Keeping the British End Up

One of my great regrets is that I never bought a copy of David McGillivray's 1992 account of the British sex film industry in the 1970s, Doing Rude Things. I don't know why I didn't buy a copy. I remember reading large parts of it in various London bookshops during my lunch hour, when I worked up there. I also saw the amusing BBC documentary based on it. But I never bought the book. When I tried to obtain a second hand copy a few years ago, I found that it was now fetching ludicrous prices, (apparently it hasn't been reprinted, rendering it a 'rare' or 'collectible' book). Over the years other books on the subject have appeared and I've perused them in bookshops. They were OK, but none moved me to buy them. Until now. I recently caught sight of the new revised edition of Simon Sheridan's Keeping the British End Up. I was captivated by what I saw - it's clearly lovingly researched - and ordered a copy via Amazon (it was ten quid cheaper than in the shop).

I've just taken delivery of my copy and already, after only a brief skim, have learned things I never knew about British sex comedies. Who knew, for instance, that veteran Hollywood B-Movie monster specialist Jack Arnold, (the director of such 1950s classics as Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man amongst others), came to London in the 1970s to direct a sex film? Or that Christopher Matthews, (who I only remembered as the bland hero of psychedelic horror flick Scream and Scream Again), made a sex film in the late 1960s, in which he cavorted with the Collinson twins, (of Twins of Evil fame)? Apparently the scenes with the twins were shot several months after the films initial UK release in order to provide more 'action' for the US release. It really is extraordinary how many well known British actors appeared in this type of film in the 1970s. Not that they had much choice - apart from James Bond, by the mid-1970s there wasn't much else in the way of commercial movies being made in the UK. Speaking of Bond, Martin Campbell, later to direct Goldeneye and Casino Royale, started his film directing career in sex movies. I look forward to exploring this fantastic chronicle of a genre which is all too often sneered at in greater detail over the next couple of weeks.