Man-Hungry Women

GROUPIE GIRL (1969)
PERMISSIVE (1970)

The Collinson Twins and Esme Johns frolic in GROUPIE GIRL, which was released in America as I AM A GROUPIE, in France firstly as THE PIMPS OF PERVERSION, then in 1974 under the title MAN-HUNGRY WOMEN, with hardcore inserts.

BRITISH cinema's prolific sex comedy output of the 1970s existed in a juvenile fantasy world light years away from these downbeat and sordid sexploitation entries, which both centre around groupies' fascination with hairy musicians in grubby settings. Co-written by director Derek Ford with former groupie Suzanne Mercer, GROUPIE GIRL is certainly the livelier of two. Sally (stripper Esme Johns in her only picture), a star-struck provincial girl, becomes involved with Orange Butterfly lead singer Steve (Marc Bolan lookalike Donald Sumpter), before being literally off-loaded to permanently stoned group Sweaty Betty. In the film's outstanding sequence, Sally is passed out the window of Orange Butterfly's speeding van into their rival's vehicle, a scene filmed at Hendon Airfield made even more impressive by the fact that there was only minimal dummy work.

Ford had one of the most colourful backgrounds of any filmmaker involved in the smut-peddling seventies, before succumbing to a heart attack in W H Smith's in 1995. A former accountant, Ford wrote radio plays for Children's Hour and - with novelist brother Donald - scripted a number of popular television shows which included Z-CARS and THE SAINT. Remembered as "generally miserable" and a "male nymphomaniac," Ford regularly directed hardcore versions of his early movies, and departed to Italy to make low-budget shockers such as 1978's EROTIC FANTASIES, a perverse sex odyssey set to classical music. On his return to Britain, he wrote stroke paperbacks as well as continuing his film career, which involved writing then being fired from directing DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS after two days, and making THE URGE TO KILL about a murderous computer called S.E.X.Y.

Taglines such as "The Minstrels and their Mistresses ... fast living, free loving, putting out savage driving rhythmic music to the pulse of the new generation ... See it from the inside screaming out!" hide the fact that PERMISSIVE is a dank and unsympathetic affair.

GROUPIE GIRL features two brief appearances of an uncredited Mary and Madeleine Collinson, who are used even more sparsely in Canadian Lindsay Shonteff's PERMISSIVE. Made under the glorious title SUZY SUPERSCREW, this release is even more squalid than Ford's film, and tells of duffle-coated runaway Suzy (Maggie Stride) in search of her school friend Fiona (Gay Singleton). Fiona initiates Suzy into the heady environment of London groupie life with Forever More (a genuine group described by Simon Sheridan in Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema as "a turgid mix of all the worst elements of Jethro Tull combined with Slade," of which two of their members went on to form The Average White Band). Effectively chronicling Suzy's personal journey from naive waif to hard-faced bitch, she eventually steals Forever More's lead singer from under Carol's grip, leaving her friend to die after a suicide attempt in a bath of blood.

Santa Slayer

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1984)

“Do you think we might have a psychopath on our hands?” Wearing a distorting plastic mask, a hooded killer is terrorising London Santa's in Britain's answer to the American slasher craze of the 1980s.

WITH a scene of 198 naked, elderly men corralled in an electrified reindeer pen, the release of Finnish horror RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is set to rekindle interest in the sleazy sub-genre of mean-spirited Christmas cinema. Origins of this particular type of film can be traced back to the Mexican-made SANTA CLAUS in 1959, which displays both a nauseatingly wholesome attitude to its hero and near surreal art direction. It features Santa battling Satan, who sends bad dreams to innocent children and inspires them to break windows and steal toys. The original killer Santa appeared in the celebrated And All Through the House segment of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, before the festive season was the setting for two influential slashers released in 1974: the sorority-house based BLACK CHRISTMAS and the giallo-like SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT. The most notorious, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is actually nothing special, but came along at the wrong time and felt the brunt of a slasher-weary protest movement during its 1980s explosion. Rather than following the mold of these previous entries, DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS makes Santa the victim, focusing on the search for a London serial killer who slays Shopping Centre Father Christmas's.

The film is associated with a long list of cult personalities. Producers Stephen Minasian and Dick Randall had previously been involved with FRIDAY THE 13TH and PIECES; Derek Ford, a director and writer of sex films throughout the 1960s and 70s, wrote the screenplay; Alan Birkinshaw, who helmed the notorious KILLER'S MOON - here credited as Al McGoohan - is "assistant director"; and Des Dolan (the guiding light behind the Go Video label) provides the score. Fallen star Edmund Purdom heads the cast as Scotland Yard detective Ian Harris, and set dressing is provided by Caroline Munro cameoing as herself, and sex starlets Pat Astley (as a nude model) and Paula Meadows (as the London Dungeon secretary). In his final film Alan Lake plays journalist Giles, a fittingly seedy role to end a seedy life; a notorious heavy drinker who had punched an extra on the set of THE PLAYBIRDS, he was most famous for being the third husband - and attempted murderer - of Diana Dors, before shooting himself in 1984.

Why has a killer such an apparent and vile disgust for Santa and the festive holiday? The answer is supplied in this obligatory childhood flash-back scene.

This role call of suspect talent could not prevent DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS suffering one of the most troubled shoots in British cinema history. The film took two years to complete and scenes were reshot and rearranged endlessly, with Birkinshaw, Ford, Purdom and editor Ray Selfe all taking turns in the director's chair. What eventually surfaces looks suitably filthy and is technically inept, but at least the body count is kept consistent and the deaths bloody and inventive; one Father Christmas has his penis cut off with a razor, while another has his face thrust into roasting chestnuts. There are also scenes that exude a sleazy charm: the photographer snapping nudes in his grubby bedsit could have come straight from any British smut-fest of the previous decade, and Munro's glittery performance of an instantly forgettable song (Warrior of Love) concludes with a scream when a Santa with a machete in his face comes up through the stage trapdoor.