As far as I know, Secrets of Sex is the only film I know of — softcore or otherwise — to open with a quote from John Milton and be narrated by a mummy. (No wonder it’s alternately known as Bizarre.) Living 1,000 years wrapped in gauze is certain to give one quite the case of blue balls, so said mummy leads the viewer through several near-non-sequitur stories involving the ol’ slap-and-tickle.
An early sequence depicts the film’s female starlets in their underwear, being pelted with tomatoes, leading into the first tale, in which a woman photographs men in poses of medieval torture. Cutting into her lunch of steak has a voodoo-esque effect on the model she left strung up. Later, a man catches a comely cat burglar (Cathy Howard, School for Sex) pilfering his home, so naturally, he ends up rubbing lemon-cucumber soap all over her naked body in the shower. Moving to the bed, he stuffs a phone receiver down back of her panties so the other line can hear whatever it is one would hear from such awkward placement.
Perhaps the most amusing vignette is a spy spoof, in which one Col. X briefs his curvy Agent 28 (Maria Frost, School for Sex) to infiltrate a foreign embassy; seduction becomes a required part of the mission. Sandwiched within the segment is a spot-on parody of a silent comedy, a bedroom farce circa 1929. Elsewhere in Secrets, a man (Elliott Stein, one of the screenwriters) orders a hooker (Benny Hill girl Sue Bond) for some lizard-loving, and an elderly woman puts her past lovers’ souls — all 17 of them — into garden flowers.
The film ends with fireworks that score an orgy ever after. As if you couldn’t tell, Secrets of Sex is nonsensical, but nudity trumps lucidity in such a project, and this UK one actually possesses as much brains as beauty. The women are gorgeous and natural, and the proceedings told with so much humor that it reeks of being good-natured. Director Antony Balch (Horror Hospital) bathes it in such vibrant colors, it’s a practically a piece of Pop Art — with just as little meaning, but none of the pretension. —Rod Lott