The Boys (1962, Sidney J. Furie, UK: Galaworldfilm Productions)

US one sheet poster

The boys outside a Jacey cinema in Picadilly

One of the first distributors I began researching for my PhD was Kenneth Rive, who for a number of years ran a company called Gala. He became known as a specialist in French New Wave and European art house cinema during the 1950s and 1960s, but every so often he also produced films under the Galaworldfilm Productions banner. I have finally caught up with possibly one of his best, The Boys from 1962.

(L - R) Rita Webb, Betty Marsden, Patrick Magee, David Lodge

The Boys begins in a court room with very little exposition. We are thrown into a court case as four teenage boys are in the dock on a charge of murder; the stabbing to death of a garage nightwatchman during a bungled robbery. Various witnesses for the prosecution give evidence as to the yobbish, loutish behaviour these boys indulged in around the west end of London on the night in question, whilst their concerned parents look on in horror. This is 1962 after all, when the penalty for a murder conviction was still death.

What is particularly enjoyable about this film is the way in which it deconstructs the narrative, offering a commentary on the unreliable nature of storytelling. Each of these witnesses offers circumstantial evidence that on the surface points to the guilt of these four boys, but it based purely on assumptions that these boys are up to no good, purely because they look like teddy-boys and one of them carries a flick-knife. Even the audience believes they must be guilty, before we hear testimony from each boy in turn, who fills out the details and gives a wider context for each of the stories told by these so-called eye witnesses. Yes, they may have seemed like louts, but really they were just teenage boys out for a good time. Suddenly you begin to believe they must be innocent, and that this film is a critique of the attitudes adults have towards a youth culture they mistrust and don't understand. The drama, with the present taking place in the courtroom and the flashbacks taking us to the night in question, really creates tension and never lets on which way the verdict will go right until the last minute. Like all good courtroom dramas, you feel invested in the outcome. Sidney J. Furie does not pass judgment on these young boys, and creates realistic, likeable characters who are as much the victims of poverty and circumstance as the trouble-makers of a Charles Dickens novel.

One thing that really makes this film stand out is its tremendous cast. Familiar faces follow each other onto the witness stand, such as Roy Kinnear and Wilfrid Brambell, and Felix Aylmer, recently seen as a predatory paedophile in Hammer's Never Take Sweets From a Stranger (1960, Cyril Frankel, UK), is now on the right side of the law as the judge, listening to questioning from both Richard Todd and Robert Morley. One of the boys, Stan Coulter, is played by that irascible raconteur Dudley Sutton, in one of his very first starring roles, and he is brilliant. He goes from menacing thug to wide-eyed innocent, remaining completely believable the whole time. Popular singer and heart-throb Jess Conrad plays one of his friends. 

Richard Todd for the prosecution on the left, Robert Morley defending on the right

My desire to watch this film was prompted by an interview I conducted with Aisha Ahmed (now Wills) last summer for a book chapter I was writing on Jacey cinemas. As a teenager in Birmingham she started working for the chain at their offices there before being selected to become the glamorous face of the company. As "Miss Jacey" she was required to attend glittering premieres in London, attend public events and even model for advertising materials. In 1961 she was encouraged to get into the film industry and was offered a small uncredited part in The Boys, as a kiosk girl. Being a Kenneth Rive production, her scene was shot in the Jacey on Piccadilly, which was currently screening the Italian neo-realist drama Adue e le compagne (1960, Antonio Pietrangeli, Italy: Zebra Film), which Rive had retitled Hungry for Love. Also on offer was the creaky striptease spectacular Femmes de Paris (1953, Jean Boyer, France: Hoche Productions), and the advertising for both can be clearly seen in the film.

The boys are causing trouble outside the Jacey

Aisha "Miss Jacey" Ahmed in her cameo role

Her film career was stymied when she refused to appear in horror films, and she continued to work for the Jacey company for the remainder of the 1960s. She kindly sent me a photo taken during the shooting of her scenes.

Aisha discussing her scene between takes with Sidney J. Furie whilst operator Chick Waterson readies the camera. Photo courtesy of Aisha Wills. 

 The Boys is a great example of Britain in transition. This is a pre-Beatles, pre-sexual revolution 1960s where boys still wear smart suits and go to dance halls for a good time. Jess Conrad may have been a pop star, but his style was soon going to become very unfashionable indeed. The location photography around London reveals bomb sites and Victorian tenements alongside new high-rise blocks under construction (in fact one of the boys works as an apprentice carpenter on one such block). With Furie having apparently told the boys to "rip up the script," their scenes have a freshness and improvised quality which helps accentuate the contrast between their poor working-class lives and the more stilted, formal atmosphere of the court room. These boys could have easily stepped out of a John Osborne play, or one of the "Angry Young Men" films that were still in production during this period. Perhaps the court room nature of the film, or the fact that Sidney J. Furie was not considered part of that British New Wave, means that The Boys is neglected when talking about depictions of youth in British cinema of the early 1960s. It is certainly as much of a 'message' picture as one of Tony Richardson's or Lindsay Anderson's, and these boys feel like Karel Reisz found them when shooting his Free Cinema documentary We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959, UK: Graphic Films). Like that film, here Furie, with Stuart Douglass' script, is challenging audience perceptions and asking for tolerance and understanding towards young people.

Sadly, for aspect ratio fans, the version of The Boys currently available from Talking Pictures TV and Renown DVD has been cropped from it's widescreen in order to fill 16:9 TVs. This is a pity as the photography is excellent, and there are times when information is missing from the edge of the frame because they cut it off, including a crucial final shot in the court room. In these times of restoration and preservation of lost and long-missing films, this is particularly disappointing. Despite this it is still well worth tracking down and deciding for yourself whether these boys did it, or if they are just victims of circumstance.

Immersed in Eurospy

I've been working on a chapter about the Eurospy film since well before Christmas, and it sometimes feels like I will never finish it. I recently spoke to the Dorado Films podcast about the genre. It was them who very kindly sent me an Agent 077 boxset last year which has formed the basis of this chapter. They are American but appear to have a massive catalogue of European popular cinema. Apparently this includes at least twenty Jess Franco movies, and tons of Spaghetti Westerns and other Eurospy movies. Cool stuff, and they seem to be kicking up a gear in terms of releasing some of these gems on DVD and blu ray.

The podcast can be found here, and apparently I talked so much they are cutting it into two episodes. 

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966)

Seeing as how my PhD is built on my Bonditis collection, it is perhaps inevitable that the Eurospy would play such a large part in it, but it's forcing me out of my comfort zone and into areas of colonialism and imperialism that I have very little academic experience in. Which I suppose is a good thing. I just wish I could finish it! It is my aim to have this done by the end of the week, which is probably why I'm writing a blog about it instead of just writing it. I only update this when I'm putting off doing the real writing.

I'm a real convert to the Eurospy now, and was grateful for the opportunity to talk about it with someone else who is interested. I hope Dorado are able to get some of the other films in their collection out there.

In related news, I've been talking to Screenbound (who used to be Odeon Entertainment) and they are planning to release Bonditis on DVD and blu ray next year! With any luck I will be involved in creating some bonus materials, which is very exciting.

Examples of Agent 077's casual violence and misogyny. What a guy.

The Hilton Sisters

It's funny how things can happen that cause you to take something of a left turn in your research. I had not expected to be doing background reading on vaudeville and burlesque entertainment in the early twentieth century, yet that's pretty much all I have been doing over the last week. Let me tell you, it's a bit awkward trying to read a large book about circus freaks on the train.

Violet (on the left) and Daisy (on the right) Hilton were born out of wedlock in Brighton in 1908. Their mother worked in a pub, and the landlady, clearly an enterprising woman, offered to buy the babies from the no doubt shocked parents, once it became clear that they were not going to die within the few days predicted by the doctor. The twins were almost immediately put to work in the pub, drawing crowds who could come into the back parlour for a glimpse and the opportunity to buy a postcard or two. For an extra couple of pennies you could lift up the girls blankets to check for yourself that they really were "bound by flesh." Before long the girls were learning to sing, dance and play instruments and were playing to packed variety halls and theatres around Europe. Whilst still teenagers they were whisked away to America, only returning to Britain once many years later.


From our more "enlightened" perspective the idea of exploiting the disabled for entertainment seems tasteless and crass, but from the 1700s right through to the mid-twentieth century  the freaks, geeks, pinheads, dwarves, midgets, indeed anyone deemed to be deformed, were basically given two options: go on the road as a performer or be left to rot in an institution. The Hilton sisters grew up with this used a constant threat should they ever refuse to perform. Refused schooling, all the girls knew was how to perform on stage. They became accomplished singers, dancers and musicians and audiences were often brought to tears seeing these diminutive girls overcoming such personal tragedy with such grace and style.


Anyone reading this will know the girls mainly from their appearance in Tod Browning's Freaks (1932).

By this point it had been many years since the girls had actually performed in the circus, and evidentially they were initially reluctant to appear in the film for this reason, but ultimately they perhaps saw it as an opportunity. They actually come off well in the film. They are required to act, something they were inexperienced in, rather than sing, dance or play music. Sadly, due to the problems the film had it was not the springboard to movie success they were perhaps hoping for, and they went back on the road, touring for many years with their own revue. Along the way were romances, fake weddings and even a baby: Daisy got pregnant from someone in her band, and the baby was born in Minnesota and put up straight away for adoption; just another in the long list of personal tragedies for the Hilton sisters.

After years of being ripped off by unscrupulous men they were advised to put their own money into another movie, this time with them as the stars. In 1952 Chained for Life was released, directed by the journeyman Harry L. Fraser, who had spent decades making 'B' westerns. This means that unlike many cheap exploitation films, this was at least shot with relatively decent production values. The girls were in their early forties at this point, and are showing what two decades on the road, smoking and drinking all the way, can do to your looks. It is still a fascinating watch, being semi-autobiographical in it's depiction of the Hamilton sisters who are still a big draw on the vaudeville scene. In real life they were anything but, and vaudeville was dying out.


The film is worth viewing especially for one astonishing scene. Daisy (playing Dorothy) is in love and wants to marry, but they have been refused a marriage licence on the grounds that it would be bigamy (this is something which did actually happen to them some fifteen years earlier). She goes to bed wishing that they could finally be free of each other, the screen wobbles and we are in a dream sequence, where Daisy climbs out of bed leaving Violet (Vivian in this movie) behind. She goes out into a garden and dances around, alone, until her lover appears and they dance together. This is a heart-breaking scene to watch, as one imagines the shooting of it. Obviously a double is used for the long shots, and there is enough Vaseline on the lens to make sure we can't tell it's not Daisy, but occasionally it cuts to close-ups of Daisy. At one point she is standing next to a tree, and you picture in your mind poor Violet crouching down out of shot. How the girls must have felt about this scene when they sat and viewed it for the first time one cannot imagine. Perhaps it was wish-fulfillment for them.


In the mid-1950s they actually set up and operated a burger shack by the beach in Florida, but this did not last long, possibly because customers felt slightly revolted at the sight of "freaks" serving up hot snacks. By the end of the decade they were reduced to travelling around the States making personal appearances at movie theatres and drive-ins, accompanying double-bills of Freaks and Chained for Life. All they really knew what to do was perform. They had not changed their act in fifty years, despite the entertainment industry irrevocably changing around them. By 1962, the kids at the drive-in would not have known who they were, or cared.


Just when their story could not get any more tragic they were left in Charlotte, North Carolina by the promoter who had been driving them from gig to gig. He took the money and the film prints and drove away. Daisy and Violet were taken in by the local community, offered shelter, jobs in the town grocery store and most importantly friendship. When they finally died in 1969, they had spent their last few years living something close to a normal life, with people who cared about them. This must have been some comfort after such a long and exhausting life of abuse, exploitation and abandonment.


So their story does have a happy ending. I think they are fascinating and have enjoyed revisiting their story over the last week or so. My reason for this renewed interest was because I was invited to contribute to a short piece on the girls for BBC's The One Show. It has not been aired yet so I don't even know if I will make the final cut. You will learn far more about the girls if you watch the documentary recently produced by Leslie Zemekis called Bound by Flesh (2012). It's a great overview of their lives and features interviews with people who actually knew them. I watched it on American Netflix, but you can also find it to buy and download on iTunes.

Legend of the Witches (1970): A Border Films Production

By the end of the 1960s the Age of Aquarius, once filled with the optimism of a hundred thousand hippies, was going sour. The Manson murders, the Altamont Rolling Stones debacle (not forgetting Sympathy for the Devil) and the rise of Anton LaVey as a celebrity Satanist, hanging out with rock stars and Hollywood A-listers, put the Devil at the forefront of alternative culture. Hack authors like Dennis Wheatley suddenly found themselves back in print with lurid covers usually depicting goat-headed men pawing at naked women, and the idea of witchcraft for many became inextricably linked to sexual freedom. By the early 1970s, if movies and The News of the World were to be believed, the only people getting any sex were wife-swappers and devil worshippers.

Alexander Sanders and his young wife Maxine

Into this rather heady atmosphere, in a typically seedy British manner, stepped Alexander Sanders, who dubbed himself "King of the Witches". He was a Wiccan high priest and talented self-promoter and soon found himself a minor celebrity in the UK. He claimed to have used black magic for most of his life, having been taught by his grandmother, but following the disintegration of his first marriage and family problems which he credited to an abuse of his powers, he decided to use his powers for good. He became a Wiccan in the 1960s, which was well timed for the upsurge in popularity of anything to do with witches and Satanism a few years later.

In 1970 Border Films produced Legend of the Witches, a documentary directed by Malcolm Leigh, who just a year later would direct Lady Chatterley versus Fanny Hill, aka Games That Lovers Play, also for Border. The film, shot in black and white, begins with the night-time initiation rituals of a group of witches. They are all naked with the exception of the priest who wears robes, and they dance in circles around a fire. They also place a blindfold on one man and lead him through the forest, stumbling and falling until he arrives back in the circle. A voiceover, which sounds a bit like Valentine Dyall but most likely is not (sadly there is no credit to suggest who it was), intones throughout the meaning of the rituals whilst also explaining the history of witchcraft, with its pre-christian origins. 

The film is an odd mix of naked witches performing rites, including Alexander and his beautiful blonde wife Maxine, alongside images of old English churches and countryside. Monthly Film Bulletin comically described the film as featuring "a good deal of rather goose-pimply nudity." We even get a tour around the witchcraft museum in Cornwall (which sadly got flooded out several years ago). It is artfully shot for the most part, which may explain how the film got past the BBFC despite the copious full-frontal nudity from both sexes. This would have been one of the last films to be viewed by John Trevelyan, coming in just at the point when the X certificate was changed to mean suitable for over-eighteens only. The BBFC were always more lenient on films which they felt had artistic merit, although it does appear that some cuts were made at the time. Despite the nudity the film is not leering or exploitative, which is possibly surprising given its origins as a Border film. Olive Negus-Fancey is credited as producer, with Malcolm Fancey as an assistant director and his half-sister Judith Smith as editor. This was made by Border around the same time they were producing films like Not Tonight, Darling or distributing European movies such as I Am a Nymphomaniac (1971, France, Max Pecas).

One can only imagine how well this film would have been received by punters at the time. Whilst it could have been viewed in all seriousness as an in-depth documentary on a fascinating subject, it was most likely viewed by men in raincoats in basement cinemas around Soho. These posters I have found online would suggest as much.

The film can now be found in its entirety on YouTube, although rumours persist that there is a much longer cut of the film somewhere. The longest commercially available version is seventy-two minutes, which is the same as this one. If there was a longer version it must be languishing in a vault somewhere, or in Malcolm Leigh's shed. It's well worth having a look at, for a number of reasons. Like many films of this ilk, it's a glimpse into the world of our parents and grandparents that they would rather be left behind. The 1970s was a time in British cinema history when a documentary about naked witches could be found in cinemas around the country, and audiences were willing to sit through the boring bits in order to get to the naked bits. Renown Films appear to have inherited the back catalogue and original elements to many Fancey-produced movies. Their new TV channel Talking Pictures TV has screened Legend of the Witches several times, as well as dozens of other long-forgotten rarities from the Fancey vaults. I am still hoping to be able to visit and take a look in those vaults some time. 

In the meantime my research into the Fancey family continues. I have finally made contact with a member of the family who may be willing to talk about the business with me. I am optimistic that he will.

Dick Malloy: Agent 077

I am currently writing about Agent 077, aka Dick Malloy (Ken Clark), an American spy who spends most of his time in Europe either punching bad guys or seducing exotic women. I named this blog after the second of three Agent 077 films, having found lobby cards and this original quad for dirt cheap in a local memorabilia store. Now, thanks to Dorado Films in the U.S. I finally have the out-of-print DVD box set of all three films and am working my way through. As is to be expected, they are entertaining but not amazing. Most of the sixties eurospy films I have seen can be a bit of a slog to get through. Trying to match the thrills and romance of Bond on a quarter of the budget was always going to show on screen, and they often come across as travelogues with the occasional pedestrian car chase and raven-haired beauty wrapped in a towel.

Despite their shortcomings I personally find the whole genre fascinating, and I now have to justify this by writing a chapter of my thesis on them. Ideally I need to turn in the first draft of this, a mere 10,000 words, some time next week.

So, the Agent 077 films are:

Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

From the Orient With Fury (1965, originally titled Fury on the Bosphorus)

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1967)

All three were directed by Sergio Grieco, under the name Terence Hathaway (a common practice at the time, in order to fool Italian audiences that the film they were watching was American) who clearly had a good relationship with Ken Clark. He made two other eurospy films with him, Tiffany Memorandum (1967) and The Fuller Report (1968). Neither of which are on DVD but are available on YouTube, thanks again to Dorado Films who own videotape versions of these films. They are not good enough quality to release on DVD but they are watchable. I intend to watch all five, as although my focus is specifically on Agent 077, I feel that the other two are relevant to the set. Hopefully they will not be too disappointing.

The eurospy film was massively popular in the 1960s with the majority coming out of Italy, and yet it is very underserved when it comes to legitimate DVD releases. There are probably hundreds that are currently commercially unavailable. This is probably because there is not a lot of mainstream interest in them, which is a pity. Like all popular genres, they tell us a lot about national identity and the times in which they were produced. The costumes, haircuts, cars, etc. are often a far more authentic depiction of their era than the big-budgeted Bond films, which have for the most part achieved a kind of timeless quality.

I have written a large article for a future issue of Cinema Retro on another eurospy film, Bonditis (1968), a one-off spy spoof from Switzerland, which I have probably mentioned on here before. I will also be writing about that for this PhD chapter, depending on how close I get to 10,000 with Agent 077.

I often get asked why I spend so much time with films that no one else (i.e. in the mainstream) has ever seen or heard of. Even I have to admit that watching obscure cinema is something of a crapshoot, but for every five bad or boring films (I saw Sharknado 3 last week, and that was terrible), you find a gem. Maybe. 

Arrow Video and Mario Bava

I have once again been invited to contribute to a blu ray release from those great people at Arrow Video. As I have been discovering the world of Mario Bava over the last two or three years it is perfect timing. I have been able to draw on the research I conducted for my paper on the Fancey family back in May AND my giallo paper in Italy in June. Also over the summer I wrote a chapter for Routledge on the Jacey cinema chain, which turned out to be directly relevant to my PhD after all. Part of that research involved interviewing the last surviving member of the Jacey family, John N. Cohen, who had personal dealings with the Fancey family, so this has all neatly dovetailed together. 

I am trying where possible to use things I am writing towards my PhD, which as far as I can tell is fine, but it does mean that by the time the thing is finished most of it will already have been published elsewhere, and I can kiss that offer of publishing it as a book goodbye. Still, I can't worry about that now. I just need a finished PhD, and then I can write books about anything I want.

Speaking of which, I am still working on Norman J. Warren's book. He is now shooting a new movie, which is exciting but does give me another chapter to write. I have interviewed several more people for it in the last couple of months, so I really hope I can get it finished within the next twelve months. It's driving me slightly insane.

Anyway, to be involved with Arrow is exciting again. I have written an essay on the Fancey family who were behind the distribution of Five Dolls For an August Moon. They also attempted, fairly unsuccessfully, to distribute Bay of Blood too. There is some overlap here with my essay for the Mark of the Devil blu ray, as that was also handled unsuccessfully by the Fanceys. As far as I can tell, despite Five Dolls For an August Moon receiving an X-certificate, with no cuts required, it looks like they just let it sit on a shelf. Seeing that the Fancey family archive appears to have gone up in smoke, it's likely that I will never know.

The new Arrow blu ray is due out on the 1st February 2016, and marks the third time now that I have been involved with them, and it is the fifth time I have contributed to a blu ray release (the other two being the BFI and Shameless). I hope there will be plenty more in the future...

Not Tonight, Darling

My research interests, much to my chagrin, have often brought me back to the British sex film of the 1970s. I was even referred to as an "expert" in this field by fellow academics at a recent conference. This I find highly embarrassing. However, despite trying to get away from that field in the last few years, I do still find that my curiosity occasionally gets the better of me.

The new freeview channel Talking Pictures TV, an offshoot of the Renown DVD label, have acquired the catalogues of several small British distributors, including the titles owned by Adrienne Fancey. This has meant that I've kept an eye on the channel over the last couple of months. They have been screening long-forgotten films that the Fanceys produced and distributed as well as an assortment of other rare and often unmemorable movies. Amongst these have been some British sex comedies and dramas from the 1970s, a bleak period in our nation's film history when actors were forced into drab, badly written movies for the entertainment of raincoat-wearing audiences. These movies were generally always profitable and therefore producers would rather make them than take a risk on something more wholesome or artistic. I am sure that when people like Luan Peters were taking their clothes off in grubby, brown bedrooms, they had little idea that the films would still be playing to audiences some forty years later.

Which brings us to the Border Films-distributed Not Tonight, Darling (notice how the poster drops the comma), one of many films of that period to serve up the "bored housewife seeks extra-marital sex" plot-line. If the films and TV of the 1970s are to be believed, all wives were gagging for it, their husbands were too dull to notice, and it was left to an army of milkmen, window-cleaners and travelling salesmen to service their needs.

Luan Peters, perhaps best remembered for getting being bitten on the boobs by a Collinson twin in Twins of Evil (also 1971), plays Karen. Her prudish husband John (Jason Twelvetrees) commutes to a solicitors in London every day whilst she takes her young son Gary (Lance Barrett in his only film role) to school and then wonders around shopping and having drinks with friends. She is desperate to get some sex, or even attention, from her husband, but he is blind to her needs and only thinks about work.

What she doesn't realise however is that moustachioed shop-assistant Eddie (Sean Barry-Weske) is a peeping tom, and hovers outside her bathroom window at night in the hope of seeing her apply some moisturiser to her arms. Whenever she does appear his binoculars struggle to maintain focus, much like the audience at this point one imagines. 

Eddie gets into a conversation with the smooth-talking stock supplier Alex (Australian actor Vincent Ball, who was approaching fifty at the time) at work the next day and they get chatting about Karen. Alex is clearly a player, and bets Eddie £5 (a lot of money in those days) that he can get her into bed by the end of the week. This being a film where we are expecting sex, that is precisely what happens. Alex picks her up in a bar and plies her with drinks. He then, for no obvious reason, takes her to watch the band Thunderclap Newman rehearsing. This scene is purely there to fill five minutes, as they just sit and watch, with Alex clicking his fingers like he is really hip, whilst this hairy sixties bunch play a whole song. This photo is the closest I could find to how they look in the movie.

The expression most of them have during this scene suggests that none of them know why they are there either.

Alex takes Karen back to his bachelor pad, which screams "serial killer". It's an almost bare room with only seventies curtains and photos from porn mags for decoration. I am sure I had curtains like this in my home when I was a child.

Despite all the signs to the contrary, Karen is talked into stripping and shagging. Little does she know that Alex has a photographer secreted in a cupboard documenting the whole thing, in order that he can prove to Eddie that he scored and thus claim his £5. He is one class act. 

Karen returns home feeling guilty but liberated. That night she tries to give her husband a blow-job and he leaps out of bed, horrified. He demands that she never tries anything like that again. What a guy.

The next day Alex collects his winnings and celebrates by dropping a copy of the photos through Karen's door, in order to effectively blackmail her into coming with him again. She ends up at a sex party featuring hairy men and women dancing and shagging. One of these women, Suzanne, is actually the notorious horse-faced porn star Fiona Richmond in her feature-film debut. She is credited as Amber Harrison (her real name is Julia Rosamund Harrison).

Not Tonight, Darling treats us to some amusingly choreographed coupling before the camera pans to a large mirror on the wall, where we are let into the secret: it's a two-way mirror! And someone is filming this without anyone else knowing! Shock, gasp.

Sometime later Karen's husband John is taken to a strip club in Soho by grateful client Captain Harrison (Bill Shine, who in better times had appeared in The Red Shoes (1948) and other British classics) where he is presented with a hilarious striptease act by The Tiffany Sisters, who appear to have been real Soho strippers. The club itself is a tiny panelled preview cinema, and these girls dance and strip in front of just five men like their clothes are on fire. It is about as erotic as that sounds. Although the Captain is enjoying himself, and is something of a connoisseur when it comes to Soho strippers, John looks unmoved or unaroused. However, when a film comes on called Willing Flesh, which features his wife in a starring role, he promptly runs to the toilets and throws up. 

Which brings us to the final scenes. He confronts Karen, calling her every name he can think of. She is tearful and sorry and tries to explain, but he is having none of it, and instead plans to take his son and return to his mother's house. Karen tells her friend Joan (Nicki Howorth) about the film, who by coincidence was also at the sex party. Joan then plans a revenge on Alex and his cameraman which involved kidnapping them both, stealing their clothes and dumping them in the countryside, filming the whole thing. We then cut back to a sad and wistful Karen at the bonfire party they had planned before all this happened, wondering whether she can persuade John to stay. And then the credits role, before we know what might become of them.

So what have we learned? Is this film a warning to housewives everywhere? No matter how little sex you are getting from your husbands, it's better than ending up in illegal hardcore porn? Like most of these sex-themed dramas, there is a moral judgement on the film's participants. The actors already feel bad for having to get their clothes off so often, yet their characters don't even get to enjoy it, having to suffer for their behaviour. There are also dead-ends in the plot, most notably with the peeping tom. We see a lot of him in the beginning, and we suspect that he is going to be a major character, but he then disappears, bumped from the screen by Alex. It is interesting that Karen seems to be the only person properly punished, yet she was driven to desperation by her husband's lack of attention. Eddie ought to have been arrested to spying on women through their windows at night, but it's seen as just a harmless hobby. Alex may have to get home naked, but there is little suggestion that he will not be returning to play the field once more.

Considering the likelihood of any bored housewives seeing this in cinemas was pretty slim, one can't help but wonder who was buying this conservative morality. The audience would most likely have been men hoping to see boobs, and they were rewarded for their suffering through the tedium of it all. The only real reason Karen is punished is to get the film past the BBFC. If she had enjoyed it all and not been suitably chastised it is likely that they would have refused a certificate. As it is there are several obvious cuts during the sex party scene, where things were literally cut from the print, leaving jumps in the music. Not Tonight, Darling is also an odd mix of drama with some comedy, most notably the kidnapping of Alex, which is the kind of ending one would expect in a Confessions of... film.

This was directed by Anthony Sloman, who according to the IMDB has mostly worked as a dubbing editor since the 1960s, and has credits on dozens of TV shows. He directed one other feature, Foursome (1972). No prizes for guessing the genre.

Not Tonight, Darling was one of the many sex films distributed by Border Films, which at that time was situated on Wardour Street in Soho next door to the famous Marquee Club. The day to day operations were taken care of by E.J. Fancey's common-law wife Olive Negus-Fancey and her son Charles.

Part of me hopes that this is the last British sex drama/ comedy I sit through, as they are dispiriting and depressing in many ways. Yet I am sure that once enough time has passed I will probably dip my toe in those murky brown waters again.