Film Report: Demon Baby (2014)

Demon Baby (2014)
aka: Little Devil
aka: Wandering Rose
Country: UK
Director: Corrie Greenop / Writers: Corrie Greenop, Lee Phillips
Stars: Carina Birrell, David Wayman, Cameron Jack

Engaged couple Rose (Carina Birrell) and Theo (David Wayman) are taking a camping holiday in the Scottish highlands.  Theo is full of enthusiasm for exploring the great outdoors and eagerly looking forward to becoming a father following Rose's recent news that she had fallen pregnant.  Theo is loving and attentive but Rose is feeling despondent and remote having done something she knows will shatter him when he finds out.  In the meantime Rose keeps having nightmarish visions that she cannot control, and as Theo becomes increasingly concerned about her, she begins to question her own sanity.

Demon Baby is the film's American title and its DVD cover art is clearly trying to gear it as a horror film.  Whilst the film does at times steer you into thinking in terms of a supernatural explanation, it is not ultimately of that genre and so may lead the viewer to an ending they were not expecting.
For its UK release it has been renamed again as Little Devil - this again sounds as though it is being aimed at the horror market.
The original title of the film was Wandering Rose which is somewhat vague but not misleading.

The nudity in this film comes from Scottish actress Carina Birrell in a scene in which her character is taking a shower.

Carina Birrell in Demon Baby (Little Devil)

Carina Birrell has previously been seen topless in episode 5 of the second series in BBC3's lesbian relationship drama Lip Service in 2012.

Film Report: Dark Vision (2015)

Dark Vision (2015)
Country: UK
Director: Darren Flaxstone / Writers: Darren Flaxstone, Bernie Hodges
Stars: Bernie Hodges, Suzie Latham, Judith Haley, Alicia Ancel, Oliver Park, Simon Pearce

Charismatic TV medium and hypnotist Spencer Knights (Bernie Hodges) presents an internet- steamed paranormal reality show called Mind-Full which visits Britain's spookiest locations and uncovers their dark secrets with the help of an intrepid celebrity guest seeking to overcome deep-rooted fears by means of Spencer's mind control techniques.  In the latest instalment, Spencer and his guest, along with a small crew, are staying overnight in the catacombs beneath the notoriously haunted Baylock's Folly where children were kept safe from the Black Death in the 15th century only to suffer at the hands of a Satanist madman instead.  Multiple hidden cameras cover every move as they explore the vast network of tunnels beneath the towering edifice.  Spencer spins an atmospheric tale for his viewers ramping up the intrigue, scares and drama - but something unexpected is going on, terrifying things that weren't scripted are occurring and it appears the team have disturbed a stalking evil spirit from which some of them may well not escape alive ...

Dark Vision is an effective and atmospheric British horror tale that does something refreshingly different with its premise.  There is also an encompassing story (which does seem a bit redundant) in which Spencer Knights and his crew are meant to be in a competition in which several rival paranormal shows are vying to get the most ratings and this is what drives Knights to do a reckless thing which awakens the evil spirit.  But we never see anything of these rival shows and are only updated on the "leaderboard" via occasional progress update captions and a few mentions in the dialogue.  The main story is good enough to have worked just as well without the need for what seems to be a largely immaterial plot intricacy.

The nudity comes from British actress Alicia Ancel who plays the celebrity guest Marva Clewes, a former hot soap actress with a pathological fear of the dark.

She has a lovemaking scene with the broadcast engineer in his technical van in which she is seen topless a couple of times.

Alicia Ancel in Dark Vision

Film Report: The Maid (2014)

The Maid (2014)
Country: UK
Writer/Director: Paul Emmanuel
Stars: Claire Kahane, Ryan Cerenko, Keith Hill

Plot: Emotionally troubled and angry-with-world American teenager Jack (Ryan Cerenko) has come on an unwanted trip to England to visit his hated British father David (Keith Hill).  Jack shuns all efforts his father makes to build bridges and blames him for everything wrong about his life.  It is Jack's 18th birthday soon but he hates his birthday because it reminds him his mother died giving birth to him.  His father's second marriage failed and now living with an uncle in the States he feels like an orphan who has never had a proper family. David employs a 20-something French maid called Maria (Claire Kahane) who tries to understand the pain Jack is feeling.  Jack finds her fascinating and soon develops a massive crush on her making his stay bearable.  Maria has hidden sorrows of her own and eventually that helps her empathise with him and a soul-searching relationship develops between the two of them that enables them both to grow and perhaps forgive those they judge to have wronged them.

Claire Kahane plays her role as Maria with a convincing French accent, so-much-so that whilst watching I assumed that she was a real French actress working abroad.  But it turns out she is an English actress who has worked on a number of projects although this appears to be her first lead role in a feature film.  Ryan Cerenko is also a British actor so (presumably) he too was putting on the American accent he uses.

There are two topless scenes which both feature Claire Kahane.  In the first she opens her blouse and lowers her bra cups when she grants Jack's request to kiss her breasts; later on she is topless in a bedroom when she and Jack have a lovemaking scene.

Claire Kahane in The Maid

Missing But Not Forgotten: The Last Detective

The Drama Channel have just concluded showing the ITV drama series The Last Detective starring Peter Davison as 'Dangerous' Davies, the undervalued detective whose superiors think of as the 'last detective" in line to be assigned cases of any importance.

The series ran on ITV from 2003 -2007 during which time there were 17 episodes made.  The penultimate episode The Man from Montevideo (broadcast on 24 May 2007) had an unexpected topless scene ("unexpected" because it wasn't the sort of series you'd have expected would have one).

In a subplot to the episode Dangerous Davies' friend and lodger Mod (Sean Hughes) meets an attractive East European barmaid called Katrina (Ksenia Zaitseva) and they start going out.  But she has an insatiable sexual appetite and Mod is soon exhausted and so when she comes knocking on the front door for him late at night he sends Dangerous down to fob her off.  As the door opens Katrina throws back her head and opens her coat revealing herself to be naked and ready - but then screams and turns tail when she opens her eyes and sees it is Dangerous standing there and not Mod.

I didn't issue a "Heads Up" because the way the Drama Channel were showing the series left doubt about whether the scene would survive.  For each episode over the course of a week they were showing them thrice: during the day; early evening (pre-watershed); and in a late night slot.  So knowing they would inevitably have to edit this episode for pre-watershed viewing it was unclear whether they would show it uncut in the late night slot or just lazily show the same cut version in all timeslots - so I erred on the side of caution.

As it turned out they did show a different, more complete version in the late night slot, but unfortunately it was still cut anyway!  The pre-watershed version was 7 minutes shorter which was achieved by cutting out nearly all of the scenes involving Katrina.  So if you watched the early showing then you wouldn't have seen much of her at all other than her initial scene in the pub when she and Mod meet.  The scene at the door with Peter Davison was missing entirely.

The late night version (shown at 23:40) restored all the missing scenes.  However when it got to the moment when she opens her coat at the front door the scene has an abrupt cut.  The front door opens and we see her standing there in her coat and then suddenly in a reverse angle shot she is running away in distress - seemingly simply because she sees Peter Davison standing there.  It must have seemed a rather odd and unexplained overreaction on her part to any viewer who didn't know how the scene was meant to play out.

It seems strange that the channel would restore all the removed footage but still make a tiny cut to this scene - so I wonder if the scene was altered like this on their original source.  Perhaps it is cut on the official DVD release as well - does anyone know?

Cut Sequence

In this collage the top row shows two consecutive frames on the Drama Channel broadcast which bridge the removed part and below that is a run of frames from the original TV broadcast showing what we were meant to see.

Ksenia Zaitseva (as she was originally credited) is now known as Ksenia Kaas.  She is a British/Russian actress who trained and lives in the UK.  The Last Detective was her first British TV work and she has subsequently had roles in Doctors, Trial and Retribution, The Bill, Holby City and Sirens as well as a few UK films.

Mystery Model Identified: Donna Dillingham

Thanks to a blog reader, a query from November 2013 has now been solved.

In the original blog entry "Uncredited Model in Various 1990s Programmes" I proffered my observation of the same unidentified model/actress being seen in a goodly number of TV dramas from the late 1990s.

She has now been identified as Donna Dillingham who was a men's magazine glamour model in the 1980s and 1990s

Donna Dillingham, from her younger modelling days

Although she was never credited in any of the programmes I saw her in, she does have an IMDB entry and was credited in a number of other things that I hadn't seen.

Here are the programmes in which she has appeared topless:-

Uncredited appearance in the 1998 BBC2 one-off drama Touch and Go

Uncredited dancer in a 1999 episode of BBC1 comedy series Roger Roger

In a 1999 episode of The Vice (Sons) she was seen as an uncredited woman on a video that PC Doug Raymond is viewing for evidence.  And in a 2000 episode of the same programme (Walking On Water) she is seen dancing on the floor at the feet of a group of men - seen briefly through an open doorway when undercover detectives Pat Chapel and Cheryl Hutchins are taken to a restricted part of the club they are infiltrating.

Another topless appearance I've just found out about after looking her name up was in a drama-documentary series called Hidden Empire.  In episode 4 A Son Of Africa she is seen washing in a bedroom.  This was shown on BBC2 on 29 Jan 1996 at 7:30pm.

Straight acting roles with no nudity
In a 1994 BBC1 Screen One presentation called Two Golden Balls she was one of six uncredited auditioning starlets hoping to get a part in the blue film being made by the main characters of the drama.  She's the one in the red dress.



She played an uncredited speaking character called "Diane" in The Secret World of Michael Fry, a 2-part C4 drama from 2000.

In a 2000 episode of Holby City entitled Into The Woods she plays a strip-o-gram stripping out of a policewoman's uniform for a patient celebrating his 50th birthday until she is stopped by a nurse (therefore no nudity) - she has a speaking role too and is credited in this.

In episode 3 of C4's 6-part 1999 comedy series about the music industry Boyz Unlimited she plays a make- up lady getting diva-ish boyband member James Corden ready for a photoshoot.  She has a speaking role and is credited.

Her IMDB entry shows she was also two 1993 episodes of Demob playing a dancer; in the final 1998 episode of The Broker's Man, and an episode of The Wilson's from 2000.  She is also listed for a 1995 film called Cynthia Payne's House of Cyn.  It's not known at the moment whether any of these roles involve any nudity or not.




Update: 8th January 2016
Spot the difference.  I see someone has been paying attention.  All but one of the above new "spots" have now been added to IMDB.  All except for Roger Roger, presumably because the exact episode she appeared in is not established.

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.