The Playbirds (1978)

Mary Millington was a minor pop culture phenomenon of the 1970s (and in Britain perhaps not so minor). She made a series of incredibly successful softcore sex films and became one of Britain’s best-known nude models. She committed suicide in 1979, hounded to death by police harassment.

The Playbirds (1978) was one of her major hits. I had expected this movie to be a sex comedy but while there are some comic moments it’s essentially a crime thriller. With some nudity. OK, with lots and lots of nudity.

A crazed killer is strangling nude models, all of whom have posed for Playbirds magazine. That’s one link between the killings, but there’s another. The victims all seemed to have some connection with horses. Since the owner of Playbirds magazine, a man named Dougan, is a keen racing enthusiast and racehorse owner Chief Superintendent Holbourne (Glynn Edwards) devotes some attention to Dougan. Holbourne also wonders about the witchcraft angle, since the magazine recently featured a series of photoshoots involving witchcraft.

The police fear that the next victim might be Playbirds’ latest centrefold, a rather charming cute blonde named Lena. Inspector Harry Morgan (Gavin Campbell) is assigned to keep an eye on her. Since she’s a very pretty and very personable young woman it’s a rather pleasant duty.

The Assistant Police Commissioner (played by comedy legend Windsor Davies) feels that the investigation is going nowhere. The new plan is to have a policewoman go undercover as a nude model for Playbirds magazine. That assignment will go to Woman Police Constable Lucy Sheridan (Mary Millington).

The highlight of the movie is the selection process for the policewoman who is going to go undercover. Chief Superintendent Holbourne and Inspector Morgan sit at a desk in an office while various policewomen troop in and take all their clothes off. Sometimes being a cop ain’t so bad. The great thing about this scene is that we see luscious naked women (these are the prettiest policewomen you have ever seen) but it’s not gratuitous nudity. It’s integral to the plot!

The story is mostly played fairly straight. While stylistically it bears no resemblance to the Italian giallo genre the content does appear to indicate a major giallo influence. A series of sex murders, a black-gloved killer, an atmosphere of sleazy glamour, some decadence.

Setting a sex movie in the world of girlie magazines had been a favoured technique in 1960s American sexploitation movies. It always offers an excuse for lots of nudity and doesn’t require expensive sets, and it provides a suitable atmosphere.

The movie is certainly not lacking in nude women. We get our first glimpse of female frontal nudity about fifteen seconds into the movie. There’s lots more to follow. Oddly enough while Mary Millington is in the movie right from the start we have to wait a very long time for her to take her clothes off. This means that she has to do some actual acting. As an actress she’s perfectly competent. Most of the cast are quite OK, they’re obviously just coasting and waiting to pick up their pay cheques but they’re competent actors.

There is a bit of social comment in this film. It’s certainly not directly political but the movie does take a few swipes at the self-appointed moral watchdogs of society and the police are not exactly portrayed as either competent or particularly pleasant.

This was the 70s so the movie comes down very much on the side of sexual freedom, which in today’s climate is quite refreshing. The nude models are really nice girls. There’s nothing negative about the way they’re portrayed. WPC Lucy Sheridan has no qualms at all about having lots of sexual encounters in the line of duty. She’s portrayed as one of the more competent among the cops. If the job requires her to drop her panties and jump into bed with someone she’s OK with that. Hey, it’s more fun than typing arrest reports. But she still comes across as a dedicated cop. She just happens to see it as quite natural for a woman to want to have sex. The movie doesn’t suggest that this makes her a bad person, nor does it suggest that shedding their clothes for a magazine makes the nude models bad people.

This movie could be compared to Play Motel, an erotic giallo made at about the same time. Taking the basic giallo or erotic thriller formula and adding lots of extra nudity was an obvious enough idea.

The Playbirds doesn’t look dirt cheap and it’s technically well made. There are even a few reasonably effective visual suspense moments.

The ending is quite unexpected.

Screenbound’s DVD offers a good uncut transfer. The extras include Mary Millington’s World Striptease Extravaganza which doesn’t actually feature Miss Millington (it was shot in 1981). If you can put up with the awful comic acting as the host then it provides a fascinating glimpse of the art of striptease in 1981. It’s quite lengthy and it features an astonishing array of very naked young women. There’s also one of the shorts that Mary Millington did earlier in her career and I have to say that considering it was shot on 8mm it looks remarkably good. If you enjoy lesbian sex scenes you’ll like it. There’s a stills gallery which includes some of Millington’s photoshoots for 70s girly magazines, plus there are trailers. Overall a pretty impressive DVD presentation. The Playbirds is also included in the recent Mary Millington Blu-Ray boxed set.

The Playbirds works OK as an erotic crime thriller with a fairly serviceable plot (I guessed the killer’s identity but I turned out to be wrong) but of course the point of the movie was to display enormous amounts of bare female flesh. As a softcore erotic movie it’s pretty good. Overall The Playbirds is kinda fun. I’m recommending this one.