SPOILERS INCLUDED The devastating flip-side to Come Back Peter, this downbeat slice of sexploitation came from the camera of Donovan Winter- the one man producer, director, writer and self distributor. Winter's exploitation mode goes way back to the nudist era with World Without Shame a fascinating story of young people who left civilization to commune with nature'. Winter's signature piece remains Come Back Peter'. Shot in rough cinema verite fashion the film consists of little more than shagging between its titular hero and various dollies. Many of the sex scenes seem to have been shot with a double as hairy as a gorilla- ultimately the premise is revealed to be one big male wish fulfilment. Peter' far from being a flash hipster is actually stuck in a going nowhere job in a butchers shop- at this point the films psychedelic-era colour scheme is dropped in favour of black and white. If a bitter pill cynicism hangs over Come Back Peter then its all consuming in Winter's next film All Lovers Are Strangers which eventually did the rounds as Escort Girls in December 1974. Escort Girls actually bears more than a passing resemblance to Saturday Night Out- Robert Hartford-Davis' look as 1960's London as observed through the eyes of a bunch of sailors- here the plot evolves around the goings on at an escort agency but most of the vignettes remain symmetrically similar. Its Christmas Eve, when lonely people tend to be at their loneliest- no coincidence then that a London escort service is doing good business. The allure of a special woman on your arm (or despite the title- a special man) albeit for a price, attracts across the board types- office nerds, foreign tourists and ageing spinsters. Harvey, an American, takes his escort girl to a casino Lady Luck is with me tonight' he tells her, it will not turn out to be one of his best bets. Far removed from Harvey's world of roulette and high stakes- two creeps prop up a pub bar- their bad jokes go down as well as their attempts to pick-up women. Clueless and drunkenly sexist their night out only leaves them literally in the gutter. Elsewhere an ugly duckling girl hires out black escort Lester seemly for the sole purpose of shocking her venomously racist friends. At a party sly insults are passed between Lester and these nasty pieces of work with Lester coming out on top. The scene ends on a jarring, surreal note as we see the party guests' imaginary visions of Lester, - Lester as boxer loverman, Lester as African warrior and Lester as romantic singer. In the context of the film, escort' isn't the double entendre for what you might imagine, but sex generally ends up on the cards anyway. Despite this little joy awaits our alienated heros and heroines- Harvey becomes overheated when the girl won't give it up, and tries to assault her- but the jokes on him as a blackmailing photographer takes pictures of the whole escapade. As played out in Saturday Night Out this sex trap scenario had very post Profumo overtones but here it plays as simple 70's fleshed out luridness. Harvey leaves half naked, humiliated and allot less richer. Most unsettling is the fate that befalls Lester who ends up at the mercy of his date' who freaks out- saying she'll accuse him of rape if he doesn't make love to her like an animal. Special mention should go to the films central figure played by David Dixon a repressed clerk nearing middle age. The film tries to paint him as sympathetic but at every turn Dixon comes across creepy par excellence, in a classic example of nerd wish fulfilment his escort turns out to be a nice girl whose willing to put up with some awkward hanky panky. In the last shot Dixon emerges from his shell to slap the ass of a secretary who ignored him in the opening reel- this is Winter's idea of a happy ending. The sex scenes in Escort Girls are so repellent and unflattering they seem almost self-destructive for a film bearing that name- the big shocker is a bedroom scene between a male escort and a woman in her fifties. Her dialogue here consists entirely of put downs of younger women and what a great lover she is- yet the scene is repulsively shot in a way that only suggests the ridiculing of a narcissist. For a man who only made a handful of films, Winter crossed swords with many people- no one made films that rubbed up London film critics the wrong way more than Winter- who wasn't about to hide either. In 1978 he sued big company EMI for dumping his would-be class conscious actioner Give Us Tomorrow at the bottom half of a double bill- he won, but never made another film again. Despite its sexpo roots, an intelligence is at work in Escort Girls which does say quite a bit about the psyche of people desperate enough to pay someone to be around them (sexual or otherwise) - allot of telling dialogue is based around the imaginary lives they dream up for their escorts to use in polite circles tonight you're a writer, it sounds more intelligent'. For all this though, so much of Escort Girls just seems like the product of a negative frame of mind, everyone appears either hateful or pathetic and an endless parade of stagey scenes simply depict people being miserable, going through misery and mostly ending up in a state of more misery- the cynical Seventies indeed. Then and now Escort Girls is no ones idea of a good film and even less anyones idea of an entertaining one, yet it exists for better or worse as proof positive that British sex films weren't always sweetness and light, and no film loudly makes that more clear than Escort Girls.
Review of Escort Girls
