Mary Millington's True Blue Confessions (1980) User Reviews

Tawdry and heartless cash-in on the suicide of Mary Millington.

[Pedro_H · 3/10 · 11 November 2006]

The life and early death of Mary Millington remains one of the saddest episodes of British cinema history. A woman whose sexual honesty and openness was abused by business men who viewed her as little more than a cash cow.

This "tribute" has to be watched with open mouth as producer Sullivan uses it to make a quick killing and preach his own self-serving propaganda over someone else's grave. Sex, death and politics don't really go side-by-side. We even have Marie Harper pretending to be Millington in her coffin!

Strangely the MM story is an interesting one with rumours (let us be respectful of the dead) of cocaine running, high ranking prostitution, tax avoidance and hardcore pornography peddling (very illegal in the UK at the time.) There was even a C4 documentary 20 years after her death which uses some of the footage.

Those wanting a sex film will be disappointed. Those that want to know more about the private life of MM will be disappointed (they don't even tell us she was married). Those that enjoy pornographers whining about their experiences and how they are shinning knights who operate at the cutting edge of media freedom will enjoy it though...

Porn martyr exploited by pornographers

[jaibo · 3/10 · 14 July 2008]

Where to begin in getting one's head round this little number? Shortly after the death of Mary Millington, Britain's best known glamour model and sex film actress, her co-star, acting coach and so-called "friend" John M East put together this curious and rather distasteful cash-in on her fame and demise. It mixes old film clips, newly filmed softcore sequences purporting to portray photo-shoots and swinging parties (to give us a glimpse into Mary's world), some staged sequences with punters inside sex shops and a porn club cinema, interviews with pornographers who knew Mary and some intriguing footage taken inside the gay nightclub Heaven, which had just opened in London. What the latter is going in the film, god only knows - the structure seems more like a freewheeling ramble about whatever comes into East's mind than a coherent look at Millington's life. To detract even further from its claims to be a serious tribute, most of the footage is cut to some of the craziest and tackiest electronic music ever composed.

East also narrates the film, and this narration is a rather sleazy mix of biographical gossip, salacious lingering over prurient details, poorly expressed editorialising and even poorer "humour." Little can be said in the film's defence, except that it is a curiously compelling, grisly epitaph to an interesting, sociologically important as well as deeply sad life and death. The most intense sequence has a voice-alike reading Mary's suicide note, and it is sobering in a 2008 England in which hardcore porn is widely available to hear of someone driven to destruction by the country's then puritanical laws (Mary herself mentions the common market at one point, and it was the general availability of porn in mainland Europe as well as the internet which made Britain's laws impossible to enforce by the early 21st Century).

The pornographers who in this film cravenly use Mary's death as a means to aggrandise their own trade and make themselves share in the glory of her martyrdom for freedom don't come out of the exercise very well; neither does East, who doesn't stop for a moment to explore why Millington didn't have people around her who were friends enough to pull her through her darkest night.

Not anything to do with good cinema, but worth catching as an addendum to any understanding of where Britain and its film industry was, sexually and socially and morally, by the early 1980s.

Jaw droppingly awful

[malcolmgsw · 3/10 · 20 February 2021]

Unfortunately they could not let the poor woman rest in peace.They had to try and squeeze or more exploitation film out of her. It seems to be a lot of shots thrown together. It does not know the meaning of the term bad taste.All persons connected with this should have been ashamed of themselves, but I doubt that they did.

Mary Millington. A Top Girl.

[martin-alexander5 · 7 June 2014]

The two reviews above sum up exactly what was happening in the UK sex industry (such as it was) in the late 70's/early 80's. Anyone who took a ferry across the North Sea from Sheerness to Vlissengen and a train to Amsterdam could wander the streets amazed at the frankness the Dutch had to sex. They're still more relaxed about it than the British ever will be.

Today, this film is a historical document of the decade it was made in and much more so than the "entertainment" it purported to provide at the time. I suspect if Mary was here today she would be pleased about that and that we have moved on. So don't let that stop you watching it if you get the chance and realising how lucky you are to be able to. Many countries still won't let you.

To be fair one still can't strip naked outside the Tatler Cinema Club in Leeds City Centre as Mary did for her first article in Playbirds.

There is photographic evidence of her in a pair of boots and nothing else next to a male ice-cream seller with an enormous grin plus one of her outside the Queens Hotel in City Square pulling her tee shirt down to hide any modesty she had left.

Even the club owner who made his living from showing pornography protested at that and called the police. For the record they were more broad minded and just told her (with a smile) not to do it again.

As a teenage boy, I was completely gobsmacked by her. No-one did what she did. No-one looked like she did. She had a very open nature. Loved and supported animals very much but was taken to the cleaners by most everyone around her to the point where she took her own life.

Mary Millington Maxted committed suicide on Sunday 19th of August 1979 and was buried next to her mother Joan ten days later at St Mary Magdalene Church, South Holmwood, Surrey. Nearly 500 people attended and 200 wreaths were laid. She was 34.

So, when you're next in the newsagent and you look at the top shelf on your way out, remember Mary. The British girl who wasn't afraid to spread her charms for her belief in freedom of expression. It didn't make her rich but she had a lot of fun whilst opening up a whole new world that we now take for granted.

RIP Mary. A top girl.