Saucy! Secrets of the British Sex Comedy review – a cheeky look at cinema’s wild sexploitation craze

My favourite thing about Saucy! Secrets of the British Sex Comedy is the captions that pop up to introduce the talking heads. This two-part documentary covers the short-lived sexploitation cinema craze of the late 1960s and 70s. It is as jaunty and knowing as it should be, and my fondness for the captions is no slight on what the film-makers have, ahem, pulled off. But seeing people listed by “Name”, “Job”, then “Daft film title” – more often than not involving a double entendre – is endlessly amusing. Among those we meet: Sally Faulkner, actress, I’m Not Feeling Myself Tonight; Ken Rowles, director, Take An Easy Ride; and Gay Soper, actress, The Ups and Downs of a Handyman. The list goes on and on.

Fond amusement is mostly the point (I think) of this clear-eyed look at a short-lived British phenomenon. Sexploitation films emerged from the burgeoning sexual revolution of the 1960s. Depending on who you ask, this revolution came about as a result of sex between men being decriminalised, or the liberating arrival of the pill for women. All the subsequent shagging coincided with a dip in British-made films, owing to the explosion in popularity of television, which provided audiences with entertainment they could watch in their own homes. But what they couldn’t watch at home – not easily anyway – was pornography, which was still illegal.

A handful of canny film-makers sensed something in the air, combined a furtive nude short-film industry with slapstick comedy, and invented a new and wildly popular genre. Pete Walker directed School for Sex, often described as the first British sexploitation film, and he gamely appears here to talk about his adventures in nudity and censorship: “Many, many years ago, I made very naughty films,” he says, though he does admit that School for Sex was not one of his best. John Trevelyan was the Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors until 1971, and Walker says that he spent most of his time in the censor’s office, drinking tea and working out what could and could not be shown. Trevelyan was in charge of protecting public morality, and was in a position of great power. Pubic hair and breasts were out. “I was only allowed two whips,” remembers Ken Rowles of one of his own films, with a faint air of sentimentality.

It was, as almost everyone is keen to point out, a very different time, and Britain a very different place. Sue Longhurst, who appeared in the hit Confessions of a Window Cleaner, talks about being taken to a particular kind of Soho cinema to see the sights, or what Walker calls “the dirty mac brigade”. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she recalls, laughing. “At lunchtime !” Elsewhere in Soho, films would find their crews by rounding up whoever was drinking in the pub at the time. Most of the films seemed to be about working men trying to do their jobs and getting lured away from the task at hand by horny women who wanted to use them for their bodies. Was this a predictable male fantasy or a form of feminist revolt?

The documentary is as gregarious and cheeky as the subject matter demands, but it takes a sensitive, contemporary view on it, too, and allows the people involved to explore every side of the story. Among the big questions addressed is whether the female actors were exploited. Some of them say they went willingly and happily; others say there weren’t many other parts for women. Some paint a grimly familiar picture of casting couches and jobs for “favours”, in a heavily male-dominated business. In a fascinating segment, we learn about the one woman who held a position of real power: Hazel Adair, writer of Virgin Witch, Sex Clinic and Keep It Up Downstairs. She also co-created Crossroads.

Its other main query is why the British seem compelled to mix their sex with comedy. In Europe, sex films were sensual, soft-focus and at least aimed to be classy. In Britain, it was ooh-er-missus innuendo, door-to-door salesmen being ravished by housewives and female characters called Busty. There are various theories put forward as to why, from traditional seaside-postcard humour to the stiff upper lip to the fact that “nobody took their clothes off in those days”. I like the producer who blames it on the inherent conservatism of the nation and the old aristocracy. But it never quite settles on a convincing answer. Nevertheless, this is highly entertaining, eye-opening stuff, and it’s only the first part of two. Next week: Joan Collins and The Stud. If those five words don’t reel you in, this probably isn’t for you.

• Saucy! Secrets of the British Sex Comedy is on Channel 4 now.