The Playbirds

Playbirds Is an enjoyable mix of David Sullivan smut mixed with the elements of a police procedural thriller in the same vain as the 1970s police drama " The Sweeney"; In its look, I.e. Production design and it's attitudes towards political correctness.

It starts Gavin Campbell and Glynn Edwards who would later go on to achieve success alongside Dennis Waterman and George cole in the popular 1980s comedy drama ' Minder'.

A playbird Model Is found strangled to death in her home, Campbell and Edwards are assigned to solve the case finding out the girl in question works for a sleezy penthouse magazine company headed by a medallion wearing Harry Dougan played by the late Alan lake. An Investigation gets going with Mary millington as P.c. Lucy Sheridan going undercover to investigate the sinister and evil goings on under the surface.

The film attempts to be more than a standard Sullivan esque romp with the customary sex scenes, awkward and dopey dialogue, unbelievable situations.

It's well paced, filmed and acted with a great deal more craft than his usual awful dreck.

The actors play their roles with a alomp Glynn Edwards as the gruff veteran cop and Campbell as his slightly bemused sidekick work well as partners. Alan lake a mains tray on British TV is suitably sleazy and arrogant as the porno magazine head, Mary millington acts surprisingly well considering her sex actress status.

Overall: a surprisingly good sexploitation film mixing Sullivan esque smut and elements of a police procedural.

Well, it's one way to build circulation for your porn mag - make an X-rated thriller about it, as David Sullivan did, even hinting that the pornographer in the story could be trying to keep his own magazine (also conveniently called 'Playbirds') in the public eye by arranging for each centrefold model to be brutally murdered, just as the publication hits the street.

We can't name the killer, of course, but we can tell you that the suspects make a colourful line-up, providing an excuse for some varied location scenes, ranging from Speakers' Corner through Newmarket racecourse to a forest where some rather extreme witchcraft rituals look like getting out of hand...

Funniest is the moment when the baffled detectives think it's time to send in an undercover female cop to charm the publisher into giving her a centrefold, so they have to start by holding auditions at Scotland Yard. Mary Millington carries no conviction whatever as a police officer, but she certainly makes one heck of a stripper, and should have exploited the surprisingly common policewoman fetish with plenty of slow peeling-off of the dark blue livery of the law.

Nobody could watch this film without noting the sad irony that two of the young stars committed suicide soon after: first Millington herself, swamped by drugs and tax-bills, and then the alcoholic Alan Lake, unable to cope with the premature death of his wife Diana Dors. This reflects a haunting theme, the mystic link between mating and death - the porn-stars we're conditioned to envy in their little plastic heaven, with every carnal satisfaction laid-on like a tray of snacks, yet forever tainted by elements of the cynical and the criminal. Reminding us in the end that this branch of entertainment promises everything but delivers nothing.

The Playbirds is not as predictable or monotonous as other low-budget soft-porn features, thanks to a number of mainstream actors like Windsor Davies, Gavin Campbell and Dudley Sutton. There are some good dramatic situations too, but they don't really gel, and the scripting and directing by Willie Roe is disappointing.

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 .

"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.

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.