Film Report: The Adored (2012)

The Adored (2012)
Produced and Directed by Amarjeet Singh and Carl Medland / Written by Jody Medland

Depressed fashion model Maia (Ione Butler), in need of some confidence after a career break, employs professional photographer Francesca (Laura Martin-Simpson) to take some stylish photos of her to help her discover the woman she has now become after a rocky period in her marriage which has been tainted with personal tragedy.  Frankie takes the somewhat shy Maia to the North Wales coast where she lives by herself in a large isolated house.  Frankie is effortlessly confident and smart and fosters an ambiance in which Maia can feel at ease and show to the camera the side of herself that she has kept hidden.  With the professional work done Francesca invites Maia to stay on for a few days to relax.  Maia thinks Fran is the most together person she has ever met who has everything she wants, little knowing that Fran's self-assured exterior masks an obsessive insecure personality that harbours a secret longing and is engineering a stealthy seduction of her unsuspecting guest under cover of companionable friendship.  Will Maia succumb to Frankie's predatory desires and what will be unleashed if she spurns her?

The Adored is a UK lesbian-themed drama with an intriguing edge which is mainly a two hander between Laura Martin-Simpson and Ione Butler.  Their scenes are interspersed with occasional scenes of a troubled man with anger management issues in session with a woman psychiatrist, which at first seems to be unconnected to the main characters' story, although eventually all becomes clear.

Laura Martin-Simpson has been in a couple of UK films and has had BBC TV appearances in Holby City and Ashes to Ashes. Ione Butler who plays Maia has moved her career to the USA and has most recently appeared in an episode of CSI: Cyber.  Also in the film is Jake Maskall as the therapy patient who is familiar from TV as Danny in Eastenders (2004-2006) and more recently in the American TV series The Royals.

The film was shot on location in Tan-yr-Allt in Gwynedd, North West Wales at a former home of romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.  This is mentioned in the dialogue by Frankie although it has no particular bearing on the plot.  The exteriors show Shelley's house which has a plaque bearing his name and by the looks of it the interiors are on location too.  In real life the house is now a hotel.

Former home of Percy Bysshe Shelley, as seen in the film

The film has a soundtrack and a live on-screen performance (as a pub performer) by a singer who is (incorrectly?) billed as "Peaches" in the end credits.  However this is not the Canadian singer known by that name, but a British singer songwriter who is more properly called just "Peach".

(above) Peach as she appears in the film

Both of the lead actresses, Laura Martin-Simpson (Frankie) and Ione Butler (Maia), have topless nudity.

• Firstly, during the photoshoot Maia doesn't feel confident enough to follow Frankie's direction to remove her top for some sultry shots, so Fran heartily whips her own top off to show her how easy it is (Maia does take her top off after that but her poses remain unrevealing)
• Frankie is next seen topless in the bath bearing over Maia after a successful seduction.  Maia is very briefly seen topless too when she hears something that spooks her and sits up in alarm.
• In the third and final scene, Maia comes to Frankie's bedroom after a mini-falling out and initiates another encounter - in this sex scene both are seen topless.

Laura Martin-Simpson

Ione Butler

Film Report: Zygon (Doctor Who Spin-off)

Zygon (2008)
Director: Bill Baggs
1 hour

As I write the Zygons are in the middle of a major comeback in a two-part Doctor Who adventure.  This follows on from a successful reintroduction in the 2013 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor.  Before that they hadn't been seen since their one and only screen appearance forty years ago in the 1975 Tom Baker classic Terror of the Zygons written by Robert Banks Stewart.  But actually they sort of had, because in 2008 they featured in their own made-for-DVD spin-off story called Zygon.

Background: When Doctor Who was off air during the 1990s and through to 2005, a production company called BBV run by Bill Baggs specialised in putting together made-for-video productions for content-starved fans featuring Doctor Who associated tie-ins.

This began tentatively with original non-Doctor Who related stories starring lead actors who had been involved in the series.  From 1992 to 1995 there was a series of stories featuring a Doctor-Who-like character called "The Stranger" played by former Doctor Colin Baker whose assistant initially was former companion Nicola Bryant.  And in 1993 Jon Pertwee, Sylvester McCoy and Peter Davison starred in an original thriller called The Airzone Solution.

In 1994 BBV managed to gain the rights to use the character of Liz Shaw who had assisted Jon Pertwee's Doctor for his first series in 1970.  Original actress Caroline John played her again in a set of stories collectively called PROBE (the first couple of which were written by Mark Gatiss) although no other elements or references to the wider world of the Doctor Who universe were allowed to be used.  The productions continued with a trilogy of stories featuring UNIT and the Autons.

BBV were able to obtain permission to use isolated elements from the Doctor Who universe because often the rights to characters and monsters are owned by the original writer of the serial in which they first appeared.

This brings us on to the final (to date) BBV production in 2008 called Zygon.  This original story had no former Doctor Who actors involved, but featured the evil alien race of shape-shifters.  Although as before there are no other references to the wider Doctor Who universe.

(As far as I'm aware) Zygon stands out as the only BBV production to use nudity (both male and female) in the story which of course is why it comes up for special attention here.

Plot Outline: Electrician Michael Kirkwood (Daniel Harcourt) has been having disturbing dreams about being a shape-changing monster he calls a Zygon.  He seeks treatment from a young hospital psychiatrist called Lauren Anderson (Jo Castleton) who becomes intrigued about his case and seeks a psychological explanation for his recurring fantasy.  When Lauren is taken off Michael's case by her boss, she and Michael continue to see one another and fall in love.  Weird things start happening and it becomes clear that Michael's nightmares are in fact real and represent a suppressed memory of his true self as a Zygon infiltrator called Kritakh who became stuck in his human shape retaining no conscious awareness of his true self.  Michael's former Zygon partner Torlakh, in his human form of Bob Calhoun (Keith Drinkel), contacts Lauren and imbues her with the abilities of a Zygon allowing her to discover the intoxicating power of being able to pretend to be whomever she pleases.  Torlakh will stop at nothing to restore Michael's memories to enable them to fulfil the mission they were sent to Earth to accomplish.

The scenes involving nudity are as follows:-

Scene 1
• Jo Castleton (Lauren) - Topless and full frontal nudity in a bedroom with Michael as they start to have sex and his hand starts to glow and turn alien.

Scene 2
• Jo Castleton (Lauren) - topless and rear nudity when she leaves the bedroom in distress after Michael tries to strangle her in his sleep

Scene 3
• Lucy Lockly (Wife) - topless as she undresses in front of her husband (Matt Montgomery) unaware that he is really Lauren in shape-changing disguise - then laying contentedly asleep on the sofa after the sex as Lauren wakes up as herself.
• Jo Castleton (Lauren) - topless waking up on a sofa with a naked woman whom she just had sex with in the guise of the woman's husband.

Scene 4
• Jo Castleton (Lauren) - Topless as she looks at herself contemplatively in a mirror after she has had a shower - then topless as she gets onto the bed and sits up hugging her knees thinking about recent events.

Jo Castleton

Jo Castleton is the film's main star.  Her other credits include an episode of Doctors and other earlier BBV productions.

Lucy Lockly

Lucy Lockly only appears in one scene.  She has no other credits on IMDB.






Zygon is a competently made story that is worth a look.  It would make a fairly interesting low-budget sci-fi/horror story film even without the Zygon connection (they could have easily just used generic shape changing aliens and called them something else).

The Zygon creatures themselves are only sparingly seen in the story and nearly all of the time they are in human form.

===============================================

The use of overt nudity in a Doctor Who related drama may be unexpected and surprising but at least with Zygon the scenes were to an extent story-led.  The same cannot be said for an earlier and far less worthy effort from another company that unofficially used the Daleks.


Abducted By The Daleks made in 2005 basically featured naked girls being kidnapped and mistreated by Daleks.  The BBC understandably took action against this and tried to have it banned.  The makers re-released it with the cover title changed to Abducted By The Daloids although in every other respect it is still the Daleks.

It is a 55-minute film that was apparently written by "Billy Hartnell", produced by "Patrick Baker" and directed by "Don Skaro".

For this I'll give a full synopsis (therefore spoilers)
It follows the usual horror trope of a group of young people (in this case four women in skimpy dresses: Katarzyna Zelnik, Eliza Borecka, Sonja Karina and Linda Black) finding themselves stranded somewhere remote.  The four girls are driving along a main forest road at night.  Naturally the car breaks down and they have to go into the creepy fogbound woods looking for help.  They don't know it yet but they are under observation by Daleks in a spaceship who decide this quartet will make ideal specimens with which to study Earthlings for weaknesses.  Isabella becomes separated from the others and decides to take her dress off (don't know why) and walk around naked.  She is the first to be teleported to the Dalek ship where she finds herself at the mercy of strange machine-like beings who demand she obey.  Back in the forest Sylvia and Barbara get sidetracked from looking for Isabella to engage in some naked lesbianism in the middle of which they too get teleported to the ship.  The Daleks get nowhere interrogating the three girls so they teleport up Anna whom they impel with menaces to be their agent and take over the interrogation dressed as a dominatrix with a whip.  The Daleks get riled when this is unsuccessful and exterminate their three prisoners whilst Anna escapes and teleports back down to the forest.  But there has been a malfunction and she looks completely different (now played by another actress) and she has also become naked and her accent has changed.  She walks around and is captured by a perverted hunter who ties her to a tree and molests her.  Then she is found by a humanoid alien who likes to skin humans alive.  She is saved from this fate when the Daleks teleport the alien to their ship and exterminate it.  Anna finds her way to a police station and makes her report still naked although it turns out the police officers are in league with the Daleks who recapture her ... THE END


It is listed as a UK-made production and the dialogue is in English but a couple of the girls speak in thick East European accents and seem to struggle a bit with the dialogue.

Eliza Borecka

One of the other actresses (Eliza Borecka) seems to have a regional UK accent which is hard to pin down (maybe one from Northern Ireland).  She did the best acting job of the bunch but I haven't established if she has any actual UK links - her credits don't show any UK films so unless she is known under a different name perhaps she was simply a good enough actress to do different accents.



Linda Black also sounds like she comes from the UK - however she gets replaced about two thirds of the way through by another actress called Maria Vaslova by explanation of a teleport malfunction which changes her appearance to that of the new actress who now speaks with a thick accent.  It is not clear if the original actresses name is Lina Black or Linda Black since the spelling differs on the opening and closing credits.  The change of actress seemed a very odd thing to do story-wise.  I can only speculate that maybe the first actress backed out of doing any nudity which only happens for her character after the change.  Or maybe the makers wanted to belatedly lengthen the film for commercial release and came back to shoot new footage to tag on the end and the original actress wasn't available so they devised a contrivance for the change of appearance.

Because none of the actresses (seem to) have any UK links and are not high-profile European names, no scene descriptions for this film appear on the online Topless Review site.

But for anyone interested here's what they would have been ...

Eliza Borecka (Isabella)
Full frontal nudity peeling off her dress over her head in an eerie forest - then full frontal nudity as she looks around for her friends with a torch - and gets her foot stuck in brambles - then as she is teleported to a Dalek spaceship so they can study her • topless manacled laying down in a cell room as Anna #1 (Linda Black) and the Daleks come to interrogate her - later topless and rear nudity as she attacks a Dalek and attempts to escape but is then shot and killed by the Daleks.

Katarzyna Zelnik (Sylvia) and Sonja Karina (Barbara)
Their scenes are all done as a pair so descriptions are the same for both

Sylvia and Barbara are captured by the 'Daloids'

Full frontal nudity in an eerie forest as they undress each other and engage in some lesbian petting to comfort their fears - and then as they are teleported to a Dalek spaceship and taken prisoner - then full frontal nudity as they are marched to an interrogation room • full frontal nudity manacled to a wall of a cell room - as Anna #1 (Linda Black) and the Daleks come to interrogate them - then full frontal nudity as the Daleks fire lasers at them to torture them - then full frontal nudity as they escape and go to the teleport room - but are then recaptured and killed by the Daleks.

Linda/Lina Black (Anna #1)
No nudity

Maria Vaslova (Anna #2)
Topless as she wakes up in the forest after going through the teleport and discovering that her body has changed - then full frontal nudity as she walks in the forest looking for a way out - then finding a handbag and putting on some makeup - then full frontal nudity as she hides from a hunter (Terry Barlet) - then full frontal nudity tied to a tree as the hunter uses her as bait for a serial killer monster that roams the forest - then full frontal nudity as the hunter fondles her - then full frontal nudity gagged as the Serial Skinner (Lenny Delmore) approaches her and toys with her with his knife and draws lipstick lines on her body to mark his incision points until she is saved by the Daleks when the Skinner is teleported away • topless sitting in a police station telling a detective (Baron Trenck) what happened to her.

Heads Up: Bad Girls on CBS Action

Freeview channel CBS Action is about to start showing the 1999-2006 series Bad Girls.  The ITV drama, set in the women's prison HMP Larkhall, ran for 107 episodes.

For all its qualities, the series was not strong on nudity and the only overt nudity came in Series 1 from Mandana Jones.

Mandana Jones in Bad Girls

In one scene her character is undergoing a strip search (top row) and in another scene she is changing in her cell (bottom row).  Specific episode numbers are currently unknown although I would anticipate they are from different episodes.  Series 1 ran for 10 episodes and from reading an episode guide the second episode seems to have a plot that could account for the strip search scene.

The only other slight nudity was in series 3, episode 2 (or episode 25 overall) from 2001 when Debra Stephenson's character is attacked in a shower - but it is very marginal and fleeting.

There may have been other "almost" moments but nothing that has emerged as being enduringly noteworthy.

It is being shown on CBS Action every weeknight from 10:00pm starting on Wednesday 21st October 2015.  With the same episode then repeated later on at 1:00am.

UPDATE: 24/Oct/2015: The strip search scene was in episode 2 of series 1.
UPDATE: 12/Nov/2015: The scene shown on the bottom row of the collage turned out to be from series 2, episode 6.

Film Report: Curse of the Witching Tree (2015)

Curse of the Witching Tree (UK 2015)
Director: James Crow

Plot Outline: Amber Thorson (Sarah Rose Denton) is a mother of two who is having to cope alone while her husband is in hospital in a coma from which he is unlikely to recover.  Amber rashly decides to buy a large 800-year-old farmhouse in Kent called St Jonas Farm and moves in with her student daughter Emma (Lucy Clarvis) and 12-year-old son Jake (Lawrence Weller). Unfortunately for all concerned the farm has a bad history and was the site of tragic events many centuries ago when a medieval witch called Isobel Redwood was hanged from a nearby tree accused of killing her young son Ulrich.  Isobel cursed the tree and all children who touch it - a curse which has not diminished with the passage of years.  Jake unwittingly touches that certain tree while hiding in the woods from a gang of school bullies and brings back to the farmhouse vengeful spirits of the long dead children who proceed to make the lives of its occupants a living nightmare ...

Curse of the Witching Tree is a suspenseful horror film from writer, producer and director James Crow.  This is his feature debut after making a number of short films.  It was co-produced by actress turned producer Lucinda Rhodes(-Flaherty) who used to play the sister in Cavegirl. There are no star names amongst the cast although Gary Lineker's wife Danielle Bux makes a brief appearance as the evil (young) witch.  Although Sarah Rose Denton heads the cast, the main action tends to centre more on the plight of her two children Emma and Jake.  Emma is said to be a student and although her precise age is not mentioned she is probably in her adult teens.

The nudity in the film comes from co-lead Lucy Clarvis in two scenes, one of which is probably the best bath scene you're ever likely to see.  She is a relatively new actress from Lincolnshire in her mid-20s with one other 2015 horror feature on her credits and a number of shorts.

Lucy Clarvis in Curse of the Witching Tree

The main scene shows Emma (Lucy Clarvis) topless having a peaceful bath after some upsetting events only to have her peace shattered by a phantom presence.  The other scene is later on when she is seen marginally topless while preparing to take a shower.

Film Report: Bonobo (2014)

Here's the first in (perhaps) a regular theme of reports on recent UK films that haven't otherwise had much attention.

Bonobo is a drama about a strait-laced and lonely middle-aged widow called Judith (Tessa Peake-Jones) whose 20-year-old daughter Lily (Eleanor Wyld) has dropped out of law school and left home to join a notorious commune at a place called Bonobo House.  Uptight Judith is determined to "save" her only child from her folly and visits the commune to persuade her to come back - Lily is just as determined not to leave having found an inner peace.  The leader of the small close-knit commune is Anita Janacek (Josie Lawrence), a philosophy doctorate who believes that harmonious living can be achieved by following the behavioural lifestyle of the Bonobo monkey where all members adhere to the principle of making love not war and resolve their differences and disputes accordingly.  Judith is naturally sceptical but is persuaded by Anita to stay with them for a day and experience the way they live and then she will help resolve the pent-up difficulties between mother and daughter.  Judith reluctantly agrees and so embarks upon a life changing new episode in her own life.

Also starring is James Norton who has had a high TV profile recently in shows such as Life in Squares, Granchester, Happy Valley and Lady Chatterley's Lover.  He plays a commune member who has a penchant for doing naked yoga in the garden.  Bonobo is the debut feature of director Matthew Hammett Knott.

The film features both male and female nudity seen as the commune members cavort naked and free outdoors; and at bedtime practising the principles of free love.  Eleanor Wyld does the main honours for the fairer sex and this would seem to be her proper nude debut having previously done a "side view/almost" type scene in Misfits on E4 in 2012 (series 4, episode 2) where she was credited as "Eleanor Wild" playing a blind girl who can see telepathically through her guide dog.


Here is a description of the scenes in Bonobo.
In the pre-credits prologue scene naked commune members are seen running in the forest and then sitting down in a group when Lily sees her mother watching them from behind a tree - although it turns out to be a troublesome dream her mother Judith is having about what she thinks her daughter is getting up to at the commune.  In addition to Eleanor Wyld and some commune men there are also two other naked young women in the group - they are credited as Helen Anslow and Carolyn Mellor although they are not seen again in the rest of the film so are essentially non-speaking extras.  A little while later Judith dwells on it a bit more and we see a few more new shots of Eleanor Wyld topless.  There is a brief moment when Judith thinks she sees Lily prancing about naked in her back garden in a window reflection - but it is her imagination and makes her realise how lonely she is without her daughter.  Later on at the commune Lily is seen topless making love astride Ralph (James Norton) on a bed.  And lastly Lily is seen with (mostly) rear nudity larking around in the commune garden with two of the guys as they play a prank on Ralph while he is sitting meditating.

Eleanor Wyld in Bonobo

Eleanor Wild in Misfits

NOTE. If you seek out this film be aware that strangely enough there were two full-length UK films released in 2014 called "Bonobo".  The other one is an entirely different story and stars Caroline Langrishe.

Heads Up: Playing The Field on CBS Drama

Starting soon the Freeview channel CBS Drama will be showing the BBC1 series Playing the Field written by Kay Mellor about the women's football team The Castlefield Blues.  It begins on Thursday 8th October at 9pm and then every subsequent weekday at the same time.

Playing the Field began in 1998 and ran for five series ending in 2002 with 32 episodes made in total.

The first couple of series had a fairly high female nudity quotient, but by the time of the latter few series this had almost entirely disappeared as an ingredient.

I know which of the known scenes take place in series 1 having seen that one in full.  The remaining scenes must be from series 2 onwards with a fairly high likelihood that most of them are from the second series.


SERIES 1 (1998, 6 episodes, 50 mins each) - started 8th March 1998
No nudity in episodes 1, 3 or 6

Episode 2
Jo McInnes - Brief rear nudity (mainly) jumping into a communal bath

Episode 4
This episode has what is probably the drama's most well known scene when the team are celebrating in the showers.  Marsha Thomason and Saira Todd are the main actresses seen topless; and Saira Todd also has another bit of brief nudity elsewhere in the episode

Episode 5
Tracey Whitwell and Saira Todd have nudity together in a bedroom scene


SERIES 2 (1999, 7 episodes, 50 mins each) - started 18th February 1999
Updates in blue to confirm episode numbers

Debra Stephenson - There are several episodes in which she is seen topless - a few in a bedroom and one sitting in a communal bath (that one I believe to be episode 2).  She is seen almost topless twice in episode 1; topless in the baths in episode 2; and topless in a bedroom scene in episode 6.
Marsha Thomason - She is topless in the same communal bath scene as Debra Stephenson and another scene in a normal bath in which she is briefly topless.  The communal bath scene is in episode 2 and the other bath scene is in episode 5.
Lorraine Ashbourne - She is seen topless is a scene in which she is giving birth.  This is in episode 1.
Jo McInnes - there is a scene in which she is topless in a bedroom getting dressed while talking to a man.  This is in episode 4.


SERIES 3 (2000, 6 episodes, 50 mins each) - started 8th February 2000
Emma Rydal - A brief topless side view getting out of bed.  This is in episode 3 of series 3
+ There is a topless scene involving an uncredited extra lying in bed next to a man that has been pinpointed as being from episode 5 of the third series.


SERIES 4 (2000, 7 episodes, 60 mins each) - started 13th July 2000
No known scenes hail from this series


SERIES 5 (2002, 6 episodes, 60 mins each) - started 6th January 2002
The only nudity in this series was in episode 5 when Kelli Hollis "supposedly" flashes her backside from the clubhouse door - but it is a cutaway close-up and so could have been a double.


Some collages showing various scenes from throughout the series
This run down currently assumes any unpinpointed scenes are from series 2.

Debra Stephenson from various episodes in series 2

Emma Rydal from series 3

Jo McInnes from series 2 and series 1 (bottom right)

Kelli Hollis from series 5

Lorraine Ashbourne from series 2

Marsha Thomason from series 1 and series 2 (bottom left)

Saira Todd in two episodes from series 1

Tracy Whitwell from series 1

Uncredited from series 3

Killing Me Softly again; and Clocking Off on CBS Drama

True Entertainment have scheduled another showing of Killing Me Softly.

Again it is listed as the 2002 Heather Graham film, but last time they said this it turned out to actually be the 1996 BBC Screen One film of the same name that features some Maggie O'Neill nudity.  I can only assume it will be that one again despite what the listings state.
See the post Killing Me Softly Mix-Up for more details:

It is set to be shown on Saturday 5th September at 9pm



New Freeview Channel Launched
A new Freeview channel started yesterday (on 1st September) called CBS Drama on channel 74 and joins a roster of its sister channels already on Freeview (CBS Action, CBS Reality and Horror Channel).

Alison Swann in Clocking Off episode 1

I found out too late about the channel launching, and their programming, to do a Heads Up post about it, but they are showing the BBC drama Clocking Off (first shown in 2000) every night at 9pm.  Episode 1 contained a minor topless scene featuring Alison Swann in bed with John Simm.



The only other nudity in Clocking Off is Nicola Stephenson in episode 5 of the third series.

Other programming that may be of interest:
The new channel is also showing Sex and The City and Californication each weekday evening from 10pm.