This is combined with lots of foreshadowing of the terrible fates awaiting some of the characters, a clever technique to make sure we get depressed right from the start and stay depressed.
Permissive’s original working title was the much more appropriate Suzy Superscrew but sadly that was never going to get past the British censors.
Suzy is a blonde who arrives in town to meet up with her friend Fiona. Fiona is a groupie who hangs around with a band called Forever More. She sleeps with all of them but now she’s become obsessed by their scruffy goblin of a bass player/lead vocalist. She has, foolishly, fallen in love with him (God knows why since he’s a self-centred creep).
Fiona introduces Suzy to the world of the groupie.
Suzy takes to this world like a duck to water. Pretty soon she’s not only slept with the various members of the band and their manager but with miscellaneous members of other bands. She’ll sleep with anyone who asks her. They don’t even have to ask her nicely.
Suzy thinks the road manager likes her so she sleeps with him but then he kicks her out. She’s befriended a drifter named Pogo who seems like a bit of an acid casualty but he also seems fairly nice. He’s the only person in the film who could be described as moderately sympathetic even if he is crazy and his departure from the film accelerates Suzy’s descent into depravity.
That kitchen sink drama influence and the associated semi-documentary style ensures that the sex lacks any eroticism. Sex isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s all about suffering and emptiness. OK, being a groupie really was the ultimate dead-end lifestyle for a girl, being passed around like a slab of meat by scrofulous smelly musicians, but the lack of eroticism does tend to make it difficult to understand why girls like Fiona even bothered.
1970 was a particularly grim year for both music and fashion. Things were about to improve. Heavy metal, glam rock, disco and punk were about to arrive on the scene and make things more interesting. But in 1970 popular music was still dominated by turgid hippie rock, fashion was ghastly hippie-influenced horrors and men still sported scraggly long hair and beards. It’s sobering to reflect that even disco music and disco fashion was better than this. The music (from various bands) in this movie could I guess be described as progressive folk-rock and I have to admit a certain bias here since it’s a type of music that I’ve always heartily disliked. If you actually like this sort of music then you’ll love this film.
The main featured band, Forever More, are featured way too much and it’s a challenge to endure their songs. They were a real-life band and there is some justice in the world since their prodigious lack of success would soon lead them to break up. I have to grudgingly admit that Sylvester’s Last Voyage is their one vaguely OK song.
At this point you might be wondering - does this movie have anything at all going for it? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. Director Lindsay Shonteff was clearly trying to make a softcore sex film with some emotional resonance and with some arty touches. He succeeds, up to a point. He does throw in a few interesting cinematic tricks and the constant intercutting between the present and the future does give the movie an interestingly nonlinear narrative. And while the semi-documentary feel adds to the bleakness of an already bleak film it has to be admitted that pessimism and emotional blankness is what the director is aiming for so to that extent it works.
I assume Maggie Stride was cast because she has that waif look and she isn’t especially attractive. Suzy’s popularity with the bands is based more on her willingness to drop her knickers at any time than on her beauty. Stride gives an odd distanced performance which kind of works. The more obviously glamorous Gay Singleton is quite good as Fiona. Look out for the Collinson twins (former Playboy centrefolds and the stars of Hammer’s Twins of Evil) in bit parts.
Lindsay Shonteff had an undistinguished career as a director, making a few sexploitation features, a few spy spoofs and a couple of more serious spy films. In 1967 he did direct The Million Eyes of Sumuru which I quite liked so his career wasn’t a complete washout.
There’s a lot of nudity including quite a bit of frontal female nudity and a lot of sex. It might be deliberately un-erotic but it’s still pretty daring for a 1970 British movie. I guess it was hoped that the lack of eroticism, the touches of artiness and the general tone of bleakness would make the censors more lenient (it didn’t work and the British censors cut the film to ribbons).
Permissive has an extraordinarily grimy, grungy, scuzzy feel to it. You can almost smell the griminess. It’s a relentlessly pessimistic movie but it has one or two interesting elements. It’s recommended if you like sex combined with artiness and misery.
Suzy thinks the road manager likes her so she sleeps with him but then he kicks her out. She’s befriended a drifter named Pogo who seems like a bit of an acid casualty but he also seems fairly nice. He’s the only person in the film who could be described as moderately sympathetic even if he is crazy and his departure from the film accelerates Suzy’s descent into depravity.
That kitchen sink drama influence and the associated semi-documentary style ensures that the sex lacks any eroticism. Sex isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s all about suffering and emptiness. OK, being a groupie really was the ultimate dead-end lifestyle for a girl, being passed around like a slab of meat by scrofulous smelly musicians, but the lack of eroticism does tend to make it difficult to understand why girls like Fiona even bothered.
1970 was a particularly grim year for both music and fashion. Things were about to improve. Heavy metal, glam rock, disco and punk were about to arrive on the scene and make things more interesting. But in 1970 popular music was still dominated by turgid hippie rock, fashion was ghastly hippie-influenced horrors and men still sported scraggly long hair and beards. It’s sobering to reflect that even disco music and disco fashion was better than this. The music (from various bands) in this movie could I guess be described as progressive folk-rock and I have to admit a certain bias here since it’s a type of music that I’ve always heartily disliked. If you actually like this sort of music then you’ll love this film.
The main featured band, Forever More, are featured way too much and it’s a challenge to endure their songs. They were a real-life band and there is some justice in the world since their prodigious lack of success would soon lead them to break up. I have to grudgingly admit that Sylvester’s Last Voyage is their one vaguely OK song.
At this point you might be wondering - does this movie have anything at all going for it? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. Director Lindsay Shonteff was clearly trying to make a softcore sex film with some emotional resonance and with some arty touches. He succeeds, up to a point. He does throw in a few interesting cinematic tricks and the constant intercutting between the present and the future does give the movie an interestingly nonlinear narrative. And while the semi-documentary feel adds to the bleakness of an already bleak film it has to be admitted that pessimism and emotional blankness is what the director is aiming for so to that extent it works.
I assume Maggie Stride was cast because she has that waif look and she isn’t especially attractive. Suzy’s popularity with the bands is based more on her willingness to drop her knickers at any time than on her beauty. Stride gives an odd distanced performance which kind of works. The more obviously glamorous Gay Singleton is quite good as Fiona. Look out for the Collinson twins (former Playboy centrefolds and the stars of Hammer’s Twins of Evil) in bit parts.
Lindsay Shonteff had an undistinguished career as a director, making a few sexploitation features, a few spy spoofs and a couple of more serious spy films. In 1967 he did direct The Million Eyes of Sumuru which I quite liked so his career wasn’t a complete washout.
There’s a lot of nudity including quite a bit of frontal female nudity and a lot of sex. It might be deliberately un-erotic but it’s still pretty daring for a 1970 British movie. I guess it was hoped that the lack of eroticism, the touches of artiness and the general tone of bleakness would make the censors more lenient (it didn’t work and the British censors cut the film to ribbons).
The BFI’s uncut release includes the film on both Blu-Ray and DVD accompanied by quite a few extras. The movie looks reasonably good on Blu-Ray. It’s in the correct 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The movie was shot in colour, on a minuscule budget.
Permissive has an extraordinarily grimy, grungy, scuzzy feel to it. You can almost smell the griminess. It’s a relentlessly pessimistic movie but it has one or two interesting elements. It’s recommended if you like sex combined with artiness and misery.
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