Plasmid  

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British popular culture

Stanley Long (Born in 1933 in South London) often known as Stanley A. Long is a British exploitation cinema and sexploitation filmmaker. He was a writer, cinematographer, editor, and eventually, producer/director of cheap exploitation movies.

Long began his career as a photographer, before producing striptease shorts or “glamour home movies”, as they were sometimes known, for the 8mm market. Beginning in the late fifties, Long’s feature film career would span the entire history of the british sex film, and as such exemplifies its differing trends and attitudes. From coy nudist films (Nudist Memories, 1959), to moralizing documentary (The Wife Swappers, 1969)[1] to a more relaxed attitude to permissive material (Naughty, 1971) to out and out comedies at the end of the 1970s.

He made all the 'adventures' sex comedy movies in the 1970s such as Adventures of a Taxi Driver [2] starring Barry Evans. Like Norman J. Warren he also made horrors. He made horror anthology movie Screamtime in 1983 [3] and was due to film a David McGillivray script entitled Plasmid, about mutants living in London’s Underground, until the production ran into trouble at the 11th hour. Confusingly a tie-in novel of Plasmid was however released.

Long was also the cameraman on several british horror films of the 1960s including The Blood Beast Terror, Repulsion (uncredited) and The Sorcerers. For the latter he was strapped to the top of a car to film one sequence.

Long retired from film directing in the early 1980s, however in 2006 he returned to direct The Other Side of the Screen a one-off documentary about various aspects of filmmaking, hosted by Paul Martin, star of Flog It!. In addition he plans to release the ‘Adventures of’ comedies to DVD, as well as four of his more obscure films, Bread, On the Game, (Sex and) The Other Woman and This That and the Other.

Simon Sheridan’s biography of Long is due in autumn 2007, Long was recently interviewed for the BBC's Balderdash and Piffle programme (broadcast 25th May)[4], and the upcoming British Films Forever series.

Low budget filmmaker Jan Manthey recently paid tribute to Long’s ‘Adventures of’ sex comedy series with the short film Can You Keep It Up With This That and The Other For A Week (2004)[5], and for the sequel Adventures of a Plumber in Outer Space leading man Vic Pratt has been promised the use of Long’s famous plunger “that got stuck on various young birds' behinds in Adventures Of A Plumbers Mate”.[6]

See also

• Derek Ford
• Pete Walker (director)
• Norman J. Warren
• Robin Askwith