Flipside 022: Her Private Hell

[antnield]

Her Private Hell



The cautionary tale of an innocent girl abroad who gets caught up in the sleazy world of modelling, Her Private Hell was the debut feature of British exploitation director Norman J Warren (Satan’s Slave, Prey and Terror) and the UK’s first narrative sex film.

Beautiful but naïve Marisa arrives from the continent for a job as a fashion model but soon discovers she’s being groomed for a different purpose. Starring Italian actress Lucia Modugno (Il Generale della Rovere, Diabolik), the film ran for over a year in London and put Britain on the map in the realm of home grown adult features.

Extras
- Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition.
- Original Her Private Hell trailer.
- Alternative, uncensored US sequences (3 minutes).
- Screen Tests (4 minutes).
- Making Her Private Hell (15 minutes): new documentary with cast and crew interviews.
- Incident (Norman J Warren, 1959, 14 minutes): newly-created HD version of Warren’s enigmatic first film.
- Fragment (Norman J warren, 1966, 11 minutes): exquisite short about a woman’s unhappiness after a failed love affair.
- The Anatomy of a Pin-up (David Cohen, 1971, 30 minutes): modish documentary about attitudes to nude modelling in Britain.
- Fully illustrated booklet with new essays by Norman J Warren, David Cohen, Lynn Barber and Josephine Botting.

[MichaelB]

The BBFC has been classifying some additional material for Her Private Hell, Norman J. Warren's 1967 feature that was promoted on release as "Britain's first sex film". Given that it's Warren I'd say it was a more than safe bet that this will among the next Flipside titles.

The additional material classified, presuming it all ends up on the Warren disc:

Incident (1959, completed in 2007) - experimental black and white short directed by Warren, shot by Brian Tufano (Trainspotting) and told without dialogue.
Fragment (1966) - another Warren black and white short, "the story of young girl and her relationship with a young man which leads her to contemplate suicide" according to BFI's film and TV database.
The Anatomy of a Pin-Up (1971) - half-hour documentary by David Cohen (who worked mostly in television and would later make the 1991 feature The Pleasure Principle) and counting Barbara Cartland, Francoise Pascal and Katya Wyeth amongst its participants. The film was banned in Ireland upon its release and produced by Walter Shenson Films, previously responsible for the Beatles movies.

Given the simultaneous submission of the shorts, I think it's a very safe bet that it's a future Flipside title!

[antnield]

February 20th

[ellipsis7]

An original theatrical trailer...

[MichaelB]

Blu-ray.com has initial specs.

The trailer can be seen on YouTube - I'm assuming it's the same one.

[ellipsis7]

Those specs I think are from the Amazon listing just up...


Also notes the Special Features are subject to change...

...(but probably won't)...

[MichaelB]

Confirmed as region-free - and also as Flipside 022, so I've updated the Flipside master list.

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced:

RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIB1124 / BFI Flipside no. 022 / Cert 15
UK / 1967 / black and white / 81 mins / original aspect ratio 1.33:1 / region 0
Disc 1: BD50 / 1080p / 24fps / PCM mono audio (48k/16-bit)
Disc 2: DVD9 / PAL / Dolby Digital mono audio (320kbps)

[antnield]

Trailer

[MichaelB]

Mondo Digital.

[ellipsis7]

Louder Than War review

[antnield]

The Digital Fix.

[antnield]

Typically epic review from the Wilson Bros for DVD Active.

[MichaelB]

Typically epic review from the Wilson Bros for DVD Active.

It's magnificent - here's a taster of the second paragraph:

British audiences had relied on the outside world for its quota of smut, mainly in the form of art house movies like Cleo de 5 a 7, which could be seen in dingy establishments where clouds of smoke often obscured the screen, either by guys smoking cigarettes or generated through friction from the guys in the dirty macs.

[ellipsis7]

What a really fascinating release & great package - a rich time capsule of societal change and shifting sexual mores, as much a sociological as an entertainment document - well done the BFI (again!)...

Hopefully Flipside may soon turn their attention to giving Peter Whitehead's TONIGHT LET'S ALL MAKE LOVE IN LONDON a proper dual format BR/DVD release...

[MichaelB]

There's an interview with Josephine Botting, the producer of the Flipside version of Her Private Hell here - which goes into some detail about the logistics of a project like this. At any given moment, there are dozens of titles being considered as possible Flipside candidates, but quite a few fall at some stage of the rights and materials obstacle course.

The film had been on the Flipside schedule for a while but we struggled to find adequate film material. No negative is known to exist and the well-worn release prints were no doubt junked years ago. A print apparently survived in the US but there were problems accessing it, so in the end we returned to the distribution print in the BFI’s Archive. This was supplemented with material from the director’s collection and a tape copy of the US print. This allowed some of the imperfections to be corrected, slightly affecting continuity but plugging gaps in the dialogue caused by splices in the print.

[MichaelB]

Official Criterion Forum review.