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.
