when The Ups And Downs Of A Handyman opened across the street. "My photo was displayed outside the cinema - a full length nude picture! Because of the musical I had met many Anglican priests and nuns, who had become close friends by this time. One of the priests told me that ... not only had he been to see the movie himself but he had taken Sister Elspeth and Sister Constance with him! The thought of a priest and nuns in full habits watching that film makes me laugh to this day! I just wonder what the men in dirty raincoats in the cinema must have thought!" If, like me, you don't know your I'm Not feeling Myself Tonight from your Can You Keep It Up For A Week?, your Adventures Of A Plumber's Mate from your Confessions Of A Sex Maniac, rest assured, this handsome volume is the answer to your prayers. Thanks ever so, Mr. Hack!
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Post by ripper on May 31, 2015 8:37:45 GMT
Sounds a very interesting read, Dem. I think I must have caught that same season of films as you did, Dem, and they were, I thought, not exactly laugh-a-minute experiences. It was fun to see who would turn up in them: often those either on the way up or on the way down, and familiar faces from then current TV comedies. Apart from the Confessions series, most of these British sex comedies are forgotten now, often for good reason. Also, around 1976, Mary Millington was very well known, but now sadly forgotten by most, and her end was tragic.
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Post by dem bones on May 31, 2015 11:44:34 GMT
Sounds a very interesting read, Dem. It is, and mostly very funny, too. Taking the innocuous Nudist Paradise (1958) as his point of entry, Mr. Sheridan reviews every Brit sex flick through to 1983, when some kind of nadir was achieved with David 'Dirty Dave' Sullivan's Hellcats - Mud Wrestling, a deliberate mismatch which saw a team of buxom US professionals make short work of several ill-prepared Brit glamour models in a Croydon paddling pool. British Board Of Film Censors' supremo, James Ferman, led the tributes. "That is the most appalling film I've ever had the misfortune to sit through in my life." Either he was on leave when the BBFC examined Carry On England, Holiday On The Buses, and Dune, or Hellcats ... is truly an abomination. I think the Channel 5 retrospective went out toward the tail end of the nineties. The author lists some of those screened in a 'Sex On The Telly' feature toward the end: Adventures Of A Taxi Driver, The Amorous Milkman, Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse, Ups & Downs Of A Handyman , and various Confessions .... Not to be left out, the BBC retaliated with Keeping It Up Downstairs. And yes, the role of shame includes several of the days household and household-ish names, including several Hammer starlets, many of whom feature in the chapter Knobs & Knockers: The Biggest Boys & Girls In British Sex Film History.
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Post by ripper on May 31, 2015 14:04:39 GMT
The book sounds far funnier than any of those sex comedies. The only film that I saw at the cinema that might be considered as a sex comedy was 'The Great British Striptease' with Bernard Manning hosting a striptease competition and making ribald comments about the contestants and telling his usual brand of blue jokes, and he was assisted by Sue Pollard, who thankfully kept her clothes on. For some reason it was paired with George Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead.'
The wrestling flick sounds far more entertaining than that nadir of Carry-ons, 'Carry on England.' Apparently, Tigon acted as distributor for 'Hellcats.' Were any of the glamour girls famous?
My memory tells me that Arthur Lowe turned up in a fair few of those 70s sex comedies. I am sure I recorded some of the C5 films at the time, but goodness knows where I put the tapes.
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Post by dem bones on May 31, 2015 18:51:21 GMT
I saw exactly the same double feature in North London! Whoever dreamt up that pairing had a grim sense of humour.
Re; Hellcats ... For 'glamour models' read Whitehouse magazine cover girls/ porn stars, one of whom was Sullivan's significant other for a while.
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Post by andydecker on May 31, 2015 21:11:35 GMT
This looks interesting. I have sampled some of the so-called sex-comedies. As far as the craft of film-making goes, they are better then the german sex-comedies of the time. Hard to believe,I know. Of course those movies have become virtual time capsules which sometimes make them interesting.
I have seen some Millington - both soft and hard - and some of the Confessions movies. Parts of which I found amusing. And Linda Hayden is always nice to look at. The case of Millington is tragic.
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Post by pulphack on Jun 1, 2015 6:36:46 GMT
Hellcats... really is that grim. Absolutely no redeeming features and the appalling John East, a man whose middle initial was M but should have been A for Amoral, sliming everywhere like a slug. Sorry, unfair to slugs, really.
For the most part Brit sex comedies (as David McGillvray said, inaptly named as they are neither sexy nor funny - and he used to write them!) are competently made because they were, like low budget horror and TV spin-offs, how the Brit movie industry survived the seventies. That's why they have so many familiar faces in them - I think it was Jill Gascoigne who once said that everyone wanted to grab a part in them (...) as it was the only way you could get a movie on your CV if you were a Brit TV actor back then. I also recall Nicky Henson saying that cheapo movies were better than TV for actors who liked stage work as you could pick up a cheque and still do stage work, knowing that union rules in the studios meant you would down tools in time to get back to the theatre for an evening performance - something TV could not guarantee.
Really, the only sex comedy watching is Eskimo Nell - because it's not really a sex comedy but a film about making a sex comedy that turns into Michael Armstrong's revenge against every low budget low rent movie maker who screwed his career. And it is genuinely funny as well as scathing.
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Post by ripper on Jun 1, 2015 9:49:48 GMT
I think Andy is right in that often the most interesting thing about 70s sex comedies is their mirroring of social attitudes in Britain at the time. Of course, those attitudes were also seen in the TV programmes of the time, but the films could be more explicit and use language closer to real life.
I have never seen any German sex comedies but if they rank lower than their British counterparts then they really must be something to behold :-).
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 1, 2015 14:36:03 GMT
I think Andy is right in that often the most interesting thing about 70s sex comedies is their mirroring of social attitudes in Britain at the time. Of course, those attitudes were also seen in the TV programmes of the time, but the films could be more explicit and use language closer to real life. I have never seen any German sex comedies but if they rank lower than their British counterparts then they really must be something to behold :-). This is a definite call for examples Andy. You know you want to.
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Post by andydecker on Jun 1, 2015 20:38:23 GMT
I think Andy is right in that often the most interesting thing about 70s sex comedies is their mirroring of social attitudes in Britain at the time. Of course, those attitudes were also seen in the TV programmes of the time, but the films could be more explicit and use language closer to real life. I have never seen any German sex comedies but if they rank lower than their British counterparts then they really must be something to behold :-). This is a definite call for examples Andy. You know you want to. Lol. This is such a broad topic and hard to explain. How do you explain Confessions from a Holiday Camp? They produced enough of these movies that there are movie guides.
The early sex-comedies are set mostly in Bavaria. Deep in the hinterlands where every character is a farmer and a stereotype and dumb as bread. Middleaged and married to a shrew, a self-important pillar of society in the small cycle of local farmers. Then the young girls come in, either the beautiful daughters frolicking with the sons in the hay or the girls on vacation looking for studs. Everything of course exaggerated to the max, as campy and loud as they could. More broad slapstick than your average Laurel&Hardy. Farcial. Rinse and repeat. These movies are dumb and mostly specteculary unfunny, but they are quite harmless. Not as sleazy as the many Report movies, though. These were never done in the UK I gather. And I would guess that there is more nudity and simulated sex in them then in their british Counterparts.
Interestingly the same is true here as pulphack wrote. A lot of actors worked in these movies because it was the only work in town. One or two of the girls later made the jump to the mainstream, meaning television, most left the business, one or two later worked in porn. Some of these movies are still broadcast on late-nite tv today.
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Post by ripper on Jun 2, 2015 9:47:39 GMT
Hi Andy and thanks for the information. I was just wondering if the German sex comedies were mostly stand alone films or whether there were any like the British 'Confessions' and 'Adventures' series where the same character appears or the films form a loose association to others.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 2, 2015 11:21:25 GMT
This is a definite call for examples Andy. You know you want to. Lol. This is such a broad topic and hard to explain. How do you explain Confessions from a Holiday Camp? They produced enough of these movies that there are movie guides.
The early sex-comedies are set mostly in Bavaria. Deep in the hinterlands where every character is a farmer and a stereotype and dumb as bread. Middleaged and married to a shrew, a self-important pillar of society in the small cycle of local farmers. Then the young girls come in, either the beautiful daughters frolicking with the sons in the hay or the girls on vacation looking for studs. Everything of course exaggerated to the max, as campy and loud as they could. More broad slapstick than your average Laurel&Hardy. Farcial. Rinse and repeat. These movies are dumb and mostly specteculary unfunny, but they are quite harmless. Not as sleazy as the many Report movies, though. These were never done in the UK I gather. And I would guess that there is more nudity and simulated sex in them then in their british Counterparts.
Interestingly the same is true here as pulphack wrote. A lot of actors worked in these movies because it was the only work in town. One or two of the girls later made the jump to the mainstream, meaning television, most left the business, one or two later worked in porn. Some of these movies are still broadcast on late-nite tv today.
Funny but Germans I've met over the last years would scoff at any embarrassment about sex but German comedy....no laughing matter as my good mate Armin says. I guess this is the kind of thing you are talking about Andy: www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7697638&style=movieI can feel some vital research coming on.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 2, 2015 15:15:15 GMT
Hellcats... really is that grim. Absolutely no redeeming features and the appalling John East, a man whose middle initial was M but should have been A for Amoral, sliming everywhere like a slug. Sorry, unfair to slugs, really. Watched a suitably grainy six minute excerpt from Hellcats - Mud Wresting via a popular video-hosting channel last night - Queen Kong (USA's #1) versus the "European champion", Miss Deathwish. Can't say it broadened my horizons, though Mr. Ferman's verdict seems a shade excessive. Fair play to anyone who made it through the entire 45 minutes!
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Post by ripper on Jun 3, 2015 9:56:49 GMT
Just played that clip. I couldn't help thinking it was a pity they couldn't have gotten Kent Walton to act as commentator lol.
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Post by andydecker on Jun 4, 2015 21:05:48 GMT
Hi Andy and thanks for the information. I was just wondering if the German sex comedies were mostly stand alone films or whether there were any like the British 'Confessions' and 'Adventures' series where the same character appears or the films form a loose association to others. There were a few series like the Report movies. But the comedys were as far as I know just stand alone movies. There were no continuing characters, but there were some actors who did a lot and were always cast in the same roles. A prominent one was Rinaldo Talamonti, an Italien. He always played the italian migrant worker who embodied every stereotype of the italien stud. Of course the italian workers were resented in parts of the public at the time, so people could love or hate him. Talamonti did 40 movies of this type, not only the comedies but also the so-called reports. He had admittedly some comedic talent. Another who did only a few was Peter Steiner. He was a stage actor, doing mostly bavarian folklore theatre. He always played the father or mayor. Later with the advent of the private tv channels in the mid-80s he became quite famous with his farmer-theatre. His work in the erotic comedies had sunken in obscurity by then. Of course the same channel which produced his theatre broadcasted those nudie films and the yellow press had things to write about. As simple and dumb as these movies were quite a few tried to be more then exploitation fare. One tends to forget that this was the time of cultural and sexual upheavals after the 60s, and some filmmakers wanted to express and explore the new freedom. For the typical cinema goer of its time this must have been something absolutly new.
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