Secrets of Sex
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Secrets of Sex (1969, released 1970) aka Bizarre is a British sex film, directed by former experimental filmmaker and William Burroughs collaborator Antony Balch. The film is narrated by an Egyptian mummy.
Production
After directing the Burroughs influenced shorts: Towers Open Fire (1963) and The Cut Ups (1967), Balch approached producer Richard Gordon in 1968 to direct an anthology film running just over an hour, titled Multiplication. After the script was rewritten to bring the film up to feature length and the budget doubled (32,000 pounds) the film was shot over 14 weeks in 1969 and released in February 1970. A huge success in the UK, the film ran for six months at the Jacey Cinema in Piccadilly Circus alone, during which time it recouped its entire production cost. The film remained in circulation in the UK throughout the 1970s sometimes appearing in an edited down half an hour version that played on the second half of double-bills.
Five writers are credited with the script, although several other people including Brion Gysin, and Ian Cullen (writer of Cruel Passion (1977) and the husband of Yvonne Quenet who plays Mary-Claire in the film) have also claimed to have worked on writing the film. Many of the actresses who appear nude in the film, such as Nicole Austin and Maria Frost were mainly topless models who had begun to get minor acting roles in British sex and horror films of this period. Maria Frost, who plays Lindy Leigh in the film, was so horrified she’d been given a major role in the film that she reportedly told Balch “I’m a model, I cant act”. She had previously appeared in two Harrison Marks shorts ‘Maria’ and ‘Scouts Honour’
Commenting on Secrets of Sex in unpublished 1975 interview, quotes from which appear in Midnight Marquee (no.43, 1992), Balch claimed “this is a very uneven film, but three episodes and a single shot, are good. I liked the ones with the photographer, Elliot Stein, and the Lady in the Greenhouse. The episode of the monster baby is a bore, but the single shot of it, at the end is brilliant”.
In 2005 the film was released as a special edition DVD by Synapse Films under its American title Bizarre.
Censorship History
The film was substantially cut for the British cinema release in 1970, with censor John Trevelyan removing over nine minutes from the film, while reportedly muttering “nasty stuff”. Heavily cut was the ‘Spanish horse/Female photographer’ sequence, while shots of men in bed together in the ‘Bedroom Beauties of 1929’ sequence were removed entirely. Writing in the Monthly Film Bulletin (march 1970) Jan Dawson remarked of the cuts “ paradoxically, the bowdlerized version of the film moves closer to pornography than the version from which its audience is being protected. …its sad that censorship should function against its own long term purpose and re-enforce the man-in-the-mac’s sexual furtiveness by denying him the chance to view sex irreverently.” The film was briefly released uncut in America under the name Bizarre by New Line Cinema, before being withdrawn and re-released in 1972 as Tales of a Bizarre, a drastically re-edited version that deleted around 17 minutes from the film. The 1980 UK video release on the Iver Film Services label is uncut, as is the 2005 US DVD.
Critical reaction
- “an exploitation sex film informed throughout by the refreshing view that sex is less often fun than funny.. (the stories) create a hilarious effect because of the discrepancy between their own unflinching seriousness and the ludicrousness of the pet theories they expound” - Monthly Film Bulletin
- “Flair, resource, and a splendid gothic dottiness” - The Guardian
- “Strange and personal, a genuine and appealing oddity” - The Times
- “Erotic” - Financial Times
- “It aims to shock” - Kine Weekly
- “Excellent” - Today’s Cinema
- “The sun just set on the British empire…you’ve never seen anything like it” - Screw Magazine
