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

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Srdjan Spasojevic’s A Serbian Film is so repellent, so sick, so depraved, it may turn you xenophobic. It begins with a toddler watching his father, Milos (Srdjan Todorovic), pounding away at some woman on a porno. Oh, the memories! Milos since has retired from the industry, but the one-time “Balkan sex god” is in need of some cash, so when he’s approached by some high rollers to shoot an arty film they claim is only for foreign markets, and offer him enough money that he’ll be set for life, he’s ready to throw his hat — and by hat, we mean dick — back into the ring.

You’ve likely already heard about the atrocities Milos commits for the camera, so you may be thinking, “Should I really watch it?” That depends on how much you wanna see Milos jerk off next to a Dumpster while he gazes at an underage hooker, or hear a story about monks making a sandwich spread out of blood, semen and milk.

And that’s nothing compared to him beating and ultimately beheading a woman as he rapes her from behind. Or having to fuck a newborn baby. Or finding out that the masked person under the sheets he’s been raping is his own son. Or punching out a guy’s eyes with his bloody, erect member. A friend warned me, “There’s no reason to watch this. Turn it off now before you see things you can never unsee. And this is coming from me.”

He was right: There is no reason to see A Serbian Film, even out of sheer curiosity. I mean, what’s the point? That raping people is bad? I already knew that, Spasojevic, thanks. Claim it’s pointed, political art all you want, but I have to disagree. I shudder to think there’s someone out there literally getting off on the acts it portrays — and you know he/she/them exists. Whoever you are, please consider incarcerating yourself. Kthx. —Rod Lott

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Though their teeth stereotypically may not be in all that great of condition, the sturdy women of the British sex comedy Come Play With Me are people who deserve our respect and admiration, mostly due to the fact they very rarely, if ever, wear clothes. I really admire that, guv’nor!

Although these ladies don’t show up until about 30 minutes in — a charming Mary Millington among them — as soon as they appear on-screen (and their clothes, of course, disappear!), it quickly becomes the sex comedy we’ve paid good money for, as they dance and sing in the nude while two old perverts dressed like Laurel and Hardy try to hide their blood-infused members.

At legendary 10 Downing Street, the prime minister (played by Benny Hill cast member Henry McGee!) and his cohorts argue about some stolen money. Across town, in a burlesque house, some guy argues about women while one dancing spreads fluffernutter on her nether regions. And then, down at a café, two guys argue about the price of coffee and pies.

None of that really matters, because when a rock ’n’ roll band stops at a local hotel, the horny women turn the place into a health club that seems to run, primarily, on juice and nudity; honestly, though, it’s a business I can get behind — and in front of — and would like a pamphlet, and not just for the fact Millington gives a horny gentleman a wholly painful yet fully erotic colonic.

Double-breasted with cameos from performers from the best British sex comedies of the era — movies and television shows, mind you — Come Play With Me is, honestly, mostly dumb, but filled with so many titillating moments of Her Majesty’s softcore sexuality that it’s easy to see why it played in London theaters to forlorn perverts for four royally arousing years. —Louis Fowler

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I’ve never been a shogun and, sadly, probably never will. Mostly because while I may enjoy tacos and dogs and movies, if this flick truly leads me to believe one thing, it’s that shoguns only really enjoy the cruelest of tortures, primarily through inflicting it on other people’s bare bodies. There goes another dream!

One of director Teruo Ishii’s infamous flicks of sex, violence and torture, often at the same time, this Toei production is a supposed anthology of the heinous practices documented on scrolls during the height of Tokugawa shogun. It features a catalog of barbarism that deftly mixes penile titillation with painful humiliation, seemingly a specialty of Ishii.

Focusing on three stories, Shogun’s Joy of Torture begins with a young woman and an illicit romance with her recently hurt brother and the scummy lawmen who jealously take their sexual issues out on her, with, of course, violent retribution.

The same goes for the second story, featuring the unbridled passions and unheralded smacks at a Buddhist nunnery. And the final story, which honestly wouldn’t seem out of place in an otherworldly Amicus production, depicts a tattoo artist who wants to get as close to death as utterly possible and achieves it with the help of a sadistic shogun.

Each tale is, as you’d probably imagine, beautifully — but brutally! — told, with excesses of ropes, whips, chains and other instruments of haughty pain throughout, used primarily on women hanging from the ceiling. While I’m sure a trigger warning is necessary for most viewers — I know I could’ve used two or three — this depiction of sex and sadism is a well-made movie that, I’m sure, will make someone’s penis suitably hard. —Louis Fowler

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I remember the salacious VHS box for Smooth Talk that sat in the drama section of just about every video store I worked in sometime in the late ’90s, with perennial crush Laura Dern barely clothed as a lascivious Treat Williams stood behind her like the leering bastard he is, at least in this flick.

Even though I never rented it, I stared at that cover every time I passed it. Now having seen it, I’ll admit I felt a little guilt and a lot of perversion for lusting after it, especially upon learning that Dern is a sophomore in high school — even I have my boundaries, people!

Based on a short story by Joyce Carol Oates and directed by documentarian Joyce Chopra, Smooth Talk stars Dern as Connie, a precociously sexual young woman who happens to be the black sheep of her family. While Dad dotes and Mom nags, Connie spends most of her time flirting with boys at the mall and, soon enough, at the local redneck bar.

A sleazy older man by the name of Friend (Williams, at his scummiest) takes a fully erect liking to her, at one point coming to her house and literally wearing her down so she’ll go to an empty field and have sex with him, which does a good job of making the formerly loving act into an ambiguous one I’d be happy to forget about.

I guess there are many things I’m missing about this girl’s budding sexuality, but they’re hard to see every time Williams is onscreen, his diseased sexuality dripping off every frame. I guess it’s mostly surprising this was broadcast on the PBS anthology series American Playhouse, but I’ve been surprised before. —Louis Fowler

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