The Playbirds (1978) User Reviews

The sad, the bad and the mad - all together in one place!

[Pedro_H · 3/10 · 16 October 2005]

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.

A mess, to put it bluntly

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 21 February 2023]

THE PLAYBIRDS is another late '70s sexploitation effort from Britain, but like most of the others it really isn't much cop. Mary Millington appears as a female police officer who agrees to help some detectives in their hunt for a serial killer, but there are so many characters here she just sort of gets lost in the masses. Familiar faces pop up the cast but don't get very much to do, although it's amusing to see TV presenter Gavin Campbell as the lead. The mystery aspects are very poorly handled and the closing reveal is as uninteresting as they come. Expect wall to wall nudity, as per usual by genre standards, and a particularly angry Alan Lake performance.

KIND OF interesting in spite of itself (a non-British perspective)

[lazarillo · 9 September 2008]

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.

Cover Girl Killer.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 2/10 · 22 February 2011]

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 centre 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 centre 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.

For a film having a plot that should offer a huge bundle of thrilling moments,the film is shockingly 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.

Misbegotten attempt at a British giallo

[gridoon2024 · 2/10 · 15 March 2021]

This is an absolutely terrible British stab at the giallo genre, crossed with more traditional "skin flick" elements. Pedestrian, nonsensical, endless, with lots of horseracing footage (if you're an enthusiast). (Barely) escapes a zero-star rating because of some nice stripping / posing scenes, as well as an all-too-brief lesbian interlude.

Totally awful

[neil-douglas2010 · 1/10 · 1 January 2023]

There were some great things in the UK in 1978, Kenny Dalglish, Siouxsie Sioux, Kate Bush and David Bowie, but this all pails into insignificance to this utter twaddle. This is one of the worst films I've ever seen (and I've seen Society (1989)). The fact that the late Mary Millington is probably the best thing in this sorry mess of a film tells it's own story. The fact also that some famous faces are also in this guff like Glynn Edwards, Kenny Lynch and Dudley Sutton, they must all have needed a quick buck to appear. On the plus side for all involved the only way was up, apart for Millington and the late Alan Lake.

A very British page 3 giallo

[jaibo · 6/10 · 8 July 2008]

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.

Curse of the Centrefold

[Goingbegging · 7/10 · 5 March 2020]

Well, it's one way to build circulation for your porn mag - make an X-rated thriller about it, as David Sullivan did, even hinting that the pornographer in the story could be trying to keep his own magazine (also conveniently called 'Playbirds') in the public eye by arranging for each centrefold model to be brutally murdered, just as the publication hits the street.

We can't name the killer, of course, but we can tell you that the suspects make a colourful line-up, providing an excuse for some varied location scenes, ranging from Speakers' Corner through Newmarket racecourse to a forest where some rather extreme witchcraft rituals look like getting out of hand...

Funniest is the moment when the baffled detectives think it's time to send in an undercover female cop to charm the publisher into giving her a centrefold, so they have to start by holding auditions at Scotland Yard. Mary Millington carries no conviction whatever as a police officer, but she certainly makes one heck of a stripper, and should have exploited the surprisingly common policewoman fetish with plenty of slow peeling-off of the dark blue livery of the law.

Nobody could watch this film without noting the sad irony that two of the young stars committed suicide soon after: first Millington herself, swamped by drugs and tax-bills, and then the alcoholic Alan Lake, unable to cope with the premature death of his wife Diana Dors. This reflects a haunting theme, the mystic link between mating and death - the porn-stars we're conditioned to envy in their little plastic heaven, with every carnal satisfaction laid-on like a tray of snacks, yet forever tainted by elements of the cynical and the criminal. Reminding us in the end that this branch of entertainment promises everything but delivers nothing.

The Playbirds is not as predictable or monotonous as other low-budget soft-porn features, thanks to a number of mainstream actors like Windsor Davies, Gavin Campbell and Dudley Sutton. There are some good dramatic situations too, but they don't really gel, and the scripting and directing by Willie Roe is disappointing.

‘Sex, Witchcraft and Horses, the unholy trinity'

[gavcrimson · 24 June 2002]

SPOILERS INCLUDED

A confusing, credits heavy read the recent BFI book ‘Pop Music in British Cinema', is chiefly notable for some eyebrow-raising inclusions into its cinematic survey, namely a few pretty obscure Derek Fords and most of the output of porn baron David Sullivan. While it's a stretch to consider Sullivan's productions Great British Pop musicals his ‘The Playbirds' does manage to be a stalker horror film, sexed up remake of 1959's Cover Girl Killer, Mary Millington vehicle and publicity machine for its maker.

The Playbirds casts the most popular faces from Sullivan's sex magazines, appropriately as models all vying to be the cover girl of soft porn magazine ‘Playbirds' (a much plugged real-life Sullivan publication). The downside?-a limping,cloth cap wearing psychopath is on a mission to snuff out Playbirds' cover girls. Pat Astley starts the ball rolling, strutting her stuff around London before being strangled in her kitchen while making a cuppa tea. Two detectives-one clueless (Gavin Campbell) the other bad tempered (Glynn Edwards), are on the case,and find a chief suspect in Astley's boss-a wealthy porn baron and sex magazine publisher played by oily Alan Lake-in a role he clearly didn't have to look far for real life inspiration. The detectives also have a large hi-tech computer system (by 1970's standards) which comes up with a few more suspects like Terry Day a photographer with a violent past, Dudley Sutton's ‘Creeping Jesus' street preacher,and George Ransome-a‘clean-up' campaigner,amateur astrologer,and even more amateur pervert (when one character dubs Ransome ‘a simple voyeur' you half expect someone to quip back ‘there's nothing simple about voyeurism'). Ever willing to give the public want they want,oily man of polyester suits and gold medallions Lake gets a suspicious eye from the police when his latest pictorial turns out to be focused around witchcraft-represented here by a man in a joke-store werewolf mask being pleasured and dialogue like ‘sex, witchcraft and horses,the unholy trinity'.

While getting to the bottom of this old black magic,Campbell and Edwards are introduced to Playbird Lena Cunningham (Suzy Mandel) a girl who knows how to get herself noticed-wiggling her backside at oily Alan in order to become Astley's cover girl successor,and also finding favour with her milkman when she answers the door in a see-through nightie and reminds him ‘I get it everyday' (she means a bottle of cream.) Campbell puts her under 24 hour surveillance,but while he can't keep his eyes off her when she's prancing around naked at Satanic photo opportunities,later when his back is turned she becomes victim No.4 (for those counting two other Playbirds have ended up Deadbirds off-screen).

Combining their mucky minds Campbell and Edwards cook up the idea of sending a policewoman ‘undercover' into the sex industry in order to get her on the next Playbirds cover. Enter WPC Lucy Sheridan (Mary Millington)-who eager to expand her horizons in the force gets the cheeky coppers hot under the collar with an impromptu striptease. Sent working undercover in a massage parlour,Lucy takes to her new life ‘like a duck to water' rubbing down School for Sex man Derek Aylward and even finding time for a Sapphic moment with fellow masseuse Foxy (soon to become victim No.5). This behaviour may require a bit of explaining to her superiors, but Lucy's exploits do eventually lead her to the cover of Playbirds via Lake's bed. In the meantime, her male counterparts make a hash of the investigation, shaking down for information Tony Kenyon (in his trademark dirty old man role),arresting Sutton for the murders,and impounding Lucy's issue of Playbirds in order to preserve their colleague's modesty.

Unfortunately all of this proves in vain, as the real killer whose obviously got the early edition, plays Lucy a surprise visit in the shower (‘sacrifice pretty girls'). The film ends with Lucy dead and topless in the bath, a gross parting shot that recalls the unpleasant ‘cute but dead' scenarios from Robert Hartford-Davis' The Fiend

The Playbirds boasts a lengthy B-movie cast, which apart from the people already mentioned also includes Derren Nesbitt, Windsor Davies, Kenny Lynch, Faulty Towers' Ballard Berkeley and faded Devil Doll glamour girl Sandra Dorne. While it's not beyond the realms of possibility that some of those names brought in a few punters, the main selling point is of course the ‘Playbirds' themselves. Ex-Benny Hill girl Suzy Mandel pulls off a nifty little bit part despite having to play all her scenes in peek-a-boo clothes. Mary Millington struggles,but gives an enthusiastic performance in the only role that really reflected her star status. Sadly very few of the ‘legit' cast share Millington's enthusiasm and most are merely going through the motions. Chubby and bearded Derren Nesbitt is barely recognisable as Lake's right hand man,a role which significantly he took not long after the faux pas of putting everything he owned on the line in order to finance autobiographical sex film ‘The Amorous Milkman'.

Willy Roe's amateurish direction, evident in cheaper efforts like 1979's-‘Queen of the Blues' benefits greatly here from a large-ish budget and richness of incident. Although The Playbirds' structure is as haphazard as the later movie with choppy, half finished look scenes, and randomly filmed (but often quite curious) padding including snapshots of real-life religious fanatics in Hyde Park and Lake and Ballard Berkeley reacting to footage of Newmarket horse racing. Long-time showbiz crony and Max Miller biographer John M.East, also manages to sneak himself a small but telling role as a downmarket journalist getting a salacious scoop on sex queen Lucy (Do you have a normal sex life?.....Are you a lesbian?.....Any kinks?).

Superfluous Newmarket coverage aside however Roe manages to cut,clip and paste The Playbirds together with few dull moments,and a delightfully cheesy theme song, copious nudity from British sex queens and moments of unintentional hilarity (the killer escapes by bicycle at one point!) all add up to the most consistently entertaining of all the Mary Millington vehicles

Although a box office performer in its day,The Playbirds has only recently begun to be rediscovered.

Play this one

[videorama-759-859391 · 7/10 · 17 February 2015]

I really think this film has really taken a bum rap. It's sad to think, two of the main actors actually committed suicide, one shortly after this. I loved the saucy and cheeky nudity, full frontage, in a film that barely ceased to exist as a Roadshow title. As a thriller it really works. Some nutter is murdering sexy bare bodied girls who feature in the nudie magazine, Playgirl, where each month brings a cover girl victim, so it's not long before authorities figure the pattern, only this psycho is really clever, his method of kill- inflicting strangulation, bringing among suspects, one, a young photographer, with a bit of a dirty S and M record who does nudie sessions with models, one involving a rocking horse, you will never forget. So they send in a undercover cop posing as a budding model, where now things get quite risky. There are some terrifying edge of seat moments, if watching on a first view. I really like how Londoners make these B grades, whether psychological and sexual thrillers, or just saucy sex films, and The Playgirl Murders is quite tightly plotted. How's this? The chief detective who him and his partner work the murders, loves to have a bit of a gamble, where too another suspect, likes betting the horses too. This chief detective who used to play Frank Spencer's warring neighbor in Some Mother's Do Ave Em' would rather do this, than work a murder scene. The undercover cop audition was funny and sexy, and TPM really has it's moments. I really like this film a lot. Pity no one really agrees with me on this one. Jazzy soundtrack.

Oh the 1970s!

[peedee100 · 7/10 · 11 September 2018]

This film has been nicely restored and the DVD is excellent with some bonus items worth a quick watch. It also strikes a nostalgic note with models sporting natural breasts and a decent amount of body hair - a real treat for those of us tired of silicone and over use of the razor! The plot is weak but the visual delights are many. Don't see why the horseracing scenes were included, after all, after heading for Newmarket, the racing came from Newbury and Peter O'Sullivan's commentary declared that "No. 7 is wearing a black cap" when shown wearing a red cap. Mary Millington is a delight to behold just so long as she doesn't speak! I think she may have popped a few too many pills and her eyes look a bit far away. Most of the surviving cast have reached ripe old age and the recently deceased Glynn Edwards was way into his 80s when he passed on. Good to show todays' youth how grotty London used to be and how naturally beautiful most of the actresses and models were.