Confessions of a Freudian Psychologist... Intimate Games (1976)

Heather Deeley

Those seventies Brits and their comedies of sex… they rarely manage to sustain the funny whilst being too slapstick for anything other than the mildly sensational: erotica isn’t naturally hilarious especially when it’s smothered in carry on capers and clinging on to a flimsy premise for dear life.

However, it is not so simple and like others in this genre, it would be unfair to dismiss Intimate Games too readily.

True the story is a little slack… a group of psychology students are encouraged by their tutor to spend their summer term researching sexual fantasies; their own and others around them… to find the hidden life of the everyday – the stories we tell ourselves to keep our pecker up as it were.

OK George, it's your job to hold this all together!

Directed by Tudor Gates, best known for co-scripting Barbarella and a host of period cult horror, the film is most notable for featuring a host of sex-com starlets including future property millionaire Felicity Devonshire, Suzy Mandell, Anna – daughter of Ingmar no less – Bergman, the lovely Heather Deeley, Maria St. Clare (they’re all lovely actually) and a fleeting, uncredited, Mary Millington as a choirgirl (no typecasting…).

Mary Millington in the choir

They are supported by the finest male comic actors available at that time or at least that week… along with Lionel Blair’s sister Joyce.

The students, improbably located in Oxford (they don’t really seem posh enough) are put into pairs by their tutor Professor Gottlieb (the inestimable George Baker) mostly girls and boys except for Marion (Deeley) and Erica (Mandel) – guess what’s going to happen there?

Heather and Suzy

The laddish John (sitcom regular Peter Blake) is nervous of his experienced partner June (Maria St. Clare) who strips off to put him at his ease and take his wandering eyes away from the distraction of her chest: now he doesn’t know where to look… this never happened in Economics!? He’s far too uptight for his own good and not surprisingly as his father is Hugh Lloyd, a man who has unnatural thoughts about pigeons…

Maria St. Clare

Another couple features the sparky Felicity Devonshire as Cathy and a rather reserved young man, Benny (Edward Kalinski) who, unfeasibly, is ashamed of his rather outsized member. Once Cathy discovers his secret, her attempts to bring him out of himself are fired by a new level of enthusiasm. Suzy (Anna Bergman) and the geeky Nick (Chet Townsend) make up the remaining couple and seemingly have no spark… whilst Erica wastes no time in convincing Marion to take a walk on the wild side.

The crew gradually head home for the holidays and John encounters a bored blonde in the back of a Rolls Royce (Lindy Benson) who’s keen on extending more than courtesy to a hitchhiker – although it could easily be another fantasy… hard to tell. More revelations are in store once he gets home where we discover his Dad’s pigeon stroking is a substitute for one of the smoother areas of the female anatomy and the real shocker that his mum is Queenie Watts!

 Hugh and Peter: pigeon fanciers

Joyce Blair turns out to be Erica’s Mum Beryl, a pub cleaning lady who dreams of being a showbiz dancer partnered by dress-suited hunks – typecasting for the Blair family but Joyce looks funny as a cleaner!

Suzy’s Uncle Rodney (the genuinely great Ian Hendry) is far more interested in the pink than the red as he imagines her naked during a game of snooker and mentally undresses his maid Hazel (Normaline) at the same time: it’s all a bit seaside-saucy but, in the cut I saw, there’s little more than posing and Sidney James gurning.

Actual homework...

Almost the only scene involving academic “homework” sees June interviewing a frustrated housewife (Susan Glanville) who quickly turns from frantic close-up dusting to thoughts of being ravaged on the kitchen table… the only thing missing is Jimmy Young on Radio 2 in the background.

The story seems to have forgotten itself and rushes in a few random scenarios just to illustrate its point: Johnny Vyvyan plays a Jockey In a bizarre sequence in a cinema: he ends up riding a generously proportioned lady (Claire Davenport) illustrating perhaps that there’s no right or wrong fantasy, just what works for you…

Uncle Rodney tries to concentrate on his game....

Spoilers: And so the students return to class, a new term to begin. Some have changed and none more so than their professor… has it been a summer of over work or has he just got too close to his subject and his class: he looks around and sees all of the women naked allowing ample opportunity for the audience to assess their assets. He’s tense and nervous; can’t relax and, focusing on Heather Deeley, he cracks and makes a grab. So… enjoy your fantasies but don’t let them get the better of you as even this highly-trained academic did? A mixed message for a film in search of some kind of ending and the chests of all five female leads provided the opportunity to send the fans away happy.

Serious study

Dusty verdict: This can only be a guilty pleasure… a reminder of seventies sexuality and a treat for all those old enough to appreciate an illicit glance at adverts for films starring Heather, Suzy, Felicity and Mary M, but who were far too young to go and see them.

The film pokes fun at the frailty of human desire whilst also being as artful as it can in playing to the watching audience’s tastes.  It’s not just the Professor who is driven to distraction… that’s kind of the whole point. Sexist, exploitative and all the rest, Intimate Games does have the final laugh at its audience’s expense.

With or without a dirty mac, DVD’s are available from Amazon.

The quickies and the damned… Adam and Nicole (1975)

Mary Millington

The original title for this film is Erotic Inferno which has me wondering what level of hell the writers had in mind – on this evidence the holding area in which the damned are used to screen test beginners’ soft porn films. Phew, it must be all of 20 degrees Celsius in there: no wonder Dante forgot to include it!

The film’s genesis was partially captured by a BBC documentary – Man Alive: Xploitation – which would be something to see. The director - Trevor Wrenn – is apparently shown talking his performers through their scenes – dialogue would be added later – which, again, would be particularly informative during the frequent and very rushed sex scenes: “ a bit closer, c’mon love, lift your leg… no, not that one, that’s it arch your back love…” and so on.

Michael Watkins snarls

Of course, one of those who would need little instruction in these matters is Mary Millington arguably Britain’s sexual superpower of the seventies – here listed under her married name of Mary Maxted.  Actually, her scenes are only with Heather Deeley and prove to be the most subtle and respectful of all the film’s couplings – they’re just about the only ones in a proper relationship with the rest after only self-gratification at best.

The documentary showed the film’s writer, Jonathan Gershfield (as Jon York), putting the script together in the library of York University and that feels about the right level – probably he was a fresher imagining his way through the sex lives of liberated, go-getting adults.

Mary and Heather frolicking

The result leaves a film whose only charm is period – the house, haircuts and cars – with virtually no sympathetic characters except the two lovely stable girls (Mary and Heather).

So why watch it and why write about it? Got me there… although this is precisely the kind of film I’d liked to have seen as a teenager at around the time but I’m not sure it would have aided my education on adult matters. It’s seventies X-rated which means there’s a lot of female nudity, dirty talk and minimal foreplay (apart from the stable girls… who at least have manners).

But there’s also a story too…

Jenny Westbrook

After the opening credits have revealed Adam (Michael Watkins) enjoying an afternoon liaison with a young woman (Monika Ringwald) in the Tower Hotel – St Catherine’s dock full of posh yachts even in 1975 – we discover that his boss is missing presumed drowned. Old Mr. Barnard (Anthony Kenyon) was a multi-millionaire of no fixed morality who also happens to be Adam’s father although he was born out of wedlock (which is a bad thing even when so much of the activity required to produce such an outcome is apparently a good thing…).

Adam works as the Old Man’s land manager and shares a bed with the housekeeper Nicole (Jenny Westbrook) who is a nice enough sort with an insatiable interest in Adam’s two half-brothers both of whom stand to properly inherit their father’s riches.

Jeannie Collings and Chris Chittell

All parties converge on the Old Man’s Tudor mansion, Adam driving his Rolls Royce back, the more business-like Paul (Karl Lanchbury) and Martin (Chris Chittell - later a star of Emmerdale) in a yellow Triumph Stag. Martin’s a chip off the old block and takes his time in between sessions with his girlfriend Brenda (Jeannie Collings). No one’s exactly grieving…

Adam is angry, Paul is creepily-cold and Martin’s an over-baring (geddit) bully. None of this cuts any ice with the family lawyer, Eric Gold (Michael Sheard, yes Mr Bronson from Grange Hill – a fine actor who also featured in Star Wars and no less than six times in Doctor Who) who insists that the main house remain locked until the will is read.

Jenny Westbrook and Karl Lanchbury

What to do to pass the time…? Well, Nicole reveals her fondness for both of the brothers, first with the uptight Paul and then the border-line charming Martin on a number of occasions. These couplings seem passionless and rushed for old time’s sake. Martin’s neglecting his fiancée though and she starts to form an arrangement with Paul which is borderline touching: they appear to have nothing in common but seem to be rushing to love as quickly as Martin and Nicole rush to… well, you know…

Meanwhile Adam is still angry and shares a brief tangle in the fields with the pretty stable girl Gayle (Heather D) a rare tender moment for him but she still rushes back to Jane (Mary M) for some proper affection.

Michael Watkins and Heather Deeley

It is hard to keep up (fnar!) and very uneven… but the mood of barely contained aggression is well maintained between the males and the females are mostly more than willing to take it on the chin…

Adam has Nicole hide the key to the house on a chain round her waist and naturally Paul and Martin are keen to get their hands on it and the body attached… Paul sneaks in to find the key but ends up hiding under the bed as his brother conducts a full body search on the mattress above.

Meanwhile Martin’s fiancée is naturally unconvinced of her lover’s sincerity and becomes increasingly drawn to Paul… who knows this could be the real thing although it’s more convincing in word not deed as there’s little chemistry between the actors.

Adam, as is his wont, gets even more angry and tries his luck with Gayle again in the stables but this time she won’t be turned: he’s too rough – too much and he’s clearly not Jane. At last, some fidelity!!

Slight spoilers: Then, late one night, the moment arrives as the solicitor arrives to deliver the last will and testament of the man who begat three such winning examples of the male sex… There’s some big surprises in store but... why spoil the plot?

A Triumph!

Dusty verdict: The film was tagged “a luscious story of naked greed!” and it is indeed a story of greed and naked but by and large the women should be excluded from the unpleasant behaviour of the  four male protagonists by the end and even Paul may have transferred his interest to actual love.

In terms of performance, the women generally have more to play with than the men (ooer) with Jenny Westbrook managing to come across convincingly (oh, stop it!) whilst Adam’s start to finish black mood must have taken some skill to maintain.

Heather Deeley

In soft porn terms Deeley and Millington take the Oscars and are almost in a film of their own. Deeley’s character almost saves Adam as well as they share a few bucolic moments amongst horses and trees but he can’t help being nasty to even her in the end.

The film doesn’t appear to be available commercially which is surprising. I’m sure someone will find the wherewithal to liberate it from obscurity if only for the obvious reasons: nakedness and ambition.