The Great British Sex Film: A Phenomenon of the 1970s (Naked Pulp)

When it comes to making money, you can forget about Star Wars.

Adventures of a Taxi Driver was made for 30,000 pounds and took just under 48,000 pounds in it's opening week in Birmingham alone. The queues went round the block three times. This phenomenon was then duplicated in every major city in the U.K. It then additionally sold around the world, and like many such films of the '70s, ultimately grossed millions. The truly abysmal Come Play With Me is the most profitable British film of all time. They won't tell you that at the BAFTAs.

Far from being seen as the salvation of the British film industry that they actually were, keeping studios working and actors employed at a time when television ruled supreme and no-one was going to see anything else, the sex-coms were often unfairly portrayed in the media as the cause of the cinema's decline, which is just not true. Critics and cultural commentators would imply that these films were somehow bullying more wholesome fare off the screen, whereas family films were not being made because families in 1970s Britain were sitting at home watching On the Buses, The Benny Hill Show, The Two Ronnies, and Morecambe and Wise on their new color televisions.

The British male has long been regarded by foreigners as someone who would rather go to bed with a hot water bottle than a warm woman. “No Sex Please, We’re British” goes the old joke. So it’s perhaps no surprise that sex films aren’t our greatest artistic accomplishment. Many of the writers and directors didn't want to make them, and certainly don't want to remember them. But like a lot of trashy films, the British sex-coms are fun to watch for the wrong reasons (or at least, reasons contrary to the intentions of the makers). They are occasionally genuinely funny, and they are certainly fascinating (take a look at those clothes, the haircuts, the high streets, the cars, the decor). And however we might sneer, mock, gasp, and cringe, British sex comedies--particularly those co-featuring television sit-com stars of the era--were phenomenally popular with the Great British Bloke and his Missus, so they must have been doing something right. The (Not So) Great British Sex Film looks at the surprisingly good, the incompetently bad, and the occasionally very ugly of a distinctly 1970s phenomena.

Please note: The text in this book previously appeared in the author’s earlier 700 page Strange New World: Sex Films of the 1970s, also available on Amazon.