THE PLAYBIRDS

Directed by Wally Roe. 1978. United Kingdom.

“Oh, goodie, I’m going to be raped! I’ve never been raped before!”

So says a cheesecake model upon being woken in the middle of the night by a strange man in her bedroom. I think I could probably leave the review right there. That single line of dialogue tells you basically everything you need to know about Wally Roe’s woeful 1978 comedy-thriller THE PLAYBIRDS. Tasteless? Absolutely. Funny? Not even a little bit. Maybe it fares better as a thriller, hmm? Well, let’s find out.

THE PLAYBIRDS opens with full frontal nudity. A blonde-haired model is being photographed for a pictorial in Playbirds, a skin rag owned and operated by a horse-racing aficionado named Dougan. A few hours later, our unlucky centerfold will be strangled to death in her kitchen by a black-gloved assailant. She’s not the first victim, but police inspectors Morgan and Holbourne are working hard (?) to ensure she’s the last. When their investigation turns up nothing but more bodies, they start to think their best bet is to get a woman on the inside of Dougan’s operation. After all, the killer is only bumping off his centerfolds. Thankfully, policewoman Lucy is all too happy to strip down for the cause.

That’s the set-up for the film, and it’s not really a bad one. That’s why it’s been done to death. A series of murders. No leads. One cop goes undercover. Thrills and moral quandaries ensue. But this isn’t CRUISING. No, this is barely a coherent film. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the producer of the film was, in fact, a pornographer who published a magazine called Playbirds. A great many things made sense after that, especially the way the film treats the character of Dougan as if he were the suavest, most interesting man alive. The film has a pornographer’s sensibility to it, less interested in telling a coherent mystery thriller, infinitely more interested in endless scenes of spread legs and bared breasts.

Pound for pound, THE PLAYBIRDS has more exposed flesh burned onto its celluloid than your average Cinemax after-midnight wank fodder. I didn’t think it would be possible to grow bored of watching countless women strip down and prance about, but I caught a serious case of titty fatigue halfway through the film. I just wanted it to start moving and get to wherever the fuck it was going, unaware that where it was going was the worst possible destination.

I understood after ten minutes that the film was only concerned with me blowing my load. It had no interest in blowing my mind. Still, I couldn't overlook the shoddy storytelling here. At one point, a victim’s body turns up in a stable, and we learn that horses are somehow tied to each victim. Will this figure into the revelation of the killer’s identity in any way? Nope. It's just a massive waste of time coincidence. Morgan develops a flirtatious relationship with the centerfold model he’s shadowing. She ends up being strangled to death just before their first date. Surely, this will inform Morgan’s actions as the film goes along, providing him with an even stronger desire to catch the killer. Wrong again. He’s over it before they even cart her corpse off to the morgue.

But none of that matters, you see. We have bush in abundance. We even get some flaccid dicks for the ladies. A couple of hyperbolic orgies? Check. How about a gratuitous lesbian fingerbang? Don't mind if we do! Maybe a highly unethical scene of two cops having their female coworkers strip completely nude for them as a “try out” for the undercover position? We got one of those too. Oh, and the undercover position is filled by Lucy, a police woman who suffers no moral quandaries as she prostitutes herself out in a massage parlor, and beds the prime suspect in an open serial killer case. Is that part of the job description? Nope, but you don't hire Mary Millington just to let her keep her clothes on. Clearly, this isn’t meant to be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, there’s only so far that an excuse like that can carry you. THE PLAYBIRDS isn’t meant to be taken seriously, sure, but it’s still a film that is telling a story, and the story isn’t being told well at all. Endless scenes of two cops sitting in a room talking, followed by endless scenes of stripping, followed by endless scenes of two cops sitting in a room… the film is on a loop for most of the running time. We get a grand total of two chases, one of which is OK, and the other ends when the suspect takes a two-foot tumble into a creek and somehow dies in mid-fall. If all I wanted was to gawk at naked women, there are websites for that. I don’t need my gawking interrupted by a lame mystery that doesn’t even get solved.

There’s more I could say about how little the film seems to respect women in general and sex workers in particular (as evidenced by the downbeat, depressing finale), but that kind of criticism could be leveled at basically any film of this kind. No, what really stomped on my boner was the utter lack of anything interesting happening during the interminable 94-minute running time. I was bored and, quite frankly, turned off by the whole thing. I enjoy tasteless. I abhor bland. THE PLAYBIRDS needed a little more narrative oomph to go with its boundless enthusiasm for bush, bosoms, and buttocks. As it stands, it’s just a snoozer.