If you’ve ever watched a Dirty Harry film and thought it needed some graphic sexual depictions as well as scummy violent content, I suggest Clint Eastwood in Tightrope. But, if it also needed some proper British comedy, I then recommend The Playbirds, starring the late sex goddess Mary Millington as a policewoman who goes way undercover.
And by undercover, of course, I mean fucking.
Here, she’s bobbie Lucy, a well-meaning copper working with some straight-laced detectives to find out who’s strangling the cover girls of the nudie mag Playbirds. Who could it be? Is it the horndog publisher? The anti-porn protestor? One of the policemen who called uniformed women into his office to arbitrarily doff their clothes for the case?
Agatha Christie, it’s not. Then again, I don’t remember Murder on the Orient Express having this much pubic hair.
Willy Roe’s directing style is the opposite of Millington: very flat. Still, you could tell he was trying to do something different with the British sex film and I guess it worked, man-cementing Millington as the ultimate Union Jack sex bomb. It’s something I can understand, but not necessarily endorse, as the blood flow to the penis is significantly decreased by the incredibly bleak ending.
Or even more increased, you vile pervert. —Louis Fowler