Tweet
Released by: TLA Video/Alpha France
Released on: July, 2014.
Director: Burd Tranbaree
Cast: í‰lisabeth Buré, Laura Clair, Hélí¨ne Shirley, Guy Royer, Richard Allan
Year: 1980
Purchase From TLA Video
The Movie:
Directed by the prolific 'Burd Tranbaree', Private Secretarial Services tells the sordid tale of a marketing executive named Jean-Francois (Guy Royer). When we meet him, he is seated at his disc, his pretty blonde secretary, Josianne (Elisabeth Buré), underneath providing some of those titular services to his organ while he takes a phone call. They finish up and he heads across town for a meeting while she heads to his place to have torrid lesbian sex with his wife, Valérie (Nadine Roussial). What neither the secretary nor the wife realize is that he's gone to the apartment of their maid, Marie (Hélí¨ne Shirley - or Nicole Segaud if you prefer) for an incognito intimate encounter. While the two couples go at it, they broadcast the aural evidence of their dirty deeds across the airwaves on some two way radios placed by their respective love nests!
When Jean-Francois and his business partner (Richard Allan) decide to launch their latest and greatest product, a golden dildo, they convince front office secretary Josefa (Dominique Saint-Claire) to test it out. Allan's character winds up using another one of the prototypes on yet another woman (Laura Clair) in the restroom and before you know it, everyone is playing around with these things. It all comes to a head when Valérie and the foxy maid go at it, later joined by Josianne and then, of course, by Jean-Francois himself.
Nicely shot and plenty humorous, Private Secretarial Services is a pretty effective mix of steamy sex and amusing comedy. It doesn't reinvent the wheel and it's actually fairly predictable but the plot is goofy enough to pull us in and the attractive and enthusiastic cast ensures that this is all more than watchable. Almost the entire thing takes place indoors - the office, the maid's apartment or Jean-Francois' pad (that same damn place we've seen in a bunch of other Tranbaree/Alpha France movies made around the same time as this one, complete with the bed with built in radio and the sectional couch!) so don't expect a whole lot in the way of scenery, but no matter. What's here works and it works well.
As is typical for Alpha France/Tarbaree films, there are a lot of familiar faces in the cast. Richard Allan pops up in almost all of their films and Hélí¨ne Shirley, the only brunette in the cast and looking quite fetching here with chin length hair and a French maid's outfit, pops up in a few of their movies, A Foreign Girl In Paris, for example, where she appeared with Nadine Roussial and Laura Claire. Roussial is well cast as the wife more interested in women than her husband and she also appeared in a few Joe D'Amato films. Dominique Saint-Claire was also quite prolific and it's easy to see why these ladies all worked as often as they did, as they're all attractive, decent enough actresses in the more dramatic parts of their pictures and seemingly quite enjoying themselves on screen. Their work, often times together and without the involvement of either Royer or Allan, is no exception.
Video/Audio/Extras:
TLA Video, through a deal with Alpha France, presents Private Secretarial Services on MOD/DVD-R in 1.33.1 fullframe, which would appear to be the movie's original aspect ratio. The image is a little soft but stable enough though it's obviously been taken from an analogue source as some wobble up towards the top of the frame indicates. Colors look okay, but skin tones sometimes look a little more orange than they probably should. There are times where some minor compression artifacts pop up but otherwise this is a decent enough presentation even if it isn't going to blow you away.
The disc includes an English language Dolby Digital Mono track and a French language Dolby Digital Mono track, but there are no English subtitles provided. Dialogue is often times a bit muffled during the non-sex scenes, which may have you reaching for your remote to adjust things a bit here and there, but otherwise it's perfectly serviceable.
There are no extras on this disc.
The Final Word:
Private Secretarial Services doesn't rank up there with the more original of Tranbaree's work or with some of the other, more interesting, releases from Alpha France but it's a perfectly enjoyable, fun, breezy piece of smut that should appeal to those with a taste for the material. There's a good sense of humor behind much of the movie and Hélí¨ne Shirley and the rest of the ladies in the cast are fun to watch here.
