User Reviews

Taking a look at the IMDb credits for Leticia Roman after recently re- watching Mario Bava's fantastic Giallo The Girl Who Knew Too Much,I was thrilled to discover,that along with Bava and Elvis,Roman had also starred in a very early Russ Meyer title.Opening my Russ Meyer DVD boxset for the film,I was surprised to ind that the title had been left out of the set.Deciding to search around the internet for the movie,I was thrilled when I stumbled upon a rare Pre-Cert Video of the title being sold on Ebay,which led to me excitingly getting ready to at last set eyes on Russ Meyer and Leticia Roman's team work.

The plot-

The 18th century:

Arriving in London from Liverpool with no money in her pocket,sweet,innocent Fanny Hill is relived to spot a jobs advert outside a building.Entering the building,Hill is met by a kind woman called Mrs.Maude Brown,who tells Hill that she runs a business which involves woman "escourting" the delivery of hats,to what are oddly all male customers.With Fanny not seeing the job for what it is,but instead viewing it as a job that can help men decide on what hat they should buy for their wife,Hill cheerfully accepts the job,and unwittingly enters the seedy underbelly of London with a huge grin on her face.

View on the film:

Made at the very end of his Nudie-Cutie era,co-director (who for the first and only time co-directed the film with Albert Zugsmith) Russ Meyer unexpectedly takes things in an extremely restrained direction for his first ever sound movie,and also his only period feature.

Despite the beautiful Leticia Roman (who is perhaps the only leading Meyer lady not to appear naked in a film of his!) still being able to give a delightfully charismatic performance as Hill,Meyer takes a huge dose of Roman's charm away by splattering the film with an ear- gratingly awful dub of Leticia's voice,which is also completely at odds with the rest of the clear "natural" soundtrack featured in the film.

Dragging Robert Hill's adaptation of John Cleland's infamous novel to a long 100 minute running time, (which would end up becoming Meyer's longest movie!) Meyer thankfully shows a glimpse of style with the film's appearance,thanks to Meyer and cinematography Heinz Holscher crisp black & white work allowing Costume Designer Claudia Hahne-Herberg's elegant work to be fully displayed,whilst Meyer also shows a fun fourth wall breaking side by separating the movie into "pages" which are shown on screen in a film where the girl sadly does not know too much.

This black and white screen version of the FANNY HILL story was directed by no less than Russ Meyer, but no fears, it was made before he became obsessed with voluptuous women and nudity. This is a surprisingly restrained comedy of sex and manners, with our titular heroine ending up working in a brothel and discovering all manner of strangeness there. It's part farce, part sex comedy, part exploration of an era, and in Meyer's hands it's a rather middling experience. The dubbing is rather distracting throughout, although there's no faulting the direction or the efforts to make it look authentic.

FANNY HILL's yet another Albert Zugsmith "extravaganza", this one filmed in Germany, and originally meant for Douglas Sirk (!). Closer to Playboy magazine's "Little Orphan Fannie" than the knowing wench of eighteenth- century porn, Russ Meyer's opus aspires to rollicking comedy but only manages to achieve mildly amusing ...and that's being kind. Leticia Roman's woefully miscast as a poor lass who's taken under the wing of a brothel madam (Miriam Hopkins, who doesn't look too bad and even has a little decolleté going' on) and finds her virginity in peril at every turn. It's still intact (I think) at the happy ending much to Miriam's exasperation and if it had a more risqué script, a bigger budget, color photography, and Stella Stevens as "Little Orphan Fannie", Louella Parsons would have been right in proclaiming the film, "A female TOM JONES!"

Sweet and naive young lass Fanny Hill (a charming and spirited performance by the busty and lovely Leticia Roman) gets taken in by cunning and conniving Madam Maude Brown (a delightfully vibrant portrayal by Miriam Hopkins) at an elite brothel in pre-Victorian London. Unbeknownst to Fanny, Brown plans to sell her to the first client who will pay top dollar for her.

Director Russ Meyer, working from a breezy script by Robert Hill, relates the entertaining story at a steady pace, maintains an engagingly dippy and farcical tone throughout, milks the amusing sense of blithely broad humor for plenty of belly laughs, offers a flavorsome evocation of the period setting, and stages the uproarious slapstick gags with considerable gusto. Moreover, it's acted with great zest by a game cast: Alex D'Arcy as a dashing admiral, Ulli Lommel as gentleman suitor Charles, Walter Giller as decadent aristocrat Hemmingway, Helmut Weiss as jolly old lecher Dinkelspieler, and Chris Howland as the painfully shy and bumbling Mr. Norbert. The presence of a bevy of beautiful ladies helps a whole lot, with Christianne Schmidtmer as the ditsy Fiona and Cara Garnett as the worldly Phoebe rating as the definite sexy stand-outs. Heinz Holscher's crisp black and white cinematography boasts plenty of snazzy animated scene transitions. Erwin Halletz's jaunty score further adds to the infectiously bubbly merriment. A fun'n'frothy affair.