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Secrets of Sex

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Secrets of Sex
DVD Cover
Directed byAntony Balch
Written byAntony Balch
Martin Locke
John Eliot
Maureen Owen
Elliott Stein
Produced byAntony Balch
Richard Gordon
StarringValentine Dyall
Cathy Howard
Maria Frost
Yvonne Quenet
Sue Bond
Kenneth Benda
Mike Briton
CinematographyDavid McDonald
Edited byJohn Rushton
Music byCliff Twemlow
Production
company
Noteworthy Films
Distributed byAntony Balch
Release date
February 1970 (UK)
Running time
85 min.
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£32,000[1]

Secrets of Sex, also known as Bizarre, is a 1970 British multi-genre sexploitation anthology film directed by Antony Balch, an experimental filmmaker and frequent collaborator with William S. Burroughs. The film is narrated by an Egyptian mummy (voiced by Valentine Dyall).

Plot

Each segment, all featuring recurring sexual themes depicting the battle of the sexes, is introduced by an Egyptian Mummy, voiced by Valentine Dyall.

Cast

Production

The dinosaur sculptures that feature in the “Strange Young Man” segment are the famous Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.

Development

After directing the Burroughs-influenced shorts "Towers Open Fire" (1963) and "The Cut Ups" (1967), Balch approached producer Richard Gordon in 1968 to direct an anthology film running just over an hour and entitled Multiplication.

Writing

Five writers are credited with the screenplay; several others, including Brion Gysin and Ian Cullen (writer of Cruel Passion (1977) and husband to Yvonne Quenet, who plays Mary-Claire in the film) also claimed to have worked on the script.

Filming

After the script was rewritten to bring the film up to feature length and the budget doubled (32,000 pounds) filming took place over 14 weeks in 1969.

Casting

Many of the actresses who appear nude in the film, such as Cathy Howard and Maria Frost, were topless models who had begun to get minor acting roles in British sex and horror films of the period. Frost, who plays Lindy Leigh in the film, was so horrified she'd been given a major role in the film that she reportedly told Balch “I’m a model, I can't act.” She had previously appeared in the two Harrison Marks shorts "Maria" and "Scouts Honour".

Release

Released in February 1970, it was a huge success in the UK, running for six months at the Jacey Cinema in Piccadilly Circus alone, during which time it recouped its entire production cost. The film remained in circulation in the UK throughout the 1970s, sometimes appearing in a half hour edited version that played on the second half of double-bills.

Censorship history

The film was substantially cut for the British cinema release in 1970, with censor John Trevelyan removing around six minutes from the film, while reportedly muttering “nasty stuff”. Heavily cut was the "Spanish horse/Female photographer" sequence, together with assorted orgy and sex scenes, a bathroom striptease sequence and shots of strippers being pelted with tomatoes, while shots of men in bed together in the "Bedroom Beauties of 1929" sequence were removed entirely. Writing in the Monthly Film Bulletin (March 1970) Jan Dawson remarked of the cuts: “paradoxically, the bowdlerized version of the film moves closer to pornography than the version from which its audience is being protected. …it's sad that censorship should function against its own long term purpose and re-enforce the man-in-the-mac’s sexual furtiveness by denying him the chance to view sex irreverently.” The film was briefly released uncut in America under the name Bizarre by New Line Cinema, before being withdrawn and re-released in 1972 as Tales of the Bizarre, a drastically re-edited version that deleted around 17 minutes from the film. The 1980 UK video release on the Iver Film Services label is uncut, as are the 2005 American DVD and the 2009 British DVD.

Critical response

  • “[A]n exploitation sex film informed throughout by the refreshing view that sex is less often fun than funny.. (the stories) create a hilarious effect because of the discrepancy between their own unflinching seriousness and the ludicrousness of the pet theories they expound” – Monthly Film Bulletin
  • “Flair, resource, and a splendid gothic dottiness” – The Guardian
  • “Strange and personal, a genuine and appealing oddity” – The Times
  • “Erotic” – Financial Times
  • “It aims to shock” - Kine Weekly
  • “Excellent” &ndash Today's Cinema
  • “The sun just set on the British empire…you’ve never seen anything like it” – Screw Magazine

Director's response

Commenting on the film in an unpublished 1975 interview, Balch claimed “this is a very uneven film, but three episodes and a single shot, are good. I liked the ones with the photographer, Elliot Stein, and the Lady in the Greenhouse. The episode of the monster baby is a bore, but the single shot of it, at the end is brilliant.”[2]

Home media

In 2005, the film was released as a special edition DVD by Synapse Films under its American title, Bizarre. In January 2010, the film, under its original title, was finally released on DVD in the UK by Odeon Entertainment, featuring new sleeve-notes by author Simon Sheridan.

References

  1. ^ Simon Sheridan, Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, Titan Books 2011 p 68-69
  2. ^ Quoted in Midnight Marquee, no. 43, 1992

Sources

  • Sheridan, Simon. Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, Reynolds & Hearn Books (third edition, 2007) ISBN 1-905287-54-2
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