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Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: May 17th, 2016.
Director: Pete Walker
Cast: David Kernan, Andrea Allan, Derek Aylward, Rose Alba, Franí§oise Pascal
Year: 1967/1969
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The Movie:
Before Pete Walker become the enfant terrible of the British horror film boom of the seventies he made a pretty good living cranking out cheap and easy sex films and pandering them to a supposedly conservative UK theater going crowd. Redemption's Jezebel sub-label, distributed through Kino Lorber, rolls out a pretty great double dose of Walker lensed softcore - and with some cool bonus features too. This stuff seems pretty innocent by modern standards, but don't let that dissuade you. Anyone with an eye for the birds and a thing for vintage sleaze should get a kick out of this.
For Men Only:
The first feature on the disc, which is actually top-billed, is a pretty short one clocking in at roughly forty-minutes. Here we learn the sordid tale of one Freddie Horne (David Kernon), a man who job as a woman's fashion journalist lands him in the occasional compromising position. This doesn't always sit well with the woman to whom he is committed, his fiancé Rosalie (Andrea Allan), and so to appease the poor thing he accepts a position writing for her father's publishing company, the Puritan Magazine Group.
Once he's onboard, the future father-in-law (Tom Gill) has Freddie out to his massive estate to let him in on a little secret - he makes his real money pumping out a nudie magazine called For Men Only, and he wants Freddie to do his thing for that publication. So of course, Freddie agrees and is once again surrounded by beautiful women in various states of undress. All is going quite swimmingly until Rosalie comes poking around again…
Quirky, breezy and funny For Men Only reflects the political views of the era in which it was made, so it's not a particularly progressive film but it is enjoyable enough. Walker isn't out to change the world here or make any sort of statement, he's out to provide some skin and some laughs and on that level the film delivers. The whole thing is horribly dated but it does what it does well enough, as corny and tame as it may be.
School For Sex:
Or second film is a feature length eighty-minute extravaganza made two years later. This time around we meet Giles Wingate (Derek Aylward), a former war hero now in some legal trouble for a possible embezzlement issue. Once he gets that dealt with he decides to pursue a completely different venture all together and open up a finishing school for young women. The idea here is that an experienced man like Giles can help the lovely young ladies of the day by educating them in the ways of wifedom, to help them better please then men in their lives and attract wealthy suitors. For the most part, however, it leads to Giles finding himself in various sexy predicaments while putting together a team of goofball educators and paring them with an assortment of foxy ex-con's looking for help.
Yeah, fine, it's sexist to a ridiculous extreme but like the first feature, there's an innocence to this that makes it easy to like. Again, it's tame by modern standards and the comedy of about as hokey and corny as it comes, but the movie is quickly paced and sometimes genuinely amusing so long as you're in the right frame of mind for it. The story clearly comes second to the film's main purpose (naked ladies) but it connects the different set pieces together well enough to hold things together. Also worth noting is that the beautiful Francoise Pascal, star of Jean Rollin's Iron Rose, appears in this picture.
Neither film is really very good or very original, and the nudity and sex on display here isn't nearly as strong as what you can see on cable TV these days, but they're both amusing cultural artifacts.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.33.1 fullframe 1080p high definition transfer of For Men Only is excellent, as is the 1.85.1 transfer for School For Sex (same tech specs), though the second feature is noticeably softer at times and with dicier contrast levels. There's a healthy coat of natural looking film grain present throughout each feature but no serious print damage. Typically the color reproduction is very strong and natural looking, without ever looking artificially pumped up. Skin tones, of which there are many on display, also fare quite well and look nice and detailed and lifelike, not pink or waxy at all. Source limitations are obvious at times but this seems like a pretty accurate representation of how these movies should look and both transfers properly take advantage of the format. The fact that all of this is slapped onto a 50GB disc helps too, there are no compression issues to note, nor are there any noise reduction problems here.
The English language Dolby Digital Mono tracks don't have a ton of range and show the limitations of its source but are otherwise fine. There are no problems with hiss or distortion to complain about nor are there any issues with the levels. The film's soundtrack sounds quite good while the dialogue is always crisp and clear and perfectly balanced. No subtitles are provided and there should have been a lossless option but this is what we get.
The man himself is interviewed with the nine minute featurette Get Cheeky With Pete Walker, a chat with Elijah Drenner in which he talks about these early films, the British sex film industry of the day and what it was like working on these pictures. Walker's interviews are always worth watching and this one is par for the course in that regard.
The disc also includes sixty-four minutes of 'Glamour Loops' which are some pretty great black-and-white nudie shorts directed by Walker. These don't looks as nice as the two features but they still look decent enough considering the source, and it's pretty great to see them included here. Anyone with an interest in old stag films or strip tease films should get a kick out of this stuff.
Outside of that we get a fun trailer for School For Sex, thirteen minutes of 'alternate continental footage' shot for School For Sex, menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
Kino's Blu-ray release of Peter Walker's films For Men Only and School For Sex is a good one, presenting these hard to see early entries in the director's filmography in about as decent a shape as we're likely to see. The films are a bit rudimentary but they're fun, offering up plenty of goofy laughs and loads of eye candy. Throw in over an hour's worth of plot-less but tantalizing nudie shorts, and this disc comes up a winner (even if it does use lossless audio…. wah!).
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
