Permissive

In the development stage the title for this truly dispiriting film was Suzy Superscrew. Better had it been kept for at least it gives you an idea of where the action is heading. Suzy is a duffle-coated runaway, arriving in London to join the groupie scene. Unable to score with the band her groupie friend introduces her to, she hooks up with Pogo an itinerant musician and mad preacher. "Where do you live?' she enquires of him. "Under the stars, the world is my scene, man", he responds. Unfortunately the world isn't listening as he gets mown down by a car shortly afterwards. The subsequent narrative is reduced to what band member or groupie Suzy will wake up with next.

The film, shot in a quasi documentary style and was partly intended as a promotional vehicle for heavy rock band Forever More, which accounts for their music being way up in the mix and sometimes drowning out the dialogue. This same logic explains footage of the band performing being inserted whenever the director runs out of ideas, which is often. On the plus side the relentlessly downbeat tone does provides a telling snapshot of the fag-end of the sixties and a particular sub-culture, while at the same time maintaining a grim synergy: hairy men and ugly women having bad sex together in cheap hotels to a Forever More soundtrack. Just desserts are sometimes delicious.

These early 70's groupie films were one of the most uber-depressing cycle of films I've ever seen, and really make you wonder why ANY girl at any time would ever want to be a groupie since it inevitably leads to heartbreak, squalor, venereal disease, and a tragic end--the only apparent upside being getting to sexually service talentless hair-ball rock musicians like the real-life band Forever More. The bleak ending of this is SO bleak, it makes you lose sympathy even for the protagonist herself, which is one reason why I think the similar UK film "Groupie Girl" is definitely superior to this one (the girl in that is also serving as a sperm dumpster to slightly more talented musicians).

My personal favorite film in this cycle though is the German film "I, a Groupie", which features the incredibly sexy Ingrid Steeger and at least provides a lot of eroticism along with the downbeat degradation. The girl in this, Maggie Stride, is not unattractive, but definitely pretty ordinary-looking compared to the smoking-hot Steeger. And speaking of smoking-hot, apparently the famous Collinson twins, stars of Hammer's "Twins of Evil" have a small part in this film, but I'm not sure where exactly (they also appear, much more prominently, in "Groupie Girl").

Lindsay Shontieff is an interesting director, mostly for his rather black-hearted view of humanity--even his outright sex comedies like "The Big Zapper" contain some memorably nasty, misanthropic turns. He does use some interesting devices here like flash-forwards that give glimpses at the ultimate fates of many doomed characters. The band Forever More meanwhile comes off like such a collection of untalented and unlikeable douchebags,you have to wonder why they agreed to be in this (or why they didn't subsequently sue Shontieff). Still, while this movie is definitely inferior to "Groupie Girl" and "I, a Groupie", it isn't totally bad (like the aptly-named American groupie flick "Bummer!"). But definitely don't expect to be uplifted here.

PERMISSIVE is a surprisingly grim and unworkable film that marks an early milestone in the career of cult director Lindsay Shonteff. The story follows the fortunes of a couple of groupies as they hang around with the dregs of society in the form of a rock band, looking for fame, fortune and love and finding only seediness and squalor instead. It's a grubby little production that seems to go nowhere for its entire running time, instead dawdling around with a presentation of completely unlikeable characters who garner too much screen time. Shonteff shoehorns in some gratuitous nudity, but it's not enough to retain the viewer's interest.

Ah, the Seventies. Made at the dawn of the decade where peace and love made way for glam rock, 'Permissive' is a (presumably) deliberately turgid affair. Featuring the character of Suzy (Maggie Stride), the story charts her rapid transition from a shy, duffel-coat-sporting girl to a sexually wiling rock chick every bit as hardened and dowdy as those around her.

Filmed in that very bleak Seventies graininess, often in rainy wintery locations, Lindsay Shonteff's occasionally inspired direction features real-life prog-rock band Forever More in a very unglamorous lifestyle that nonetheless inspires hordes of groupies to travel with them. The manager is a supercilious brutish bully; the rest of the band is clearly played by non-actors whose dialogue is frequently blotted out by the soundtrack. It all seems a decision to portray just about everyone as bored and horny and the lifestyle as passionless but relentless. Only Pogo (Robert Daubigney) seems to provide Suzy with any attention, and his fate determines a darker path for her story and that of her friend Fiona (Gay Singleton).

Forever More is more club band than stadium rockers and the groupies are often a bitchy, possessive lot, the lazily passed around joints doing little to mellow their cattiness. Travelling on the open road certainly has its appeal, but none of them seems to be enjoying it very much. Peace and love seem in short supply here, but 'Permissive' is nevertheless a very interesting snapshot into a lifestyle belying the perceived accompanying glamour. My score is 7 out of 10.

This may well be an accurate picture of rather plain girls coming down to London, hooking up with rather ordinary rock musicians and being lugged around the country providing the off piste extras. It is, however, without doubt a dull, dreary and depressing view of life. The guys may look okay on stage but there is a distinct lack of presence or barely of life backstage where they seem even more morose than the girls who wait to open a fly, or two. There is some attempt to vary the dismal look or the proceedings with rapid zooms and speeded up flash backs and even flash forwards but would I ever want to see this again? No thanks.