Cover Girl Killer

There are some surprisingly long well-informed reviews of this seemingly rather undistinguished 1959 British B. Those who might have seen it at that time are now all senior citizens. But for a few, perhaps a very few, such elderly gentlemen it evokes memories of their formative years like nothing else.

If you had been a young person with an interest in photography you would have been aware of the publications safely tucked away on the top shelves of the newsagents shops - as appear in this film. Soho was then as now an exotic location well known for the fleshly pleasures including foreign foods. Indeed it was a basket of exotica quite unique in the entire UK. Oddly at the same time, it was the home of army surplus radio gear - all displayed on stalls outside the shops. It thus drew serious studious radio amateurs old and young to briefly share its busy notorious pavements with its more permanent and mostly female residents as well as passing rather furtive older gentlemen in raincoats and often bowler hats whose visit might only be slightly longer than that of the innocent old and young radio enthusiasts.

By the standards on the 1950s, the above would be quite unsuitable for any kind of family publication or family conversation as it alludes to what was common knowledge but then a taboo topic in family contexts. Such were the dim and distant 1950s - made vivid again by this film whose makers clearly knew their market.

Did I see it at the time? I'm not sure - it would have been at least an A possibly an X certificate. Yet Felicity Young seems oddly very familiar. Why was she so memorable? Not just because she was very good looking. I think because she was a classy ostensibly "nice" girl who did - remove her clothes, not all of course. In a world then firmly divided between nice girls who didn't and not nice girls who did, Felicity Young produced a thrilling confusion in a younger impressionable mind - apparently.

It is a strange thing that less can be more. In such restricted times, very little could seem very much more.

Nineteen years before Mary Millington crossed paths with a misogynist murderer bearing a grudge against bust models in The Playbirds, B-movie actress Felicity Young (Play it Cool) had to deal with the late Fifties counterpart in this enjoyable Butcher's Film Distributors programmer. Set in the era of Soho Strip-tease, smoky coffee bars and rock and roll, The Cover Girl Killer opens to its titular character, a bogeyman by way of a Soho dirty mack leering at a non-stop follies marquee. Dressed in a raincoat, pebble glasses and a wig The Cover Girl Killer is played by future Steptoe, Harry H Corbett who remains unrecognisable from his later TV incarnation. Motivated by the `unsavoury obsessions of his twisted mind' and a need to `give back man his dignity to free him from the prison of lustful images that foul his mind and his sanity' the anti-smut Cover Girl Killer poses as a photographer in order to murder models who have appeared on the cover of Wow, a typical late Fifties cheesecake magazine. Canadian Spencer Teakle (a Butcher's mainstay) inherits music hall stripclub `the Kasbar' and the magazine Wow, both the source of the Cover Girl Killer's rage. Attempting to woo June, one of the showgirls by posing as a journalist, Teakle is unaware that The Cover Girl Killer is luring Gloria his showgirl `with the most on show' to her death. A leopard skin themed photoshoot ends with Gloria being found dead and bikini clad, in a kinky fashion she's posed identical to her sexy cover shot. Initially invistigated as the murderer Teakle helps the police, who are constantly outwitted by `the man' (as he is billed in the credits). Going through the back issues of Wow for his next victim The Cover Girl Killer locates last month's model Miss Torquay 1959 (Christina Gregg another Butcher's player). Contracted to shoot a Sun Cream commercial, when Miss Torquay emerges in a bikini the Cover Girl Killer can control himself no longer, meaningfully stating `your nudity means nothing to me' before strangling her. Running just over an hour The Cover Girl Killer is rarely dull- the police actively encourage Teakle's Harrison Marks wannabe to publish his exotica in order to catch the killer. The Cover Girl Killer poses as Mr Fairchild an outrageous bowler hat wearing toff alter-ego to throw the police off his trail, the police subsequently put June on the cover to trap Corbett's well respected man, the detective in charge drinks a lot of tea, The Cover Girl Killer goes to a showbiz impresario with plans to make a movie version of his killings `I'm all for the good old X-certificate if you can get it'. Given that Wow is portrayed as the cutting edge that 1959 had to offer The Cover Girl Killer's climax, with the Cover Girl Killer dressing June in lingerie, chasing her around a studio and forcing her onto a four poster bed to reinact her front cover must have seemed raw stuff indeed. Some of the dialogue is wonderful, you can almost imagine the hack screenwriter sitting in a Soho office on a wet afternoon turning out headline dialogue like `surely sex and horror are the new Gods in this polluted world of so called entertainment'. As the Soho Bogeyman Corbett is never anything less than surprising, making up for some of the other less than credible performers. Corbett's career was bookmarked by exploitation, for after fame cameos in Adventures of a Private Eye and the Fiona Richmond vehicle Hardcore Corbett demanded high fees for limiting roles. Soft spoken, sinister and creepy his performance in the Cover Girl Killer suggests he did deserve better. Cover Girl Killer is a delusion from the mind of righteous filmmakers who believe themselves worthy of greatness but can only score sensational tack. It's full of acid comments on the illiteracy of readers of cheesecake magazines (and by association viewers of films with titles like The Cover Girl Killer). At times the film totally identifies with the killer's ideology especially in its depiction of the victim's husbands and fathers- sad broken men whose inability to keep hold of their women lead to their loved one's demise. This fashioning schizoid edge however says more about the filmmakers than it does the audience, never is the film more true than its depiction of it's chicken in a basket showbiz crony which draws impossible to ignore comparisons with Butchers themselves who were known for paying people as low as 35p to £2.50 for scripts. Butchers Film continued grinding on in the polluted world of so called entertainment making countless B pictures up until the late Sixties. Like their counterparts Tigon they freewheeled throughout the Seventies distributing foreign sex films like Erika, The Fabulous European Strip-Tease and The Sex Artist. One of their last releases was Norman J Warren's 'alien rape' movie Inseminoid. For years considered a lost film but kept alive on the strength of Corbett's appearance and historically being one of the earliest slasher films, The Cover Girl Killer now enjoys a second life as a stable of late night television, guaranteeing that the Ghost of the Cover Girl Killer will haunt insomniacs and the curious for many years to come.

Despite only lasting an hour, this film about a serial killer who has a grudge against cover girls - a la The Lodger and Jack the Ripper - rarely flags and has an energy which lifts it above other B movies of the time. It also has Harry H Corbett, best known these days for Steptoe and Son, proving he could act in a serious role. He is genuinely creepy, chilling and calculating.

In some respects this film also reminds me of Peeping Tom, also about a psychopathic murderer of high intelligence who kills by ritual. While that film was a straight A, 'Cover Girl Killer' does not pale in its company, and it proves its worth as a late night regular on TV.

Spencer Teakle is a stage door Johnny with the shyest manner. He claims to be a journalist for "WOW!", one of those magazines whose sales depend more on pretty, underdressed women on the cover than their prose. Show girl Felicity Young doesn't believe him for an instant. She's right. He's actually the publisher of the magazine, left him by his uncle, who thought the repressed archeologist needed to broaden his interests.

Then the girl on the most recent cover dies of a sleeping pill overdose, wearing the same costume. Teakle digs through the back files and discovers other recent cover girls have died in the same way. Police Inspector victor Brooks thinks they're dealing with the sort of serial killer that he cannot catch: not only insane, but highly intelligent.

Given the premises of this movie, I was surprised at its intelligence and competence. Of course, it's fun to look at the series of young ladies wearing sexy clothes and little of them, but an unrecognizable Harry Corbett as the killer has a great role, and Teakle seems to be having a lot of fun. Good script, good direction, good acting: they combine to make a very good movie.

This movie for me is very much a sweet and sour affair. One the one hand I think Steptoe and Son is the finest comedy ever but also I think if it would never have happened we could and should have seen Harry H Corbett as one of Britains finest actors. This gem of a movie takes all the naivety of days gone by with the age old story of a bad man who thinks the world is changing for the worse and depravity rules. Blitzed into just 60 odd minutes this was obviously made as a B movie but is a world above anything it was made to run alongside. If this was remade today it would have to be a gruesome 18 cert affair probably filmed in the seedy parts of London and involve drugs and prostitutes ( Harry Brown springs to mind)but the way they get the message across without so much as a grain of smut is incredible. Absolutely fantastic piece of movie making and seems as relative today as it was when made over 50 years ago.