British cinema discovered sex late in the 1960s and "The Smashing Bird I Used To Know" took advantage of the more liberal censorship although it only shows one girl topless for a few seconds and a few other quick flashes. (There were no full frontals in the cinema print or in the UK DVD release.) It arrived in Glasgow on 5th October 1969, getting a run on the ABC circuit. Here's what I wrote about it in my book "What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema)".
There was more sex in "The Smashing Bird I Used To Know", but it consisted of a couple of semi-nude scenes used to illustrate life in a school for bad girls, one of whom is Madeleine Hinde who shouldn't really be there as she was merely defending herself against an assault by her mother's horrible boyfriend. It's cheap exploitation with nothing going for it, and in his autobiography, Patrick Mower says when he and co-star Dennis Waterman went to see it in the cinema together, they came out with their heads down hoping that no one would realize they had been in it. With it at the ABC 1 and Bedford was "Mission Batangas", a routine war film with Dennis Weaver.
Jim Doyle is the author of 'What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema)', 'What We Watched In The 1970s (In The Cinema)" and 'What We Watched In The 1980s (In The Cinema And On Video)'
There was more sex in "The Smashing Bird I Used To Know", but it consisted of a couple of semi-nude scenes used to illustrate life in a school for bad girls, one of whom is Madeleine Hinde who shouldn't really be there as she was merely defending herself against an assault by her mother's horrible boyfriend. It's cheap exploitation with nothing going for it, and in his autobiography, Patrick Mower says when he and co-star Dennis Waterman went to see it in the cinema together, they came out with their heads down hoping that no one would realize they had been in it. With it at the ABC 1 and Bedford was "Mission Batangas", a routine war film with Dennis Weaver.
Jim Doyle is the author of 'What We Watched In The 1960s (In The Cinema)', 'What We Watched In The 1970s (In The Cinema)" and 'What We Watched In The 1980s (In The Cinema And On Video)'