The Playbirds

This is an absolutely terrible British stab at the giallo genre, crossed with more traditional "skin flick" elements. Pedestrian, nonsensical, endless, with lots of horseracing footage (if you're an enthusiast). (Barely) escapes a zero-star rating because of some nice stripping / posing scenes, as well as an all-too-brief lesbian interlude.

"The Playbirds", which I found - to my great surprise - in Netflix' catalogue, is a movie that really can't decide what it wants to be. Shall we go for a raw and mean-spirited British giallo about a serial killer who targets nude models in London's raunchy underbelly? Or do we aim for a simply and profitable sexploitation flick? That's what the producers must have been discussing about before landing on the unwise decision of doing a combo. And, to make things even worse, there's also a lot of irrelevant gibberish around witchcraft and too much boring horseracing footage.

The (strictly blond) centerfold models of the London nude-magazine "Playbird" are found brutally strangled in their apartments; - not raped but with serial numbers marked on their foreheads. The magazine's editor-in-chief is the police's principal suspect, but he's mainly just interested in bedding the models and gamble on horse races. After four victims, of which the last one was killed practically in front of them, the incompetent police inspectors are under so much pressure they decide to use a sexy female cop as undercover bait.

The suspense and whodunit aspects are vastly inferior to showing as much full-frontal nudity as humanly possible. The absolute low point of the film is when the two inspectors hold "casting sessions" themselves, during which they call in policewomen into their office, request them to strip off all their clothes and leave again. It doesn't get any more gratuitous than this.

THE PLAYBIRDS is another late '70s sexploitation effort from Britain, but like most of the others it really isn't much cop. Mary Millington appears as a female police officer who agrees to help some detectives in their hunt for a serial killer, but there are so many characters here she just sort of gets lost in the masses. Familiar faces pop up the cast but don't get very much to do, although it's amusing to see TV presenter Gavin Campbell as the lead. The mystery aspects are very poorly handled and the closing reveal is as uninteresting as they come. Expect wall to wall nudity, as per usual by genre standards, and a particularly angry Alan Lake performance.

If you're British, this movie no doubt has a lot of baggage attached to it. Two of the lead actors committed suicide soon after, and it was made right at a time when the once vaunted independent British film industry basically imploded. If you're not British, however, this movie is. . .well, pretty damn weird actually. A fanatically religious, horse-obsessed maniac is killing the nude cover girls of "Playbird" magazine. The police are frustrated in their efforts to stop him, so they send a sexy police woman (Mary Millington) under the covers to crack her case--I mean, undercover to crack the case. If you just want to see a lot of naked dolly birds, you certainly won't be disappointed. There are numerous scenes of the magazine's photo shoots, most of which involve a hilarious satanic/witchcraft-oriented theme. And the police don't just take the first attractive volunteer for the undercover job--no, they have to have to "audition" ALL their female staff members for the job before settling on Millington. The movie is obviously sexist (which is par for the course), but it's also surprisingly unpleasant and borderline misogynist. All the girls are topless or naked when they're murdered, for instance (except for one girl whose mini-skirt conveniently rides up while she's being strangled). The most disturbing scene perhaps is one particular magazine pictorial of a naked "witch" being "burned" at the stake which goes horribly awry when the killer comes along and (literally) adds fuel to the fire.

What's most amazing about all this is that there really is (or at least, was) a "Playbird" magazine, and its publisher was the producer of this movie! It's certainly hard to imagine Hugh Hefner, or even Larry Flynt, producing a movie where his own centerfolds are slaughtered in such an often unpleasant manner. (Apparently, all the censorship of sex and violence in Britain over the years hasn't resulted in the sexual attitudes there being any more wholesome than anywhere else--perhaps the opposite). I would also guess the publisher/producer owned a race horse or had some great interest in horse racing--how else to explain the killer's bizarre obsession with horses, which otherwise seems pretty unrelated to anything (or maybe this movie was inspired by the Richard Burton film "Equus" the year before?).

The best (and perhaps only) reason to see this is that it is a good showcase for cult actress Mary Millington. Millington certainly had a nice body, and viewers (like numerous male and female characters in the movie) will become VERY familiar with it. Her generally awkward acting, however, gives no indication of why she became a such a cult figure. On the other hard, it's even more difficult to see why the British moral authorities considered her such a threat to society that they had to harass her to an early demise. I definitely would not recommend going through the time and expense I did to see this movie, but if you happen upon it, it's a good chance to see Millington in action and it's KIND OF interesting in spite of itself.

This is a strange one ...whoever was in charge of directorial reins did not know if they were making a carry on style comedy ..a hardcore porn movie...a cop thriller in the style of the sweeney ..or an outright Horror movie replete with Psychopath ...-the end result is a confuse mish mash , not without some appeal --but with a lot of 'Non-appeal' at the same time..adding to the Euston-films cop show feel is Glynn Murphy ( Dave from minder ) as a detective sergeant who actually has the funniest line in the whole movie ( when i say it is 'F off' you will know the overall standard of writing )--his associate is the bloke off 'Thats life' and there are cameos from famous British faces including Derren Nesbitt whose screentime amounts to 2 mins and he looks like a Treacle-sponge ...-Sad spectacle in a way yet remains watchable for its entire duration ..when the 'supposedly shocking ending' comes you think ...yeah , that about makes sense ..-overall worth a watch for the nudity and dodgy performances .