With These Hands... (1971) Poster

(1971)

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4/10
Tightly plotted, but it becomes a chore
Leofwine_draca13 September 2016
SEX CLINIC offers something a little different from your usual British sexploitation movie, although that doesn't make it good. In fact it tells a somewhat tight and inventive storyline about a scheming antagonist who has all of the men (and women) in her life wrapped around her little figure. Said figure is played by the attractive Georgina Ward, who runs a kind of spa/clinic where all kinds of sexual shenanigans are going on. Co-writer Hazel Adair also wrote KEEP IT UP DOWNSTAIRS but is chiefly known for writing the long-running soap CROSSROADS, and SEX CLINIC feels like nothing more than a soap with extra sex and sauce.

Much of the running time seems concerned with Ward's efforts to seduce those around her for profit, so there are a lot of softcore fumblings. Ward certainly isn't a shy actress and seems to spend half of the running time naked. The rest of the film is a bit of a mess, with familiar faces popping up but an overall vignette style to the narrative which eventually begins to drag in the second half. Bizarrely, this is a film which was directed by Don Chaffey, who once helmed the great JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS but must have fallen on hard times. Peter Halliday and Windsor Davies have small parts (fnar fnar) and there's the unforgettable and frankly unwanted chance to see Carmen Silvera, Rene's wife in 'ALLO 'ALLO, naked.
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6/10
"I hate sex. I use it, but I hate it."
Groverdox25 November 2022
"Clinic Exclusive", also known as "With These Hands...", is an outlier among British sexploitation flicks, and I wonder if that is why I had never heard of it until today. For one thing, it's not a comedy, which almost all British sex flicks were. We're spared the cringe-inducing comedy of the "Confessions" series. It also seems to try to tell a serious story.

This is the problem, as it so often is with movies that try to be erotic. Either the sex gets in the way of the story, or the story gets in the way of the sex. There's so much nudity in the first half of the movie that I expected a light sex-farce, with an unobtrusive plot that would just provide ample opportunities for the girls in the movie to show off their ample assets. In the second half of the movie, however, the nudity and sex takes a backseat to a serious, if rather silly, story.

The protagonist is a raven-haired vixen who works at an unspecified "clinic" in which she prostitutes herself to her clients and blackmails the richer ones with the threat of revealing their licentiousness. At first we follow Julie doing what she does, allowing herself to be molested by an old man whose butt the movie regrettably shows us, and also detailing a relationship she has with an older lesbian who is apparently in love with her. Also regrettably, the movie shows the harsh-featured, middle-aged Sappho topless.

In the second half of the movie, the protagonist seems to fall in love with one of her clients, and is shown questioning her amoral behaviour. The movie turns into a lesson in morals, which I'm pretty sure nobody who saw it expected, or wanted.

The last thing that sets this movie apart from all the other British sleaze that came out in the '70s is the performance by the main actress, Georgina Ward. It's actually fairly powerful. She's ideally chosen as a cold-hearted vixen who uses her sex appeal to ensnare people. It's only in the movie's bathetic climax that I didn't believe her, repeating words and phrases rapid fire as she does, like a robot gone haywire.

It's the screenplay that lets it down. It was written by Hazel Adair, whose "Virgin Witch" is a sleaze classic. Here, though, the story undercuts it, and if they wanted to make a sexploitation flick they should have kept it as light as it is in the beginning. If they wanted to make a serious movie about morality, they should have used that approach from the beginning.
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7/10
Efficient and unusual British sex thriller
wilvram21 January 2011
A fellow poster has pointed out, somewhat acerbically, that no 'self-appointed expert' has seen fit to comment on this film. Well, I couldn't claim to be an expert, (and isn't every contributor to this site self-appointed?), but I have seen it, so here goes.

The relatively inventive plot from the pen of accomplished scriptwriter Hazel Adair, enacted by an experienced cast, results in an above average film of its kind. Adair, best known as co-creator of the soaps COMPACT, and the long-running CROSSROADS also co-produced the film with her business partner, the ITV voice of wrestling for over thirty years Kent Walton, under the joint pseudonym Elton Hawke.

The classy Georgina Ward is highly effective as Julie, alluring but extremely ruthless proprietor of the clinic where she attends to her wealthy clients' sexual as well as medical needs, prior to blackmailing them. This situation is developed with some skill, leading to an unexpected finale. The frequent nude and (extremely) brief sex scenes are blended smoothly into the plot and refreshingly lack that snickering, self-conscious approach that typify many similar British films.

The likes of Alex Davion, Vincent Ball and Tony Wright, turned up quite often in the sort of British 'B' of a few years earlier that this kind of film replaced to a certain extent, and in some ways resembles. Carmen Silvera is memorable in a minor, but pivotal role as Julie's spurned lesbian lover.
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7/10
Wondering Hands.
morrison-dylan-fan30 July 2013
Warning: Spoilers
After having found the British Sex Comedy movies Spaced Out and Emmanuelle In Soho to be far better than I had originally expected,I decided to look at the film,which DVD company Odeon Entertainment had included with the delightful Spaced Out DVD.

The plot:

Taking advantage of a client showing weakness, massage parlour owner Julie Mason decides to tell loyal costumer Elsa Farson, (who deeply desires to be Mason's lover) that she must sort out a thousand pounds so that the parlour can be kept open,due to the building having a number of bills to pay.

As she waits for Farson to begin gathering up the cash,Mason begins over charging fellow clients in order for a secret pile of money to begin building.Happy about the money that she is secretly grabbing,Mason begins to think that she may be about to get more money than she ever could have imagined,when a new client called Lee Maitland tells Mason that he needs her skills to successfully steel a pile of cash right under her clients,and the police noses.

View on the film:

Thrown on the DVD by Odeon Entertainment with a cover which suggest that the title is a cheap piece of skin,the film quickly reveals itself to actually be a sharp and edgy Film Noir that has been given a new boost in life,thanks to Odeon Entertainment presenting a good,clean transfer of the movie.

Made at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK,the screenplay by Kent Walton and Hazel Adair, (who would also create the popular UK TV show Crossroads) takes an (at the time) extremely daring approach,by showing Elsa Farson,in a sympathetic,non-judgemental light,with Walton and Adair showing Julie cruelly take advantage of the law,due to the massage parlour being the only place where Farson is able to fully express her sexuality.

Along with the movie's refreshing views on homosexuality,Walton and Adair also give the movie a clinical Film Noir heart,with Mason being shown ready to use everything from destroying her clients lives, to false signatures in order to get her hands on piles of dirty money,which unknown to Mason is a desire that will lead her to getting swiped across the face by a sharp twist'n turning,brilliantly cynical Noir ending.

Opening with dazzling credits,director Don Chaffey, (who would later direct the Disney film Pete's Dragon,and had also earlier directed Jason and the Argonauts) shows a strong eye for stylisation by using elegantly handled camera moves to shows the glamorous world which Mason is dreaming about entering.

Contrasting Mason's "Fantasy dream" Chaffey and cinematography Brendan J.Stafford cover the film in a candle-lit,glass reflecting,mist filled atmosphere,which along with emphasising the striking Gothic appearance of the beautiful,and very good Georgina Ward, (who along with leaving film/TV behind after appearing in a 3 part episode of the TV show Crown Court called The Inner Circle,was also the only daughter of Viscount Ward,the –then Conservative MP for Secretary of State for Air Defence)also shows the dark,deceitful world which Mason is more than happy to attack others with,in the hope that her clinical planning will lead to her getting everything that she desires.
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Strange, mixed-messages British porn, now playing on Netflix
lor_16 December 2010
SEX CLINIC is not a good film, but like so many other mediocre & forgotten efforts (not a single self-appointed "expert" back in Blighty has submitted an IMDb comment) it has been revived by the porn video label Salvation Films and found its way to America's guilty pleasure known as Netflix.

Like most Netflix offerings, the blurb to "shill" the movie, which appears on the little white mailer, is thoroughly misleading, pegging the film as a homosexual S&M package. Instead we have a rather grim, downbeat tale of a beautiful massage parlor lady financially & emotionally mistreating her customers. Had this been made in NYC a few years later (see: Joe Davian, Phil Prince, etc.), the S&M would have been included along with a solid dose of verbal humiliation, also lacking here.

Georgina Ward makes a pretty if tepid villainess; it is interesting that her film and TV career ended soon after this turkey -she had made solid appearances on many fine shows like "Danger Man" and "The Avengers". She preys especially on older people, bilking a geezer (who unfortunately bares his unappealing backside for the camera) out of 500 pounds early in the show, and the main plot line involves her grabbing every penny that good ole Carmen Silvera can raise, latter having a lesbian crush on Ward.

The melodramatic plot line of revenge unravels in straightforward fashion, but what I found diverting (if only ephemerally) was the glum, dour tone of the movie. This is a case where rather talented, and some famous at the time (from their TV appearances) cast members are called upon to enact sleazy roles, and not in the typically comical, who cares? mode of so many British sex comedies of the period. I had a similar reaction watching BLUE BLOOD, a vanity film from 1973, in which it is almost shocking to see Derek Jacobi in endless bed scenes with beautiful unclad actresses - a man of his talent clunking through soft porn!

End result is indicative of a culture where, for historical reasons involving funding -see Alexander Walker's essential tome "Hollywood England" to get the background picture - movies were considered junk while theatre and TV reigned supreme in Blighty at this time. So actors would appear in demeaning roles in poverty-budget films without a second thought or even damage to their careers -bouncing right back to quality work on the boards or the tube.
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totally mislading poster
trevorandrewmillar-707697 January 2018
The poster at the top of this article is totally misleading. It gives the impression that this is a 1970s West German-style sex comedy; in fact it is a rather stern morality tale about a ruthless woman running a physiotherapy clinic, while mercilessly exploiting her customers, particularly an elderly love-starved lady who she bleeds white, taking her for every penny;eventually she gets her long overdue, well deserved comeuppance, courtesy of an even more experienced confidence trickster; anyone who watches consumer-advice tv programmes like the BBC's "Watchdog" will see the big con coming a mile off; the only surprise is the con-artist's motive. A pretty average criminal-caper B-movie.
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