It’s amazing what you can find in the basements of old cinemas. Several months back I was able to save a collection of prints from an old cinema – I won’t name names for the usual reasons. I had been aware of this collection for some time. These were prints once shown at the cinema when it was a sort-of British ‘grindhouse’ in the late 70s and early 80s, showing Italian cult fare from Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, as well as British sex comedies from the 1970s. I’ve never really been interested in the latter genre, instead choosing to research Britain’s hidden economy of illicitly produced pornography on small-gauge film. However, I have always been aware of the small number of British sex films that existed in hardcore variants. These have been discussed by David McGillivray in Doing Rude Things and Simon Sheridan in Keeping the British End Up, X-Rated and his Mary Millington biography, Come Play With Me. Blogger GavCrimson has also covered these assumed lost films in-depth on his valuable blog. Occasionally, prints have appeared that contain harder footage, such as Derek Ford’s Keep it Up Jack (1974), which found its way to Blu-ray courtesy of Dark Force Entertainment. The stronger footage isn’t overly explicit when compared to the 8mm rollers, but they do demonstrate how British producers were wanting to exploit the growing demand for harder content in Europe and the United States. Derek Ford went as far as making what could arguably be considered as Britain’s first true hardcore film Diversions (aka Sex Express 1977), which was certainly not a sex comedy and a rather disturbing film. In the UK it was released in a softer version. Sadly, the film elements are yet to be discovered.
When I first examined the collection, I was struck by a number of cans that had ‘continental’ written on them. This included The Wife Swappers (Derek Ford, 1969), Groupie Girl (Derek Ford,1970), On the Game(Stanley A. Long, 1974) and Naughty! (Stanley A. Long, 1971. Being yet another synonym for hardcore, I was curious to see what these continental versions might reveal, especially for Naughty!, which features valuable behind-the-scenes footage of John Jesner Lindsay making a roller. Once the collection was secured, I was fortunate to have Vinegar Syndrome’s co-founder and exploitation film archaeologist Joe Rubin help examine the collection. Sadly, these films had become a heirloom of the cinema’s past, being passed down from owner to owner who saw these as nothing more than a curiosity or a tour exhibit. They had been stored in far from optimum conditions; some cans were decaying – the unmistakable stench of vinegar filled the air – while others appeared to be unsalvageable. We spent a day masked up and trying to match up the prints. We were surprised to discover a complete inter-positive for The Wife Swappers with continental scenes – the best elements currently known to exist – complete prints of Groupie Girl and On the Game with their continental sequences. Sadly, no full print of Naughty! revealed itself during our excavation, but the continental footage did surface.
Recognising the significance of the find, Joe recommended that the prints and continental sequences were immediately digitally scanned, starting with the continental sequences and then The Wife Swappers inter-positive, which sadly had started to curl and required a chemical treatment to prepare it for scanning; I am told that this restorative process will take around a year. A few weeks ago, we received the scans of the continental footage from the lab. What did we find? GavCrimson, who has far more knowledge of how these film’s were produced and the people who performed in them has done his usual forensic breakdown of their content on his blog. In short, here’s what the scans revealed with some screenshots from the footage (do note that the scans are yet to be colour corrected, and the footage is far more explicit than the images suggest!):
Naughty!
The continental footage contains more explicit footage of John Lindsay at work with his 16mm Arriflex, shooting the roller Sex After School, starring Peter Vernon and Sylvia Bayo (aka Lucienne Camille).
Groupie Girl
Almost 18 minutes of hardcore footage across scenes, likely shot several years after the original production and possibly for the French market. Therefore, the footage does not feature the original cast, but those who regularly appeared in rollers, such as Jacqui Rigby.
On the Game
Seven additional scenes that collectively total just over 23 minutes of hardcore footage. The most remarkable discovery here is George Harrison Marks’ regular model June Palmer giving oral sex to her real-life husband. GavCrimson offers more on this surprising find.
The prints can be traced back to Barry Jacobs, a Soho-based producer/distributor who regularly worked with Stanley Long and Derek Ford. It appears that Jacobs was involved in producing the hardcore footage and arranging its distribution internationally. According to Long’s ghostwriter, Simon Sheridan, Jacobs ran Eagle Film Distributors and was “a wheeler-dealer”, with “thick square specs and an extravagant moustache”. Long calls Jacobs “a small-time distributor, who’d been importing French and Italian sex movies for some time, but had never financed a movie of his own”. Evidently, Jacobs’ transnational links paved the way for these hardcore variants to circulate outside of the UK.
At this stage, it is not clear what will happen to this footage. The prints will be appropriately archived and hopefully a home video release of these titles might surface at some point, although original elements for these titles are an issue. I remain shocked at how I was able to save the entire collection, purely through happenstance, not knowing that the prints would have unexpected revelations. Hardcore variants of British sex films have always been rumoured, and occasionally founded. However, the Jacobs titles show us that the practice of shooting continental footage was far more common than once assumed. Just what else might be lurking in the dusty basement of a decaying British cinema? Maybe original elements for Ford’s Diversions will finally surface.
