The Deadly Females

(1976)

Look back at British movies from the late 60's, all during the 70's and on into the early 80's and what you see are tits and ass and an occasional fanny (and for those of us on this side of the Pond, the last term might seem redundant but in the UK fanny is a term that cuts a little closer to the knuckle - it means the furry bits). I read somewhere all of that is Hollywood's fault. Moviegoers in the UK abandoned British film to watch the blockbusters made over here and so to stay in business the British film makers stumbled upon the one thing that would play in Liverpool and make them them some money. What they gave us were films with Carry On and Confessions Of in their titles, and all of them starred Robin Askwith and a host of women willing to reveal tits and ass and an occasional fanny. Even the dramas were revealing, titillating... exploitative... because that's what got every limey and his cousin into the theatres.

That brings us to The Deadly Females (1976). The premise here is an amalgam. Imagine that in the course of their everyday lives some women were also assassins, hired by disgruntled wives and husbands to do away with their boring or abusive mates. All of this is run by a very snooty British woman - what friends in Sydney and Auckland refer to as a pommy bitch. So there is in The Deadly Females the element brought to its pinnacle by True Lies: a down home person whose day job requires murder and mayhem. Now mix in bits and pieces of teen slasher films - all of the guys dispatched by the deadly females are philandering, obnoxious and thoroughly reprehensible. Either the assassin gals fuck 'em and then kill 'em or the guys get killed because they are fucking someone who they won't marry or won't divorce or some such silliness. So you see the screwing and then you see the killing. It's True Lies meets Sleepaway Camp.

If that sounds dreadful, well then me buckoes, I told it right. The Deadly Females is talky, annoying, poorly written and terribly made pile of stinking elephant poo. And those are its good features.

Well, that's not true. An upside to the tack taken by British cinema in the 70's involves all the naked women, some of whom went on to long careers in movies and on the telly. The Deadly Females has two of those. One is Gennie Nevinson (here credited without the second n in her last name). Gennie seems to have made a few exploitation films in the 70's but by 1980 she was on British television, in one series after another. Her last credited appearance is in a 2009 series. In The Deadly Females she plays one of the assassins and has two nude scenes. The first, with her boyfriend, has her giving up T and A and a brief look at her bush. And the second has her topless for a while and then gives us a good long look at her tush as she smothers a crude, ugly business man who could come straight out of a Hollywood B movie if you gave him a Mississippi drawl. Good riddance is what we are supposed to say about all that.

Gennie Nevinson film clip (collages below)

The second is Sally Faulkner. She started out in TV (as part of the Dr Who ensemble) moved into exploitation movies (e.g. Vampyres and Confessions of a Driving Instructor) and then migrated back to TV, where she remains to this day.

Sally Faulkner film clip (collage below)

Olivia Munday is a third topless gal in this movie. She is in a batshit crazy scene: starts out wearing a nun's habit while punishing a knight of the realm as part of foreplay, moves into the sport-humping and then winds up topless in a long and dreadful conversation with her rich, old fuck buddy. Olivia made only a few movies, all of them of this genre - Carry On this and Confessions that - and then she up and disappeared. Too bad - fine looking lass she was.

Olivia Munday film clip (collages below)

And then there is the one-hit wonder - Angela Jay. Ms. Jay was a perky little blonde with what looks to be a killer bod although it sure is hard to tell because her post-coital conversation is filmed by candlelight, or its equivalent. BTW, I learned from this movie that 3 out of 4 English gentlemen talk rather than sleep after sex. Knowledge is power, I suppose.

Angela Jay film clip (collage below)

Speaking of knowledge and the power it brings, IMDb makes something pretty clear - there are dozens of these UK exploitation movies out there on Region 2 DVD, marketed as part of The Saucy 70's series. Only a fraction have been capped. Would only that a resident of the Empire take up capping these fine movies and making clips of the appropriate scenes. Looks like a gold mine and I, for one, would be ever so appreciative.

About the clips and caps of The Deadly Females - they suck. Well, at least the quality of the original images does. The reason for that? The DVD was made from a videotape source - has all the earmarks, including a rough band running through the lower edge of every frame. Oh well, I did what I could but The Deadly Females began life as a sow's ear and so it remains here, oh so far from a silk purse.