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Mary Millington’s World Striptease Extravaganza (1981)

Dir: Roy Deverell

 

When the lovely but doomed Mary Millington committed suicide in 1979 there were some genuine tributes and much affection shown towards her passing.
One time boyfriend and porn giant David Sullivan must have got over his mourning period though in 1981 as he teamed up with John M. East to use Mary’s legacy to produce this amazingly crass and utterly parasitic ‘film’ that shown no genuine affection at all.

Gormless looking John M. East himself (who rudely told the distressed Mary she needed ‘psychiatric help’ as she phoned him for support on the night she killed herself) introduces the film with a fawning ‘tribute’ to Mary that includes recycling a striptease scene form her last film, “Queen of the Blues”, to try and erroneously describe her as one of the great strippers.
Any mention of Mary now vanishes, her name has been used and that’s all they wanted., as we go to some trashy London club.

Next our compare for the night is revealed. It’s the awful Bernie Winters, a toothy talentless twat best known for poncing about with a huge Saint Bernard dog in family TV shows.
He opens with a few racist jokes aimed at invisible members of the audience (invisible because in reality no one there! The few audience shots we see later are edited in from the aforementioned “Queen of the Blues”!) before announcing that this is supposedly the ‘World Striptease Championships’ (!) with a £1000, a holiday and a film contract as the first prize.

First strippers up are ‘Kathy from Southern England’ and ‘Maxine from Botswana’ (hmmmm…sure), who not so much strips as simply gets undressed. Watch out for that Kathy though…more later.

Next we have ‘Katrina from New Zealand’ and ‘Vicky from Turkey’ who appears dressed like she stepped out of an India Bollywood movie rather than from anything remotely Turkish.
Busty and rather damn attractive Katrina hogs the camera as poor old ‘Turkish Vicky’ struggles to disrobe.

But Vicky’s time will come as it turns out she is something of a maverick in the stripper world it seems, not only does she take her panties off before her top, but when the top does finally come off, and is hoisted triumphantly into the air, she uncovers a display of black underarm hair so dense that it could swallow Bernie Winters himself!
And how we wish it would as Winters gets back on stage talking blatantly racial gibberish to the supposedly Turkish Vicky before pointing to her arse as she leaves with remarks about a japati ringing in her ears!
Seems basic World geography was failed by all involved with this enterprise!

It goes on some more until another Vicky appears (supposedly from Sweden this time) with a ‘Gloria from Spain’, who is in reality a glamour model from England!
Despite this supposedly being the World Stripping Contest Vicky and Gloria proceed to help each other strip as flashbulbs pop and more general audience stock shots appear.

Next we have ‘Samantha from America’ and ‘Angela from London‘.
It matters not which is which as both sport some truly appalling and unflattering undergarments which they proceed to discard to the tune of some obscure disco track as canned cheers from that phantom audience again.

More Winters ‘comedy’ follows before ‘Joy from Wales’ and ‘Rita from France‘ strut onto the stage.
‘Rita from France’ is we assume the one dressed in a cheap French Maid costume which she bounces around in as Joy tickles her fancy with a feather duster.
A cut away to two old codgers in that fake audience nudging each other and pulling dirty faces sums the whole sorry escapade up really.
Rita also seems disinterested in winning this supposed contest as she gets poor old ‘Welsh Joy’ to take her clothes off for her!
Once Frenchy Rita has shown us all she’s not a natural blonde the scene fades away as quickly as poor Joy’s close-ups.

Obviously getting as bored as it’s future audience will be, the makers proceed to hurry through the girls by bringing them on in fours.
When only three turn up (all with none of the accents from the countries they supposedly come from) a ‘spontaneous’ call out to the audience is heard to replace the missing stripper…Oh look! What comic genius! It turns out replacement stripper #4 is in fact a brassy drag queen!
Said queen is hurriedly taken off in mock horror by Winters, as the other three poor cows continue to strip down to their 80’s pubic bushes with a shared look of boredom.

But now tension rises as we reach the semi-final!
Those (un) lucky enough to get through…or those chosen to re-appear by the film makers would be a more honest way of putting it…are then interviewed by toothy Winters in a sequence that is truly terrible to behold.
Winters asks smutty joke questions, waggles his tongue and generally leers, the girls giggle a lot and try to string a coherent sentence together and, what’s this (shock flaming horror) all of these supposedly multinational women speak with English accents!

And then the film at last comes clean (ooooo) and throws away all pretence of actually being a real striptease contest and suddenly we’re in an entirely different movie. Literally!
As the girls carry out a mass strip-off the camera focuses on one of them, our Kathy, as she looks towards one of the supposed judges (indeed the supposedly present in the same room judges!) as we hear her thoughts about what sexual favours she did for him to win.
We are then treated to a visual representation of said favours as the film suddenly lurches into a softcore sex flick complete with a very short three in a bed romp complete with the fat hairy ‘judge’ and his floppy dick.
And just to show how awful this whole creation is the clothed Kathy in close-up supposedly thinking these thoughts during the semi-final strip is the same Kathy that started the strip already completely naked!
Not only that she’s not the girl in the ’flashback’ anyway as the entire sequence is simply a clip taken from the death rattle of British sex cinema, “Emmanuelle in Soho”!
God help me!

As the horror draws to a close Bernie Winters re-appears in his comedy coat and hat to announce the winners (no, I don’t know what happened to the actual final either!).
I know you can’t wait for the results dear reader, so here they are;
3rd good old Joy from Wales, 2nd Chantel from Australia and….1st…..Kathy from England!
You see having sex with the fat hairy judge was worth it after all!
And to be fair here, Kathy Green (for that is her real name) did have a sort of film deal as her ‘prize’ as she wet on to slum it in a few of David Sullivan’s cheapo video smut efforts.
What a lovely way to end…Certainly a far lovelier way to end than the one actually chosen which is Bernie Winters having his top pulled off by the reunited group of strippers. YIKES!

God save the Queen!

Side note of far more interest than the actual feature;
This epic work was released on VHS rental in the UK by ‘World of Video 2000’ and at the end of the film is a great old trailer for the infamous ’Nasty’ “Nightmares in a Damaged Brain”.
The ‘World of Video 2000’ label set up by sometime sex film producer David Hamilton Grant who later went to prison (under the 1984 ‘Video Recordings Act,’ that turns out 25 years later was never properly made law) for supplying the same…“Nightmares in a Damaged Brain”!
Somehow such a terrible forewarning of the unfortunate events to come for poor old Mr Grant seems right at home next to “Mary Millington’s World Striptease Extravaganza”.
He in fact ended his days in Cyprus exile, hiding from the law, before becoming a suspected murder victim in 1991.
Perhaps his fate was ‘from beyond the grave’ punishment by Mary Millington for foisting this turkey onto unsuspecting Brits.