The Playbirds (1978)

Powerful

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Recently,when I was looking at the filmography of Harry H.Corbett,I spotted a film that sounded like a very enjoyable Giallo-style mystery film called Cover Girl Killer,as I read up about the film,I found out that a film made in the seventies,which had a very similar plot,and also had a good amount of Sitcom stars had just been brought out on DVD.With having now seen the film,I feel that it did not get anywhere near to the potential that it could have reached.The plot: When police go to investigate a murder of a model,they discover that she has had a number written on her head.As they look into her career,it is revealed that she has posed nude for an occult-themed center fold in a magazine,which was published on the month that matches the number that was written on her head.Due to not wanting to raise any suspicious,the detectives decide to send an undercover police officer,to work at the magazine as a model.Although,when it is announced that she has been chosen to be the next center fold,the detectives start to wonder if they may have given the killer his next opportunity...View on the film: The people that I feel easily deserve a huge amount of praise for this film,is the DVD company Odeon Entertainment.Whilst the film is very low- budget,Odeon has treated the film with a huge amount of respect,which has included a surprisingly very impressive remastering,that has made the film look very shiny and (almost) new.My main disappointment that I have with this film,is that for having a plot that should offer a huge bundle of thrilling moments,the film is shockingly very dull,with the plot moving at an excruciating slow pace,even though the movie is only 90 minutes.Thankfully the cast is able to put a few bright moments into the film,with "The Major" from Fawlty Towers and Windsor Davies bringing a sense of fun,in the short scenes that they are featured in.The film is also helped by its lead star Mary Millington,who lights up the film with her excellent charm. Final view on the film:A extremely disappointing story,that completely destroys any potential that it should have reached.

If you're British, this movie no doubt has a lot of baggage attached to it. Two of the lead actors committed suicide soon after, and it was made right at a time when the once vaunted independent British film industry basically imploded. If you're not British, however, this movie is. . .well, pretty damn weird actually. A fanatically religious, horse-obsessed maniac is killing the nude cover girls of "Playbird" magazine. The police are frustrated in their efforts to stop him, so they send a sexy police woman (Mary Millington) under the covers to crack her case--I mean, undercover to crack the case. If you just want to see a lot of naked dolly birds, you certainly won't be disappointed. There are numerous scenes of the magazine's photo shoots, most of which involve a hilarious satanic/witchcraft-oriented theme. And the police don't just take the first attractive volunteer for the undercover job--no, they have to have to "audition" ALL their female staff members for the job before settling on Millington. The movie is obviously sexist (which is par for the course), but it's also surprisingly unpleasant and borderline misogynist. All the girls are topless or naked when they're murdered, for instance (except for one girl whose mini-skirt conveniently rides up while she's being strangled). The most disturbing scene perhaps is one particular magazine pictorial of a naked "witch" being "burned" at the stake which goes horribly awry when the killer comes along and (literally) adds fuel to the fire.What's most amazing about all this is that there really is (or at least, was) a "Playbird" magazine, and its publisher was the producer of this movie! It's certainly hard to imagine Hugh Hefner, or even Larry Flynt, producing a movie where his own centerfolds are slaughtered in such an often unpleasant manner. (Apparently, all the censorship of sex and violence in Britain over the years hasn't resulted in the sexual attitudes there being any more wholesome than anywhere else--perhaps the opposite). I would also guess the publisher/producer owned a race horse or had some great interest in horse racing--how else to explain the killer's bizarre obsession with horses, which otherwise seems pretty unrelated to anything (or maybe this movie was inspired by the Richard Burton film "Equus" the year before?).The best (and perhaps only) reason to see this is that it is a good showcase for cult actress Mary Millington. Millington certainly had a nice body, and viewers (like numerous male and female characters in the movie) will become VERY familiar with it. Her generally awkward acting, however, gives no indication of why she became a such a cult figure. On the other hard, it's even more difficult to see why the British moral authorities considered her such a threat to society that they had to harass her to an early demise. I definitely would not recommend going through the time and expense I did to see this movie, but if you happen upon it, it's a good chance to see Millington in action and it's KIND OF interesting in spite of itself.

This is a curious mixture of sex comedy and giallo crime story, with a lunatic stalking and killing cover-girls from top-shelf magazines and a couple of clueless coppers going after him; they get nowhere, so a luscious policewoman is sent undercover to infiltrate the sex trade and track down the killer.There's something strangely compelling and entertaining about The Playbirds. The 70s mores on display are very redolent of that bygone era, with pornographers waging an ongoing battle against the forces of repression, prudery and censorship. As this film was produced by Britain's most successful pornographer David Sullivan, it doesn't exactly debate an even argument - the anti-porn characters are either psychotic or hypocritical. The film is in essence one of the most daring product placement campaigns in cinema history - the murdered girls appear on the cover of Playbird magazine, a real mag published by Sullivan whose industrial, mass-production printing presses are the most compelling things on screen here, spewing out copy after copy of his nudie mags. The film stars the doomed Alan Lake as a Sullivan surrogate and the equally doomed Sullivan pin-up model and business associate Mary Millington plays (one can't quite say acts) the part of the undercover policewoman. With Millington in the part, the policewoman was never going to have any difficulties with the sexual side of her assignment, and she (the character and the actress playing her) throws herself with brio into various gratuitous sauna, bed and nude posing scenes.The giallo aspect of the film begins well, with some creepy stalking, nasty deaths and a colourful array of suspects. Yet it all goes rather pear-shaped in the final third, with a loss of suspense, a number of ludicrous plot-turns and a final twist ending which doesn't earn its place at all, although it does leave a compellingly nasty taste in the mouth, as Millington is violently strangled in her bath followed by the end credits - a genuinely shocking denouement.The film has a good pace, and some fantastic exterior location work which really does convey the bleak abandoned industrial awfulness of the UK in the 70s. The set dressing in the interiors leave something to be desired - check out the Police Chief's office for a case study of an unbelievable design, although with "shut up!" Windsor Davies playing the top cop, I suppose that realism was always going to be in short order in these scenes.There's no way a film as technically ragged and politically incorrect as The Playbirds would get into national cinemas now, which is a a shame, as under all of the propaganda and the poorly-thought-through amateur dramatics, you do leave the film with a genuine feeling for the atmospherics, values and tensions of the time it was made.

The cover girls of a famous sex magazine are murdered one-by-one and the easily baffled British police can only think of one solution: To send one of their own in undercover.In the late-70's/early-80's there was a Betamax versus VHS battle which VHS won hands down. When the battle was nearing an end Betamax users threw in the towel and converted flooding the market with old cheap machines with all the tapes that came with it. Through this history I got to see Playbirds not once, but twice. I hated the 70's - a horrible time for me and this country (the UK). The British film industry had died (to be reborn as a big budget television industry and US workshop) and the video revolution hadn't fully taken off. The only thing getting the punters interested was horror, sex and bawdy comedy -- preferably mixed so that you could justify seeing it more. UK sexual censorship was hard-line, so the films were soft -- as well as cheap and cheerful.(Playbirds is - indeed - cheap, but they forgot about the cheerful part!)I am glad that another reviewer pointed out that this is a remake/rip-off because I had thought that the producers had come up with an original idea! Indeed with a bit of rewrite and more talent (or even people that care) you could just about film this as a straight Hammer-style B picture.There are two camps involved here - the eye-candy talent who know they are not going anywhere and the proper actors who are slumming it, probably as the films producer (David Sullivan) put it "so they didn't have to sign on the dole that week." Being an actor is a frustrating and humiliating business anyway, but this must be like being put on a medieval rack.*THE BAD*The film is low budget and clunks from scene to scene with a care usually reserved for television. The treatment of the girls is quite cruel in that while there is a murderer about no one seems to really care too much about it. Even the police can't quite get themselves to wide awake about the case. Suspects are lined up and listed (by an early computer) but the feel is more like a Hammer Horror where sudden death can be forgotten about quickly.*THE SAD*It was hard to see Alan Lake without thinking about the tragedy of his later life. Killing himself after losing his well known wife Diana Dorrs to cancer. Same with the nominal lead Mary Millington (the undercover cop) who killed herself rather than be squeezed in a vice created for her by the Inland Revenue (see didn't think she should pay any tax) and the police who were on her trail for a variety of crimes, including (according to Sullivan) drug trafficking. What a happy ship!*THE MAD* For unknown reasons the protagonists stop the film to watch horse racing - something that has nothing to do with the plot. To indicate that Millington is up for the undercover job she is required to take all her clothes of in the police station (Scotland Yard?) itself while the two detectives look on! Yes Playbirds is pretty dreadful, and features pretty dreadful people both sides of the camera. The deaths of the cover girls are treated as a bit of a joke and the whole show ends with a sour and very cruel plot twist.