Difficult to believe that people actually paid money to watch this rubbish.The only point of interest for me is that John East was a max miller impersonator,that's why his jokes are so old.
6 Reviews
why such a high rating?
malcolmgsw27 September 2020
Stage Door Johnnies
gavcrimson23 December 2001
Warning: Spoilers
SPOILERS 'Honestly girls-I'd of thought when you'd seen one pair of tits you'd seen the lot' remarks one philosophising stripper in Queen of the Blues, a plea that clearly fell on the deaf ears of director Willy Roe and producer David Sullivan- two men responsible solo and collectively for exploitation hits Come Play With Me, The Playbirds and Emmanuelle in Soho. There's very little to Queen of the Blues other than a bunch of strip-acts filmed at a downmarket Soho club- which all glitter balls, garish colours and faded glamour is the perfect locale for Roe and Sullivan's sensibilities. Just as The Playbirds was derivative of 50's shocker Cover Girl Killer, what little plot there is sandwiched in-between the turns in Queen of the Blues has echoes of B-movie crime cheapies of the Fifties, as well as Old Compton Street melodramas like The Shakedown (1959). Brothers Mike and Tony Carter buy up a fading strip-club- a venture funded by their porn-obsessed uncle (Ballard-Berkeley). It's a roaring success until a pair of villains, played by jockey-sized Felix Bowness and burly, bald Milton Reid muscle in on the business demanding protection money. They're a classic double act, Reid whose career in playing heavies dates back to the time when he still had hair has a face made for gurning and snorts on an inhaler throughout. While Bowness spends most of his screen time eying up strippers and making observations like 'what a little charmer.Corr.I'll have some of that'-dialogue he was probably never asked to repeat on Hi-De-Hi. Like the Anti-hero of The Kinks' Preservation concept albums, Mike Carter models himself on the comedian Max Miller. He even takes to the stage, as a sort of stripper's compere, treating the audience to jokes that even the man who pens gags for Christmas crackers wouldn't like to have on his conscience. The rest of the film monotonously alternates between strips-acts, scenes of Bowness and Reid bullying, ugly soft-core fumblings, excruciating routines from the pseudo-'Cheeky Chappie', West-End street scenes and awkwardly inserted shots of the strip-club's audience, till the whole thing expires around the hour mark. The brothers are eventually sold out by one of the strippers, and the villains beat them around a bit but everything is all right in the end. Queen of the Blues was clearly envisioned as a star vehicle for Mary Millington who plays the film's eponymous head stripper but very little in the final-result bears out that interpretation. She's given next-to-nothing to do than mutely gyrate on stage, and although her character is spoken about such revered tones as 'a local girl that all the fellas are trying to mate' you'd never guess she was meant to be the star of the movie. The strippers' dressing room chit-chat is funny in a crude and bitchy way ('have arse will travel''every-time she blinks its like a flock of pigeons taking off') but Roe whose direction on The Playbirds was at least competent, slips to the low ebb of the ladder in filming the backstage scenes which are crippled by poor sound and static camerawork. If Sullivan hadn't dug deep into his pockets to hire well known actress/models for these roles (Nicola Austine, Rosemary England) you'd swear Roe had shot the film fly on the wall with real strippers rather than actresses and improvised rather than scripted dialogue. Despite the below the belt tone the only thing of interest backstage is the stripper's encounters with a skeleton-man spectre that haunts the stripclub 'if we had it off together' one girl points out 'all I'd get would be a phantom pregnancy'. Eventually the ghost is revealed to be nothing of the sort, but part of an almost Scooby-Doo like hoax to drive the strippers from the club (you half-expect the culprit to remark 'I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those pesky strippers'). At one point the 'ghost' terrorises one of the strippers as she's coming off-stage, a prank surprisingly not played out on the Queen of the Blues herself but on Rosetta aka actress Pat Astley. No one played dumb blondes quite like Pat Astley and there are few British sex films that don't feature her, though you'd never know it since most her roles were bit parts that entail her being murdered in the opening seconds (The Playbirds) or featuring in nude or sex scenes (nearly everything else). Her name if spelt right would always end up near the bottom of cast credits, but Blackpool's premiere exploitation starlet did occasionally break out of the also-ran rut. Astley's career highlight was the video-era horror film Don't Open Till Christmas, where she had the dubious honour of being touched up by a Christmas hating madman and flashing at veteran actor Edmund Purdom. Her other moment in the spotlight came from an even more unlikely source-throughout the Seventies magazine Films and Filming would illustrate their covers with side-by-side stills from two of the months new releases indiscriminate of how varied the contents of the two films were (Taxi Driver meets The Dog Who saved Hollywood- anyone?). Bafflingly half of the cover of their February 1978 issue was dedicated to Pat balling away in Let's Get Laid, a nice bit of publicity considering she's only in that film for about five seconds. And the movie doing battle with Pat Astley for the cover and the attention of Films and Filming readers that month? just some little known film called Star Wars! Sadly Queen of the Blues is only sporadically entertaining, and despite being little more than a 60 minute recording of the most famous bums and bosoms of the day still is a chore to sit through. If there's anything to be gained by watching latter day Sullivan productions its the realisation of all the time, money and effort he spent on the comparatively epic Come Play With Me and The Playbirds, everything that came afterwards was a cost cutting, penny counting exercise with ever more diminishing results.
Down amongst the dregs and tat
jaibo11 July 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Shockingly poor mixture of strip show footage (most of it filmed from a static position away from the action) and gangland melodrama.
Two brothers - big and small, the long and the short of it - invest their dirty old man uncle's money in a strip club. Two gangsters - a naff joker and a bald meathead - turn up demanding protection money. Eventually, after much repetition of threats and stripping plus the odd half-hearted sex scene with the little brother, uncle turns up and announces that he's got the heavies called off as his money all itself comes from the protection racket. And that's the end of that.
The film was clearly shoved together with as little care, attention and love as could humanly be imagined. As if the plot wasn't poorly conceived enough, the "script" shoves in a few scenes where the girls are scared of a ghost (!), some backstage banter (the only scenes where the film's name star, Mary Millington, has any dialogue) and much too much cheeky chappy "comedy" compèring from the long tall brother; this and much of the rest of the dialogue is littered by the worst jokes you will ever find yourself insulted by. This long tall brother is played by the offensive bit-part player John M. East, a down-at-heel nob who was surely the least deserving leading man to ever disgrace a British cinema screen.
This slipshod film was made at the fag end of the British sex comedy boom. After being stung by the flop of the execrable Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair, pornographer turned film producer David Sullivan decided not to hire a better director or scriptwriter but rather to keep the same careless creeps and simply give them less cash to squander. The result is cheap and sordid trash, reeking with contempt for both the girls who are forced to demean themselves by doing nothing but strip for the poorly-placed camera and an audience who were being asked to part with their hard-earned cash for this tat. Millington killed herself soon after this was in the can (perhaps she saw a cut of it?) but Sullivan continued to hire rogues to make what are presumably even worse films for a few more years.
Two brothers - big and small, the long and the short of it - invest their dirty old man uncle's money in a strip club. Two gangsters - a naff joker and a bald meathead - turn up demanding protection money. Eventually, after much repetition of threats and stripping plus the odd half-hearted sex scene with the little brother, uncle turns up and announces that he's got the heavies called off as his money all itself comes from the protection racket. And that's the end of that.
The film was clearly shoved together with as little care, attention and love as could humanly be imagined. As if the plot wasn't poorly conceived enough, the "script" shoves in a few scenes where the girls are scared of a ghost (!), some backstage banter (the only scenes where the film's name star, Mary Millington, has any dialogue) and much too much cheeky chappy "comedy" compèring from the long tall brother; this and much of the rest of the dialogue is littered by the worst jokes you will ever find yourself insulted by. This long tall brother is played by the offensive bit-part player John M. East, a down-at-heel nob who was surely the least deserving leading man to ever disgrace a British cinema screen.
This slipshod film was made at the fag end of the British sex comedy boom. After being stung by the flop of the execrable Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair, pornographer turned film producer David Sullivan decided not to hire a better director or scriptwriter but rather to keep the same careless creeps and simply give them less cash to squander. The result is cheap and sordid trash, reeking with contempt for both the girls who are forced to demean themselves by doing nothing but strip for the poorly-placed camera and an audience who were being asked to part with their hard-earned cash for this tat. Millington killed herself soon after this was in the can (perhaps she saw a cut of it?) but Sullivan continued to hire rogues to make what are presumably even worse films for a few more years.
Revolting seedy film
vlloyd4628 December 2020
Mary Millingtons final appearance.
torrascotia28 June 2020
For those not in the know Mary Millington was the UKs most famous adult film and magazine star. She was responsible for millions of magazine sales and is also one of the stars of the film which is credited as having the longer ever cinema run, 1977s Come Play With Me. A documentary about her life called Respectable chronicles her life, loves and battles with the anti-pornography movement spearheaded by Mary Whitehouse. Its well worth seeing.
Queen of Blues is the last film she appeared in before she is reported to have committed suicide, citing worries about going to jail, tax issues and police harassment. She ran her own sex shop in London where she would also serve her fans and customers personally. According to her documentary she would also sell under the counter materials which gained her the attention of the police resulting in raids however she was a libertarian and campaigned to make adult materials available at a time when the UK had the most draconian laws in Europe.
At the time of filming Queen of the Blues Mary was reportedly hooked on drugs and being arrested regularly for shoplifting, her mental health was unravelling. However there is nothing on screen that suggests any of this this was affecting her performance.
The film itself is basically a UK version of Teaserama, the Betty Paige movie. Its mainly consists of strippers or burlesque dancers if you prefer, doing their routines on stage to sort commercial disco while older men drink while they watch. This is roughly 60% of the movie which is only a min or so over being an hours length. There is very little dialogue or story. A stand up comedian also introduces the girls and tells jokes which are very much of their time.
The backstory is really paper thin and revolves around the club owners being pressured into paying protection money while a side story is concerned with one of the club owners trying to work over his hangups in the bedroom.
On release this was an X rated movie however its very tame by todays standards, some flesh on show but thats it.
Queen of the Blues is actually a good snapshot of a period of UK history with one of its biggest stars at the time. Its not a high quality movie but it is a good representation of popular culture, warts and all. Its also an important film as its the last outing for Mary Millington, who seems to have been forgotten by many despite the huge following she had during the 70s.
If you are curious about this time in the UK and have never heard of Mary, watch the documentary about her life and then watch her films. It certainly puts a different spin on it and a life as short as her dying at age 33 in such tragic circumstances should not be forgotten. Especially when she was part of so many peoples lives. (even if they wont admit it!)
Watch it for Mary!
She died beautiful
Goingbegging28 August 2020
As this was being filmed, Mary Millington was sliding into drugs, debt and suicide - quite impossible to believe, watching the confident blonde stripper performing at her peak in the last days of her life.
The story is just an ordinary floor-show in a Soho club. Basement bar-room, piped music, dirty old men, a gaggle of hard-bitten hookers exchanging cynical humour behind a flimsy curtain, and the heavy mob never out of sight for long. If you wanted to be generous, you could call it 'cinema verité'. Others might just call it fly-on-the-wall.
The club has been bought by two brothers, on the proceeds of an unexpectedly generous gift of cash from their uncle, of whose business affairs they know nothing. But where's there's brass, there's muck, and the brothers soon get the offer they (supposedly) can't refuse from Mr. Nice and Mr. Nasty, played by the laddish Felix Bowness and the murderous Milton Reid. The brothers are very poorly cast, especially the leader, played by the wimpish John East whose attempts to intimidate the gangsters are pathetically unconvincing. He is almost as bad trying to impersonate Max Miller during the intervals, actually wearing one of the great man's suits. (Incredibly, the two men had been close friends.) The elbow-game is looking like a walkover by the mob until the surprise-ending, which we can't divulge, but which reveals how the uncle made his fortune.
Try counting how many times Felix Bowness says "Cor, I'd like to get a load of that", and you'll gather that neither the plot nor the dialogue are exactly rich with subtlety. The opening theme is obviously a cut-price imitation of 'The Stripper', and the various acts are accompanied by the usual cod-oriental snake-charmer music. And while you expect a strip-club receptionist to have seen it all, the mysterious Geraldine Hooper manages to look shocked every time.
The story is just an ordinary floor-show in a Soho club. Basement bar-room, piped music, dirty old men, a gaggle of hard-bitten hookers exchanging cynical humour behind a flimsy curtain, and the heavy mob never out of sight for long. If you wanted to be generous, you could call it 'cinema verité'. Others might just call it fly-on-the-wall.
The club has been bought by two brothers, on the proceeds of an unexpectedly generous gift of cash from their uncle, of whose business affairs they know nothing. But where's there's brass, there's muck, and the brothers soon get the offer they (supposedly) can't refuse from Mr. Nice and Mr. Nasty, played by the laddish Felix Bowness and the murderous Milton Reid. The brothers are very poorly cast, especially the leader, played by the wimpish John East whose attempts to intimidate the gangsters are pathetically unconvincing. He is almost as bad trying to impersonate Max Miller during the intervals, actually wearing one of the great man's suits. (Incredibly, the two men had been close friends.) The elbow-game is looking like a walkover by the mob until the surprise-ending, which we can't divulge, but which reveals how the uncle made his fortune.
Try counting how many times Felix Bowness says "Cor, I'd like to get a load of that", and you'll gather that neither the plot nor the dialogue are exactly rich with subtlety. The opening theme is obviously a cut-price imitation of 'The Stripper', and the various acts are accompanied by the usual cod-oriental snake-charmer music. And while you expect a strip-club receptionist to have seen it all, the mysterious Geraldine Hooper manages to look shocked every time.
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