Escort Girls
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''Escort Girls'' is a 1974
sexploitation film A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit se ...
written, produced and directed by
Donovan Winter Donovan Winter (1933 – 6 February 2015) was a British filmmaker and former actor. Through his company, Donwin Productions, he was a writer, producer, director and editor of short and feature films. Winter was born to Irish parents in London ...
. It stars
Helen Christie Helen Christie (22 October 1914 – 17 March 1995) was a British stage, film and television actress. She was married to Patrick Crean. Selected filmography Film * '' Up for the Cup'' (1950) * ''Wide Boy'' (1952) * '' Castle in the Air'' (1 ...
, Brian Jackson, David Dixon,
Veronica Doran Veronica Doran (born 17 May 1948) is a British character actress who remains best known for her 18-month stint as Marion Willis in the ITV soap opera, ''Coronation Street''. She appeared in the series from 1982 to 1983. Early life Veronica Do ...
and
David Brierly David Alfred Brierly (January 1935 – 10 June 2008), also known as David Brierley, was an English actor. Born in Yorkshire, he appeared in various television programmes but is most notable for being the voice of the robot dog K-9 during the ...
. Its
working title A working title is a preliminary name for a product or project. The usage is especially common in film and TV, gaming, music and publishing. It is often styled in trade publications as (wt) and is synonymous with production title and tentative ...
was ''All Lovers Are Strangers''.


Plot

Set in London, the film tells six stories of people seeking companionship in the run-up to Christmas. *Hugh and Susan: Hugh, a young office clerk, spends his Christmas bonus on a night out with Susan, a social escort. After dinner at an Italian restaurant, they take a taxi back to Susan's flat, where both admit their loneliness. Susan takes Hugh's virginity. *Mary and Barry: Mary is a wealthy widow whose outward pride conceals her inner loneliness. She takes a young
male escort Male prostitution is a form of sex work consisting of the act or practice of men providing sexual services in return for payment. Although clients can be of any gender, the vast majority are older males looking to fulfill their sexual needs. Ma ...
, Barry, to a nightclub and then back to her hotel room. Barry is put off by Mary's overbearing nature and slips away while her back is turned, leaving her heartbroken. *Emma and Wayne: Emma is a company director weary of the business world. As an amusement, she hires a male escort, Wayne, to accompany her to a high-level Christmas party. Returning to Emma's house, Emma and Wayne have sex. *Harvey and Sheila: Harvey Matelow is a corrupt businessman who books an escort, Sheila, to take with him to a casino. Later, he tricks his way into her flat and rapes her. He is interrupted by Sheila's boyfriend, who photographs him in the act and proceeds to blackmail him, stealing his money and threatening to publish the photographs if he goes to the police. Realising that he has been set up, the humiliated Harvey is kicked out of the flat. Left alone, Sheila and the boyfriend have sex. *Vicky and Lester: To impress her old school friends, Vicky shows up at a reunion accompanied by Lester, a black male escort who has agreed to pose as her fiancé. Over the course of the party, Vicky's female friends fantasise about Lester and discreetly pass him their telephone numbers. Back at Vicky's flat, Lester hesitantly indulges Vicky's interracial
rape fantasy A rape fantasy (sometimes referred to as rapeplay) or a ravishment is a sexual fantasy involving imagining or pretending being coerced or forcefully coercing another into sexual activity. In sexual roleplay, it involves acting out roles of coe ...
. *James and Ian are Scotsmen visiting London for the first time. They pick up two women and take them to dinner at a restaurant, where they are shocked to see an exotic dancer give an explicit solo
sex show A sex show is a form of live performance that features one or more performers engaging in some form of sexual activity, typically on stage, for the entertainment or sexual gratification of spectators. Performers are paid either by the spectators ...
. After leaving the restaurant, they pursue the two women for sex. The women knock them to the ground and they drunkenly pass out. In the film's epilogue, the normally shy and reserved Hugh arrives at work and greets his female colleagues by cheerfully slapping one of them on the rear with his morning newspaper.


Cast


Critical response

Gavin Millar Gavin Millar (11 January 1938 – 20 April 2022) was a Scottish film director, critic and television presenter. Biography Millar was born in Clydebank, near Glasgow, the son of Tom Millar and his wife Rita (née Osborne). The family relocated ...
of '' The Listener'' gave the film one star out of four. Reviews in ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'', the ''
Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily Middle-market newspaper, middle-market Tabloid journalism, tabloid conservative newspaper founded in 1896 and published in London. , it has the List of newspapers in the United Kingdom by circulation, h ...
'' and ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' were negative. Back cover. Richard Combs of ''
The Monthly Film Bulletin The ''Monthly Film Bulletin'' was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 until April 1991, when it merged with '' Sight & Sound''. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those wi ...
'' described ''Escort Girls'' as a "sexploiter with pretensions" whose acting "is better than might be expected." He added that Winter "profitably pays as much attention to all the background flummery of the social settings ... as he does to the walking clichés who inhabit them."
Duncan Fallowell Duncan Fallowell FRSL (born 26 September 1948) is an English novelist, travel writer, memoirist, journalist and critic. Early life Fallowell was born on 26 September 1948 in London, son of Thomas Edgar Fallowell, of Finchampstead, near Woking ...
of ''
The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. ''The Spectator'' is politically conservative, and its principal subject a ...
'' questioned the choice of title, pointing out that the film features both
female An organism's sex is female ( symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and ...
and
male escort Male prostitution is a form of sex work consisting of the act or practice of men providing sexual services in return for payment. Although clients can be of any gender, the vast majority are older males looking to fulfill their sexual needs. Ma ...
s. He commented: "This may not be a withering triumph of cinematic art, but it is certainly a sight better than most of the films into whose bag it has been put ... The stories do have point – not much, perhaps, but what there is you do get – and it does add up to more than an excuse for titillation. Also I chuckled a lot, if that is any recommendation." In his introduction to Nucleus Films' 2011 DVD release of ''Escort Girls'', Darius Drewe praised the film as Winter's best demonstration of his "multi-layered", "singular" vision. He suggested that while the film touches on themes of realism and loneliness, certain elements, such as the story of Emma and Wayne, are more about "how sometimes life is neither tragedy nor fairy tale, just matter-of-factly unremarkable." He criticised the pacing, commenting that the plot "seems to amble sexlessly for 60 minutes before remembering what film it's in and suddenly jumping to several consecutive scenes of softcore action." He compared the structure of the film – "a series of vignettes" – to that of the comedy drama ''
Saturday Night Out ''Saturday Night Out'' is a 1964 British comedy film, comedy-drama film directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and starring Heather Sears, John Bonney (actor), John Bonney, Bernard Lee, Erika Remberg, Francesca Annis, Margaret Nolan and David Lodge ( ...
'' (1964). In a review for website The Spinning Image, Graeme Clark comments: "Until the cast begin taking their clothes off, this is achingly slow, and you're not sure if it's meant to be a comedy or not, but things pick up when the mood turns to sleaze ... ll the characters except Hughnbsp;... come across as pretty strange, illustrating the gap between the sophistication it aspired to and the rather sour, seedy reality it ended up as." Commentator Leon Hunt considers ''Escort Girls'' to be one of a number of films that he dubs "suburban report" features: films employing a "multiple narrative" built around a "thematic focus" (in this case, characters' use of escorts) "and/or a narrator, storyteller or 'expert' to guide us through". He suggests that the virginal character David roots the film's impression of "suburban sensibility" in ideas of a "last sexual outpost" or "notion of 'catching up', a sort of sexual democracy."


See also

*
List of Christmas films Many Christmas stories have been Christmas film, adapted to feature films and TV specials, and have been broadcast and repeated many times on television. Since the popularization of home video in the 1980s, these films are sold and re-sold every ...


References


External links

*{{IMDb title, 0262402 1970s British films 1970s Christmas films 1970s English-language films 1970s exploitation films 1974 films 1974 independent films British Christmas films British independent films British sexploitation films English-language independent films Films about male prostitution Films about prostitution in the United Kingdom Films directed by Donovan Winter Films set in London English-language Christmas films