Film Report: Bloodlust (2014)

Bloodlust (2014)
aka: Bloodless
Country: UK
Writer/Director: Richard Johnstone
Stars: Patrick Wilde, Angela Zahra, Bill Fellows, Victoria Hopkins, Louis Murrall, Anna Scott, Lucas Hansen

Bloodlust is a UK horror film about a disparate group of couples who have all separately applied to take part in a medical drugs trial being held at a remote castle.  The coordinator in charge of the trial (Patrick Wilde) sets out very strict rules and forbids any contact with the outside world confiscating all means of mobile communication.  They are told they are free to leave whenever they want but only those who stay the distance will be paid the not inconsiderable fee on offer.  After a few days one couple find the regime too extreme and decide to leave but discover to their cost that leaving was not really an option after all as they are set upon by something predatory and hungry once they have said their goodbyes to the others and left the castle grounds.  Those that remain are soon fighting for their lives as they discover the true nature of the trial organisers and the real reason they have been lured here.

The nudity to mention in this film comes from Victoria Hopkins playing one of the main trial volunteers.  She is an Australian actress who works mostly in the UK on low-budget horror films such as this.  The nudity is brief and comes when she is reaching for a towel after coming out of the shower.

Victoria Hopkins in Bloodlust

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