The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style (1978)

John D. Lamond’s 1978 ozploitation opus The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style was very obviously a follow-up to his 1976 success Australia After Dark so you might assume that this is going to follow the same formula. To a superficial extent it does (they’re both a collection of erotic vignettes) but it’s actually quite different in some surprising ways.

Australia After Dark is very much a mondo movie and it has all of the weirdness and all of the idiosyncracies of that peculiar genre. It’s deliberately outrageous and not intended to be taken the least bit seriously.

The ABC of Love and Sex is a sex education film. Well, sort of. Of course the intentions are entirely commercial. It is in reality a sexploitation feature. There were reasons for choosing the sex education film format, which we’ll get to later.

As the title suggests the movie goes through the alphabet, giving us brief snippets of information/entertainment on various topics related to sex. A is for Anatomy, C is for Contraception, etc.

The actors and actresses give visual demonstrations. For example, for Anatomy they take their clothes off.

There is an extraordinary amount of both male and female frontal nudity. And lots of sex.

The film was shot mostly in Melbourne but with some shooting in Sweden (including scenes in a live sex club).

This is a movie that tries to be whimsical and lighthearted but also tries to convince us that it’s a real sex education film (in fact most of the information about sex is quite factual). As a result the movie has an odd mixture of tones which gives it a certain offbeat charm.

It also tries really hard to be positive. F is for Fun. Yes, sex is allowed to be fun. Fun was legal in 1978.

Don’t expect to be convulsed with laughter but it does have a few amusing moments.

Given that it was made in 1978 you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s deliciously and gleefully and uncompromisingly offensive, dated and problematic.

It’s also entertaining in its own odd way, and erotic in a strange sort of way.

The most startling thing about this movie is that many of the sex scenes are clearly, obviously and very visibly non-simulated. Yes, these guys and gals are actually getting it on. There’s lots of visible penetration. We’re not talking about blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses. There’s even very obviously non-simulated fellatio. This movie is certainly borderline hardcore. Well, actual hardcore.

Presumably the producers figured that if they presented the movie as educational they would be able to get away with a lot more. In fact they didn’t get away with it and the censors made quite a few cuts. Those cuts have been restored for Umbrella’s DVD release.

These kinds of sex education movies released as sexploitation were moderately common at the time, the best-known being the Swedish The Language of Love (1969). The Swedes of course managed to make sex seem like a dreary but necessary biological function, about as exciting as brushing your teeth. But The ABC Of Love is Australian so it suggests that sex is something you might actually enjoy doing.

The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style has an oddball appeal. It’s so very very 70s, and very very Australian. Recommended for those reasons. John D. Lamond went on to direct Felicity (1978), one of the best softcore erotic movies ever made.

Umbrella paired this one with Australia After Dark on a double-header DVD. The transfer is not dazzling but it’s perfectly acceptable.

Australia After Dark (1976)

Australia After Dark is a 1976 ozploitation/sexploitation feature which belongs to the weird and wonderful mondo film genre.

The mondo film, which began in Italy in 1962 with Mondo Cane, was very much an artifact of the 1960s. A mondo film is a pseudo-documentary focusing on brief looks at weird and sensational things, with some genuine footage and some faked footage. It’s a genre that hasn’t aged well. The mondo sex film is a curious sub-genre of a curious genre and Australia After Dark is such a film.

Being a mondo film means that there’s no plot at all. And since each segment only runs a couple of minutes there’s absolutely zero narrative anywhere. The connections between the segments are tenuous at best but mostly non-existent. There are no thematic connections. But that’s how mondo films are. Insofar as they have an appeal it lies in the fact that you have absolutely no idea what to expect next.

It was the nudity that was going to sell the movie (and in fact did sell it) and there’s an immense amount of frontal nudity. On the other hand a mondo film is supposed to cover a huge range of sensational or weird subjects so the sexy segments are interspersed with odd sensational stuff.

Director John D. Lamond always had an eye on international markets so there’s lots of Australiana (especially stuff dealing with the Outback) which would have bored Australian viewers to tears but would have seemed exotic to overseas audiences.

And you know that the boring segments will be over in a minute or two and we’ll be back to nude women. Lamond really did understand what sells.

The challenge of course is to find dozens of different ways to get attractive young women out of their clothes. Lamond is up to the challenge. Girls trying on bikinis. Nude bathing on the Barrier Reef. Clothing fetishism. Food fetishism. Nude scuba diving. A gentleman’s club that offer lovely handmaidens for stressed businessmen. Painters using nude women as their canvases.

No movie such as this would be complete without a witchcraft in the modern world segment. Here we get two - white magic and black magic. Fortunately both kinds of magic require beautiful young ladies to get naked. If you can’t attract an audience with nude witches you’re just not cut out to be a filmmaker.

There are also UFO cultists and they’re always fun. These ones are so crazy it takes one’s breath away. There are hippies. And there’s an insane entertainer who is insane in ways you never imagined were possible. You might be wondering if the Chariots of the Gods craze gets a mention. It does. Yes, ancient astronauts.

People today believe just as many crazy things as people in the 70s (people in every generation believe different crazy things) but the crazy things people believed in then were totally different, and more fun.

This movie’s appeal at the time was obviously the copious quantities of nudity. Today it’s a fascinating time capsule. It’s so very very 1970s. Guys with long hair. Women with hair, well you know where women had hair back then. 70s fashions. 70s cultural attitudes guaranteed to make twenty-somethings of today burst into tears. 1970s Sydney street scenes. Sydney’s notorious red-light district, King’s Cross, in all its seedy sleazy 70s glory. Surfer’s Paradise in the 70s. And that attitude to sex - that it was naughty but lots of fun.

No mondo film was ever meant to be taken seriously and this one is no exception. There’s some obviously genuine footage and plenty of obviously staged footage.

Lamond went on to make the best of all Emmanuelle clones, Felicity, in 1978.

I’d love to be able to report that there’s a fully restored special edition Blu-Ray but sadly that hasn’t happened. Your best bet is the old Umbrella Entertainment DVD double feature which also includes Lamond’s 1978 follow-up, The ABC of Love and Sex Australian Style (this DVD is still available). The transfer is letterboxed and not fantastic but this is the kind of movie that is more fun to watch if the print looks a bit scuzzy.

That time capsule element is certainly the reason to see this film. It’s just like being back in the 70s! If that appeals to you you’ll enjoy Australia After Dark.

The idea of a mondo film focused on sex was not exactly original back in 1976. British filmmakers Arnold L. Miller and Stanley A. Long made several in the 60s, beginning with West End Jungle (1961) and continuing with London in the Raw (1965), Primitive London (1965). Their sexy mondo films are actually quite entertaining.

Pacific Banana (1980)

Pacific Banana is a 1980 ozploitation sex comedy directed by John D. Lamond.

When the Australian film industry was reborn at the beginning of the 70s it quickly split into two bitterly opposed camps. On one side was the official respectable industry that made the government happy (these movies were all financed by the government) and pleased critics. These were middle-brow movies with artistic pretensions and everybody knew these were good movies because they were dull and could never have been made unless the taxpayer footed the bill. They were seen as movies that would give people overseas a favourable impression of Australia and of the artiness and seriousness of Australian filmmakers.

On the other side were the ozploitation filmmakers. They made movies that people actually wanted to see, which enraged Australian film critics. Their movies made money, which enraged critics even more. Their movies sold well overseas and made money on the drive-in circuit in the U.S., which was yet another black mark against them.

John D. Lamond definitely belonged to this disreputable side of the industry. In 1978 he had an international success with Felicity, by far the best of the countless 1970s Emmanuelle rip-offs.

He followed up that success with Pacific Banana.

This movie concerns a young airline pilot named Martin (Graeme Blundell). His problem is that after a traumatic sexual misadventure he can no longer perform in the bedroom. This sexual misadventure also cost him his job. He ends up flying an ancient DC-3 for Banana Airlines, a cheap broken-down airline at the bottom of the airline food chain.

His pal Paul (Robin Stewart) on the other hand can perform anywhere at any time. He has two fiancées, Sally (Deborah Gray) and Mandy (Alyson Best). They’re Banana Airlines stewardesses. In fact they’re the airline’s only stewardesses.

In Tahiti Martin’s friends do everything they can to help him overcome his problems. He is offered sexual temptations which no man could resist, but poor Martin fails to rise to the occasion.

Even the amazing Candy Bubbles (Luan Peters) is helpless in the face of Martin’s inadequacies, and Candy has never failed to arouse a man’s interests.

The problem has some connection with the female members of the Blandings family, and especially with the young Julia Blandings (Helen Hemingway) who seems to terrify Martin. And Julia keeps showing up.

The basic idea is fine. Lamond knew how to do this sort of thing. The script is by Alan Hopgood, who wrote Alvin Purple (one of the best sex comedies of the 70s). Graeme Blundell is perfectly cast. There’s an exotic setting. There are lots of lovely ladies. There’s a huge amount of nudity. All the right ingredients are there, and it works up to a point but it doesn’t quite come off.

The voiceover narration is a major problem. Not only is is unfunny, it actually detracts from much of the humour. The pie fight was a terrible idea. The slapstick elements are lame and out of place.

It does have some very funny moments. It has the right playful feel and the abundant nudity and sex are handled in a cheerful good-natured way.

The ladies are not just lovely. They prove themselves to be very adept at comedy. The whole cast is good.

Umbrella’s DVD looks extremely good. Extras include an interview with Lamond speaking very wittily and amusingly about his career plus a featurette which includes Lamond, scriptwriter Alan Hopgood and star Deborah Gray (who seems to have thoroughly enjoyed making this movie).

Pacific Banana is very good in parts but one can’t help feeling it should have been just a little better. It’s still amusing and sexy and it’s worth a recommended rating.

Speaking of Australian sex comedies, I’ve reviewed Alvin Purple (1973) which I highly recommend. I’ve also reviewed Lamond’s Felicity (1978) which is absolutely top-tier erotica.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

Turkey Shoot is a 1982 ozploitation movie. When you see “produced by Antony I. Ginnane” and “directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith”it always gives one a feeling of confidence. At least the movie is unlikely to be dull.

The setting is a totalitarian future Australia in which absolute social conformity is enforced. This is a movie that seems much more chilling today than it was in 1982. It’s all very Orwellian, complete with very Orwellian slogans. All dissent is forbidden.

Chris Walters (Olivia Hussey) is a very ordinary woman who finds herself suspected of wrongthink and is sent to a re-education camp. The camp is run by the sadistic Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig). His political boss is Secretary Mallory (Noel Ferrier) whose sexual tastes seem to be more than a little outré. Mallory takes an immediate interest in Chris. She is terrified. That excites him.

The main protagonist is Paul Anders (Steve Railsback) who is convinced he cannot be broken. Thatcher intends to break him.

Also caught up in the net is Rita Daniels (Lynda Stoner). She’s been accused of sexcrime.

Anders is awaiting a chance to escape, as is Griff (Bill Young) who also believes that Thatcher cannot break him.

Life in the camp is an endless round of brutality and humiliation.

Thatcher is putting on an entertainment for a couple of important people. One is Mallory. The other is the very rich very sophisticated and very depraved Jennifer (Carmen Duncan). The entertainment will be a hunt, with five prisoners as the prey. The prisoners are told that if they are still alive and have not been captured by sundown they will be freed. Maybe it’s true, poor Chris desperately wants to believe it’s true, but it seems very unlikely.

The hunters are Thatcher, Mallory, Jennifer, several of the camp guards and a circus freak. I have no idea where he came from but he adds an extra exploitation element.

Most of the hunters are armed with guns but Jennifer prefers a crossbow. She likes to kill her victims slowly.

There’s plenty of graphic violence and gore and a very nasty sadistic tone. There’s some nudity as well, because this is after all an exploitation movie.

The action scenes are lively and energetic and over-the-top, as you’d expect from Trenchard-Smith.

The characterisations are all wafer-thin but this a straightforward violent action movie so who needs characterisation? The acting is mostly cartoonish which suits the feel of the movie. Olivia Hussey seems out of place in this movie but her performance works in the sense that she’s playing a woman who finds herself in a situation in which she really is hopelessly out of place. The standout performer is Carmen Duncan as Jennifer. She’s deliciously wicked and perverse.

Steve Railsback does his best but he isn’t quite convincing as an action hero. He’s a bit too weedy.

This is not a women-in-prison movie as such but will probably have some appeal to fans of that genre.

Turkey Shoot has all the violence that fans of violent action movies could hope for and it’s nothing if not entertaining.

The Umbrella DVD (they’ve released in on Blu-Ray as well) offers a very nice transfer without any extras.

This was approximately the 10,000th screen adaptation of Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game. The best of these is The Most Dangerous Game (1932) although Seven Women for Satan (1976) is definitely worth seeing as is Herb Stanley’s completely off-the-wall 1968 Confessions of a Psycho Cat.

Snapshot (1979)

Snapshot is a 1979 Australian thriller which is a lot more interesting than its reputation would suggest. The surprises here are not the plot twists but the way in which the characters just don’t behave quite like conventional thriller characters.

The opening sequence is rather shocking, with a horrific fire and an hysterical woman. Most of the movie is an extended flashback.

This is a difficult movie to discuss because it has quite a few plot twists and to offer a hint that may prove to be a spoiler for one twist would then spoil the other twists as well, so I’m going to be very vague about the plot.

Angela (Sigrid Thornton) works in a hairdressing salon and she’s always broke. She lives with her mother and her kid sister and the atmosphere at home is very uneasy and very unhealthy.

Her friend Madeline (Chajntal Contouri) a rich successful model. She is trying to persuade Angela to give modelling a try. Angela eventually agrees and is then shocked when her first very well-paid modelling job for an advertising agency requires her to be photographed topless. She is persuaded to do the job and she becomes a minor sensation. She appears to have a glittering modelling career in front of her.

This is where the movie springs its first surprise. We assume this will be yet another movie in which a naïve girl tries to break into modelling and is drawn into a world of sex and debauchery and decadence. But that doesn’t happen. The advertising shots are tasteful and at no time is she pressured into doing girlie magazine stuff or sex movies or anything like that. The photographer who does the shoot is definitely an eccentric but he’s totally harmless. He doesn’t try to exploit or manipulate her.

Angela’s real problem is that someone is stalking her. She’s pretty sure she knows who it is and she’s not overly worried. She think it’s an ex-boyfriend but while he’s persistent and annoying she doesn’t think he would ever try to hurt her. The audience however has seen the opening scene of the movie so we’re more worried than she is.

Angela has another problem to deal with. Madeline wants to put their friendship on a different, shall we say more intimate, level. She wants them to be more than just good friends. Angela isn’t that way inclined.

The stalking becomes a bit scarier. Angela finally figures out that maybe she’s in real trouble but she may be working on a false assumption and may end up putting herself in worse danger.

Eventually we get back to that opening scene.

I think that what a lot of people failed to notice about Snapshot is just how weird it is. People saw it as being a very conventional by-the-numbers thriller, but it’s actually in its own low-key way quite unconventional. It plays around with some of the conventions of the genre. It certainly plays around with the conventions of the psycho killer genre. It sets up straightforward thriller situations but they play out in odd unexpected ways. The problem perhaps is that it’s a movie that needs to be seen a second time to be fully appreciated. On a repeat viewing you notice how often it appears to conform to genre conventions but in subtle ways it doesn’t do so.

The stalker driving a Mr Whippy ice cream van is a wonderful touch. The secret room with all the photos of Angela is an idea that had been used before but the fact that every single square inch of the room, including the floor, is covered by the photos and the fact that they’re all exactly the same photo repeated endlessly makes it striking and especially creepy, and the movie’s major visual set-piece takes place in this room.

Producer Antony I. Ginnane had a big international hit with Patrick in 1978 and another with Thirst in 1979. Snapshot came in between those two films and while it was reasonably successful it wasn’t quite the major hit that had been hoped for. The reasons for this are pretty clear. Snapshot is a bit too low-key for its own good. Compared to European thrillers of its era (and Europe was a major market for Ginnane) it just lacks a bit of edge, it doesn’t have the same adrenalin-rush excitement and it really only has one major visual set-piece.

Snapshot is also an erotic thriller (everything in the plot is driven by erotic obsession) that isn’t very sexy. There is the celebrated Sigrid Thornton topless scene. Interestingly that scene didn’t bother Thornton in the slightest. In fact she got the role because of her relaxed attitude towards nudity. But that’s it for the whole movie. In strictly commercial terms this movie really needed to be a bit raunchier.

The ending is wonderful. I can’t tell you why for fear of spoilers but it does represent a major shift in the entire perspective and tone of the movie.

While it needed to be spiced up a little I liked Snapshot quite a bit. Highly recommended.

Umbrella’s Blu-Ray look great and includes a stack of very worthwhile extras.

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), Blu-Ray review

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie was released in 1972. It was torn to shreds by Australian film critics (who wanted worthy earnest Australian films) and proceeded to make a fortune at the box office. It was the newly revived Australian film industry’s first smash hit.

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie was shot partly in Australia and partly in London.

Barry McKenzie (Barry Crocker) is a young Australian who has just inherited some money, but the condition is that he has to use it to travel to Britain. His aunt Mrs Edna Everage (Barry Humphries) decides to accompany him.

Bazza’s problems (he is known to his friends as Bazza) start at Heathrow. He gets ripped off by the customs inspector but worst of all his supply of Fosters Lager is confiscated. Bazza is worried he won’t be able to buy Fosters in London.

Bazza has a series of outrageous adventures. He is recruited as an advertising model. He falls in with crooked hippies who plan to launch him as an Aussie folk-singing sensation. He encounters a middle-aged Englishman (played by the great Dennis Price) who wants Bazza to cane him. He falls into the hands of a crazy psychiatrist. He looks up a childhood friend, Gaylene (Mary Anne Severne), unaware that she is now a lesbian. Gaylene’s ex-husband Dominic (Peter Bentley), a TV producer, persuades Bazza to be interviewed on television.

All these adventures seem to end with wild fist-fights, chaos and in one memorable scene with Bazza throwing up over the psychiatrist’s head. Thousands of gallons of Fosters Lager are consumed. Bazza makes desperate attempts to persuade a variety of young females to go to bed with him, with a striking lack of success.

Bazza could easily have come across as obnoxious but Barry Crocker, giving a terrific performance, avoids that pitfall. He manages to persuade us that underneath the crude exterior Bazza is really quite vulnerable. Bazza just doesn’t understand anything that is happening to him. He’s a virgin and he’s terrified of women. His uncouthness is a defence. He’s really rather scared. If the audience hated Bazza the film would not have worked at all but Crocker is able to get us on Bazza’s side.

Barry Humphries had the Edna Everage schtick ticking along nicely by this time. He plays two other roles as well, including the hapless psychiatrist.

There are some notable British comedy figures in the guest cast, including Peter Cook and Spike Milligan.

To appreciate this movie fully you have to have some historical background. The 1950s had been the era of Cultural Cringe in Australia, a period in which Australians took it for granted that everything about Australian culture was inferior to British culture. By the late 60s a reaction was happening with the rise of the “new nationalism” which aimed to establish a distinctive cultural identity in both high culture and pop culture. The resuscitation of the long-dead Australian film industry was a part of this. And The Adventures of Barry McKenzie was the movie that proved that Australian movies could be commercially viable.

It’s also necessary to place Barry Humphries in the context of what was happening in British comedy in the 60s. This was the golden age of satire and at the forefront was Peter Cook. Barry Humphries was very part of this scene. He and Peter Cook were good friends and in 1964 Cook asked Humphries to write a comic strip (which became The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie) for his satirical magazine, the legendary Private Eye. Both Peter Cook and Barry Humphries favoured a deliberately provocative style of comedy. They wanted to provoke howls of outrage, and they did.

And no-one could provoke howls of outrage more effectively than Barry Humphries. When the Barry McKenzie comic strip was published in book form it was promptly banned by the Australian Government. This of course was exactly the kind of reaction Humphries wanted.

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is very much a movie that seeks to provoke and outrage. When Australian critics savaged the movie Humphries was delighted - if so many people whom he despised hated it he figured he was on the right track.

This movie is of course dated, offensive and problematic, but only in parts. I’d estimate that only 112 of its 114 minutes are dated, offensive and problematic. Of course it was intended at the time to be offensive. Nobody used the term problematic at the time but if the term had been used then Humphries would certainly have aimed to be as problematic as possible. It should be pointed out that the movie sets out to mock and offend absolutely everybody. It’s actually very offensive in a non-offensive way. You’re not supposed to take it even a tiny bit seriously.

It’s also crude and vulgar, and deliberately so. Again Humphries is gleefully setting out to provoke and outrage.

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie has a couple of flaws that are almost certainly a reflection of inexperience. Bruce Beresford had never made a feature film. Neither Beresford nor Barry Humphries (who co-wrote the script between them) had ever written a feature film. The movie is a bit too long. It’s also very episodic. On the other hand this is an adaptation of a comic strip, not a novel. Its episodic quality can be seen as both a flaw and a virtue.

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is a unique cinematic experience. I enjoyed ever moment of it. Highly recommended.

Alvin Purple (1973)

Alvin Purple is a 1973 Australian sex comedy which probably did more than any other movie to establish the commercial viability of the newly reborn Australian film industry.

Alvin Purple is a sex comedy and it does feature a great deal of frontal nudity. It does however differ a little from British sex comedies of that era.

A young man named Alvin Purple (Graeme Blundell), just turned 21, has a problem. Women won’t leave him alone. They take one look at him and they want to go to bed with him. It’s not that Alvin dislikes sex. Not at all. But he can only take so much.

Naturally he gets himself into a certain of trouble. He also has problems holding down a job. A friend suggests they go into partnerships selling waterbeds (which were a huge fad at the time). The friend will do the in-store demonstrations while Alvin will do the installations.

The trouble is that when he installs the waterbeds in people’s homes the lady customers insist on having Alvin demonstrate to them just how much fun a woman can have on a waterbed. The job is becoming a bit exhausting.

Then he meets a really nice girl who isn’t interested in sex. She seems like an answer to his prayers but she rather disapproves of his colourful sexual history.

Alvin decides to consult a psychiatrist. Dr Liz Sort (Penne Hackforth-Jones) seems to be helping him but unfortunately Dr Sort is a woman and is therefore madly sexually attracted to Alvin.

Her male colleague Dr McBurney (George Whaley) takes over the case and suggests to Alvin that a career as a sex therapist could be very lucrative, for both Alvin and Dr McBurney. Alvin would seem to be uniquely qualified to treat female patients with sexual problems.

Of course it all gets out of hand.

What’s clever about the central idea is that Alvin does not look like a super-stud nor does he behave like one. He’s very ordinary looking and is a bit socially inept. He’s the sort of guy one might expect would have problems persuading girls to go out with him. He just has this mysterious totally inexplicable quality that drives women crazy with lust. All of this has the effect of making a character who could have been obnoxious come across instead as very likeable. Alvin does not chase women. They chase him. It also makes the movie more likeable.

A major difference with this film compared to British sex comedies of the time is that it has a fairly well-developed plot with a few clever twists.

And this is an ozploitation movie, so it’s not just a sex comedy. You get action scenes! There’s a car chase and there is aerial action when Alvin, much against his will, finds himself skydiving.

Graeme Blundell proves to be a fine comic actor.

There were certainly some satirical intentions here. The movie pokes fun at various aspects of the Sexual Revolution and is particularly scathing in its treatment of psychiatry in general and sex therapists in particular. It’s equally scathing when it comes to the inanities and hypocrisies of the criminal justice system. That’s not to say that this is in any way a political film. Mercifully it has no actual political axe to grind but it does reflect the cheerful (and healthy) anti-authoritarianism of the 70s.

What matters of course is whether it’s funny or not. And yes, it really is funny. It’s a very rare case of an Australian comedy feature film that actually works.

With 1960s/1970s British sexploitation movies one often gets the feeling that they were made by people who were very uncomfortable with such material and very embarrassed by it. One doesn’t get that feeling with Alvin Purple. There is no implication that there is anything wrong with wanting to have sex. The film does not condemn Alvin for his sexual adventures nor does it condemn the women for being lustful. It’s good-natured fun without guilt.

Umbrella’s DVD release looks good and has some worthwhile extras. There are interviews with most of the key people involved in the making of the film. There is also a “making of” featurette dating from the time of the film’s original release which is notable for including a lot of scenes that were cut from the final release print.

Alvin Purple is rather a lot of fun and vastly superior to most British sex comedies of its era. Highly recommended.

Age of Consent (1969)

In 1960 one of Britain’s most distinguished and admired film directors, Michael Powell, turned himself into an outcast with a movie called Peeping Tom. It’s now recognised as a masterpiece but at the time British critics could not accept the level of violence and the perverse sexuality and they could neither understand nor accept what Powell was trying to do. Powell ended up in a kind of exile in Australia, where he contributed enormously to the rebirth of the Australian film industry. His 1966 comedy They’re a Weird Mob was a huge hit in Australia. If you’ve never seen this movie I urge you in the strongest possible terms not to. It’s embarrassing and hopelessly dated and completely unfunny and generally very annoying. But it was a success and proved that Australians would pay money to see Australian movies.

Three years later Powell bounced back with another Australian movie, a movie calculated to make him even more of a pariah in the eyes of British critics than Peeping Tom had done. The movie was Age of Consent, based on a scandalous novel by the notorious Australian artist Norman Lindsay (on whom the 1994 movie Sirens was based). It was controversial at the time and was savagely cut by censors in various countries, due to what was by the standards of 1969 a quite considerable amount of nudity. Surprisingly it was apparently released uncut in Australia. It also ran into major problems with Columbia Pictures who insisted on commissioning a new score. They were also unamused by the opening credits sequence featuring a painting of a nude Helen Mirren as the Columbia lady with the torch.

Bradley Morahan (James Mason) is an internationally successful Australian artist living in New York. He makes plenty of money, but he feels that he’s lost touch with the reasons he became a painter in the first place. He exiles himself to a remote island of the Great Barrier Reef in north Queensland, in the hope that he will be able to rediscover his muse. Which he does, in the form of an almost feral girl named Cora (Helen Mirren).

Morahan has become an outsider as he has grown more disillusioned with his life and with his art, while Cora has always been an outsider due to her incredibly restricted and rather nightmarish existence with her vicious alcoholic grandmother. She is trying to save money to escape to Brisbane, earning the money by selling shellfish and by petty theft. There is an immediate sympathy between Morahan and Cora.

Martin Scorcese contributes a brief but very insightful introduction, pointing out that Powell spent years hoping to get a movie adaptation of The Tempest off the ground and that Age of Consent was in some ways a kind of dress rehearsal for that film, a film that he was destined never to make. And in fact if you see the island as being a little like the island in The Tempest, a place not quite of this world, and if you see Morahan as Prospero, them the movie makes a lot more sense. Although he is not a magician, he is an artist, which is perhaps the closest equivalent we have in our world. And I think Scorcese is right to see the film a having a slight suggestion of the magical about it.

I think it’s certainly true that Brad Morahan sees his island retreat from the modern world as an island of enchantment, very much like Prospero’s island in The Tempest. You could even at a stretch see Cora as being a bit like Miranda. You could perhaps even see Cora’s grandmother as an analogue of Caliban.

Scorcese’s interpretation even helps to explain the various comic relief sub-plots. Although they are annoying and do break the mood, they do also add a touch of the grotesque and a feeling of unreality to proceedings, and add a theatrical touch, which may have been the intention.

Apart from a brief but memorable and typically outrageous appearance by the great Australian character actor Frank Thring early on the supporting actors are not terribly impressive. Fortunately the two leads, James Mason and Helen Mirren, more than make up for this deficiency (even if James Mason’s Australian accent is deplorable). Mason resists the temptation to make Morahan a stereotypical irascible and eccentric artist, or to overdo the misanthropy and the loneliness. He makes Morahan likeable and good-natured, in fact a man whose biggest problem perhaps has been that he’s always been too good-natured and unwilling to disappoint others. The sympathetic portrayal makes it easier to understand why Cora is attracted to him. He’s the first person who’s ever shown her respect and kindness. It’s an unsentimental respect and kindness, but it’s more than she’s ever had before.

Mirren is extraordinary. Not only was this her first feature film, she had not even done any TV work, and yet she’s in complete command. It’s one of the most impressive film debuts you’ll ever see.

Both Morahan and Cora are on a voyage of discovery. For Morahan it’s a rediscovery of a zest for life and art; for Cora it’s an awakening to the world and to the possibilities of life as well as an awakening of sexuality. The fact that Mason was 60 at the time the film was made, while Mirren was 24 (and her character is clearly intended to be somewhat younger still) means there was the potential for a certain amount of tackiness, but they bring a kind of innocence to their characterisation which avoids this pitfall.

That the movie, despite some weaknesses, actually works is due in large part to their performances. The gorgeous cinematography and the breath-taking locations also help. It really is visually magnificent, and since it’s a film about an artist it’s not just visual splendour for the sake of it. It is after all a movie about an artist’s love affair with beauty and light and colour.

The problem most people are going to have with this movie is the comedy. It’s not vulgar but it’s very broad. Powell had injected some comedy into Peeping Tom as well and I suspect this is one of the things British critics disliked about his later work. He was dealing in both Peeping Tom and Age of Consent with the all-consuming devouring nature of artistic obsession but he refused to be grim and miserable about it.

It’s worth pointing out that virtually all the comedy in the movie is lifted straight from the novel.

While it’s a coming-of-age movie I also see this movie, along with The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom, as part of Powell’s Artistic Obsession trilogy.

James Mason co-produced Age of Consent with Michael Powell and apparently Mason had quite a bit of creative input. Mason apparently pushed for changes to the ending and he was right to do so. The ending that was finally used is in fact pretty much identical to that of the novel.

Age of Consent was Powell’s last feature film although at the time he had no way of knowing that. He would spend the remaining twenty years of his life desperately trying to get financing for another film. And of course Powell only made two features after Peeping Tom. So the theme of Age of Consent, of an artist trying to recapture his artistic vision, was a very personal one for Powell.

Age of Consent was a huge hit in Australia but didn’t do so well elsewhere. Certainly it didn’t do well enough to restore Powell’s reputation as a bankable director.

This is a movie that for many years seemed lost in obscurity, but in 2009 it was given a terrific DVD release packed with extras. It’s also uncut and it restores the original opening credits and Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe’s original score which was heavily influence by Balinese music and which works very well. That’s the version reviewed here. It was paired, in a two-movie two-disc set, with the celebrated Powell-Pressburger film A Matter of Life and Death. For my money Age of Consent is by far the more successful and more interesting film. There’s been a more recent Blu-Ray release.

This is an odd quirky little movie, but if you give it a chance (and if you can accept the comic sub-plots) it may well work its charms on you. A fascinating movie by a great film-maker. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Norman Lindsay’s Age of Consent, the 1938 source novel. The movie follows the novel very closely indeed.

Centrespread (1981)

Centrespread is a very odd 1981 ozploitation movie. It’s a movie that consistently fails to go in the direction you’re expecting.

It starts off with a bit of a Mad Max vibe. This is a futuristic society and you’ve got the desert to increase the Mad Max feel. Gerard (Paul Trahair) is a photographer for a girlie magazine. The photos he takes are weird and violent and brutal, but as the movie progresses we find out why. This is a kind of totalitarian society but it’s a society that has taken drastic measures to stamp out violence. Violence is only permitted in the magazines, the reasoning being that violence has to have some outlet and that if violence is allowed in the magazines there won’t be any violence in real life. And that’s how things have worked out. This is a dystopian society in which most people enjoy a very low material standard of living but at least violence has been kept totally under control.

Of course there are elites who live lives of luxury and Gerard is one of those elites. He even owns a car (a cool Ford T-Bird convertible),

Central has decided that the magazines need a new look. They need a new model for the new century. All the models who appear in the magazines look pretty much the same. They need a fresh look. Gerard is given the job of finding a new girl.

He finds her in an antique shop. Which shocks him - he had no idea that antique stores were still legal. The shop is full of forbidden items from the past. Nobody wants to be reminded of such things. Or at least Central doesn’t want them to be reminded of such things. But he is sure that Niki (Kylie Foster) is the right girl.

The problem is that Gerard is changing. He doesn’t want to take the same kinds of photos any more. He doesn’t mind taking nude photos but he wants them to be natural. Even worse, he increasingly has the idea that he’d like them to be romantic. Central is not going to like that idea.

He wants to photograph Niki but he wants to photograph her in an arty romantic style. He begins to be obsessed with her. He may even be falling in love with her.

Given that Mad Max vibe that the film gives off early on you keep waiting for some sudden outburst of violence. But it doesn’t happen. Just as in this future society violence is confined to the magazines so the violence in the movie is entirely confined to the photoshoots (which are interestingly shown as successions of still images). Outside of the photoshoots there’s not a single violent act in the movie.

This is a science fiction film but don’t expect any special effects or explosions, or any high technology. This is a future society that uses 1980s computer technology and the magazines are old-fashioned print magazines. Printed on actual paper, with still photographs. Even in 1981 you’d expect some more imaginative ideas on future technology but perhaps that’s the point - perhaps this is a future society that has survived some sort of cataclysm and now has only the remnants of a technological society. It’s significant that Gerard’s car is not some futuristic air car - it’s a 1960s Ford Thunderbird which is apparently as high-tech as it gets in this future world.

The details of the future society are only filled in gradually and we are only told as much as we need to know. This is a science fiction film that has no interest at all in technology. The focus is on the stifling effect of the tightly controlled future society. It’s a society that offers security, as long as you don’t question anything.

Gerard wants to be able to take the photos that he wants to take, but Central decides what kinds of photos are acceptable. Arty romantic photos are not acceptable.

This is an unconventional dystopian science fiction film, but it’s also a sex film. There is an enormous amount of very graphic nudity. The sex is, oddly enough, very restrained but the nudity is practically non-stop.

Paul Trahair gives an oddly distanced performance which works rather well. Kylie Foster is sweet and charming.

The sets are very effective, especially the photographic studio in the middle of a huge warehouse. Visually this is an impressive film.

Centrespread has been released by Umbrella Entertainment on a region-free Blu-Ray two-movie disc, paired with Felicity as an Ozploitation Erotica set. Which is both appropriate and inappropriate. Felicity is simply an Emmanuelle clone (although it happens to be a very very good Emmanuelle clone). Centrespread has just as much nudity but it’s an entirely different sort of movie, although the one thing it has in common with Felicity is that like Felicity it’s either a love story masquerading as a sex film or a sex film masquerading as a love story. And like Felicity, insofar as Centrespread is a sex film it belongs very much to that fascinating 1970s sub-genre of sex films aimed at couples.

Centrespread looks and sounds terrific on Blu-Ray and there are some worthwhile extras as well, including an excellent 47-minute contemporary featurette on the making of the film and an interview with the producer.

Centrespread is a very offbeat movie, the kind of offbeat movie that just doesn’t get made any more and that’s a shame because it’s offbeat in a very good way. It’s a total original. It’s also an extremely well-crafted move which was, sadly, Tony Patterson’s only feature film as director. Highly recommended for its oddness.

Given that Felicity is a skinflick, but a very classy upmarket skinflick with some real emotional depth, this two-movie Blu-Ray set is also highly recommended.

Felicity (1978)

Felicity is a 1978 Australian Emmanuelle clone.

And when I say it’s an Emmanuelle clone I’m not kidding. It’s an absolute carbon copy of the Emmanuelle formula down to the smallest detail.

Emmanuelle had been an incredibly clever idea. The French believed that they had a surefire plan for taking advantage of the US X Certificate and making a ton of money. They would make a softcore porn movie but they had no interest in getting into grindhouses. They were going for the mainstream. A full-scale commercial release in major cinemas. They were aiming for the multiplexes. And how were they going to achieve this? Simple. They would make a softcore porn movie for women. It worked beyond their wildest imaginings. They didn’t just make a ton of money. They made many many tons of money. Emmanuelle proceeded to smash box-office records.

Not surprisingly the film spawned several official and countless unofficial sequels. It was not entirely surprising that Emmanuelle’s success would be noted in Australia where it was a massive hit. Producer-director John D. Lamond decided to jump on the bandwagon. His movie would not however be merely influenced by Emmanuelle. It would follow the formula in every single respect. It would be pretty much Emmanuelle Down Under.

There was more to the success of Emmanuelle than naked flesh. To appeal to women the production values had to be high, the cinematography had to be lush, there had to be an air of class about the production, there had to be beautiful and exotic locations, it had to be told entirely from a female perspective and the sex scenes had to be the kinds of sex scenes that women would like with the right mix of romance and stylish raunchiness.

John D. Lamond studied the blueprints and made sure that every element that had made Emmanuelle a success would be present in Felicity. Felicity looks much more expensive than it was and it looks fairly classy. Instead of Thailand it uses Hong Kong as the backdrop, which works just as well. The plot is the same - a sexually inexperienced young woman goes to the Mysterious Orient where she has a sexual awakening. The story is told from Felicity’s point of view. In fact she’s the narrator. There’s lots of steamy simulated sex with the right blend of romanticism and raunch.

The one thing Felicity doesn’t have is Sylvia Kristel. Kristel’s unconventional and exotic beauty and her overwhelming sexuality is certainly missed. On the other hand it has to be said that Felicity’s Glory Annen is very easy on the eye and she’s extremely good at combining innocence with wantonness. And she was a competent actress. She was actually Canadian but she does the Australian accent rather well (and it is unbelievably rare to find non-Australian actors who can do a convincing Australian accent). Lamond wanted her to sound like an educated cultured Australian (stop laughing, we do have such things here) and she manages it without any problems.

As the movie opens Felicity is a schoolgirl somewhere in eastern Australia. For some reason which I confess I didn’t quite grasp she is then whisked off to Hong Kong. Her first priority is obviously to lose her virginity and that is accomplished almost immediately.

Naturally, this being a softcore sex movie, Felicity will have to be initiated into the joys of lesbian sex. This is handled by hew new Hong Kong friend Me Ling (Joni Flynn). Me Ling is supposed to be Chinese while Joni Flynn is actually Indian but that’s a minor detail. Flynn isn’t much of an actress but her job is to be exotic, glamorous and sexy and to embody the dangerous but seductive flavour of the Orient, which she does. Who cares which part of the Orient she represents? And she has a whole bevy of naked young women with her to make sure that Felicity gets her initiation.

This is very firmly within the porn movie for women genre so there has to be a love story and that love story has to be central to the plot. That part of the movie succeeds well enough and it offers the chance for some very romantic sex scenes which presumably pleased the female audience. And insofar as the movie has any message it’s a surprisingly old-fashioned one. Felicity doesn’t just want to discover sex, she wants to discover love, and she finds out that sex is only good when it’s combined with love. For 1978 that’s a pretty extraordinarily traditional viewpoint for a porn movie to take.

Making a good softcore sex film as distinct from a routine one requires a bit of imagination. You wants to include lots of nudity and sex but you want to do so in a reasonably stylish way. Lamond clearly put some thought into this. Seeing a girl taking her panties off is sexy. Is there a way we can have Felicity taking her panties o0ff a dozen times in a few minutes. Yes there is! We’ll take her shopping for clothes. Naturally the first thing she wants to buy is new panties, but they have to be just right so she has to try on quite a few. And since we want to see how nice her new underwear looks there’s a perfect excuse for lots of close-ups of her nether regions, with and without panties.

It has to be said that Felicity is a remarkably clean girl. She seems to take a bath every five minutes. Since cleanliness is obviously very important to her it’s vital for us to see her take each and every bath. When it comes to finding ways to keep his lead actress naked for most of the film’s running time Lamond has few equals.

To give you an idea of just how closely this movie adheres to the Emmanuelle formula we see Glory Annen lounging naked in a cane chair that is almost identical to the one in which Sylvia Kristel lounged naked in Emmanuelle. In fact this was almost certainly intended as a deliberate homage. Just before the plane sex scene (of course there’s a plane sex scene since there was a very celebrated one in Emmanuelle) we see Felicity reading a copy of Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel on which Emmanuelle was based.

The Hong Kong setting works superbly. Watching the movie today it works even better since this is British Hong Kong, with all the glamour of a vanished world. Arguably it’s even more effective than the Thailand setting of Emmanuelle, Hong Kong at that time being an extraordinarily exciting (and decadent) place.

The visuals don’t quite have the lushness that Just Jaeckin brought to Emmanuelle but they’re stylish enough and there’s far more of a sense of vibrancy and excitement than in Emmanuelle.

The amount of nudity (including frontal nudity) in this movie is truly staggering. I don’t think we ever go more than a few minutes without another lingering loving shot of Felicity’s bare bottom.

Felicity certainly didn’t go anywhere near to equalling the immense commercial success of Emmanuelle but it did do extremely well in box-office terms, and apparently it did particularly well with women. According to Lamond Australian critics hated the film and were offended by its overt heterosexuality!

Umbrella’s Region 4 DVD offers a lovely anamorphic transfer and there are some very worthwhile extras including an audio commentary by director Lamond and star Glory Annen.

To me Felicity is in fact a more genuinely woman-centred erotic movie than Emmanuelle. It takes the Emmanuelle template but it adds a slightly different flavour - it’s definitely more straightforwardly romantic. Lamond obviously felt that if the movie was going to reach women it had to be tasteful and despite all the nudity and sex it really is tasteful. Luckily it succeeds in being  tasteful without sacrificing the eroticism. It also has playfulness, a few moments of humour and even perhaps just the tiniest touch of wit.

It’s very sexy in a very classy way and if that’s what you’re after then it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.