Secrets of Sex

Secrets of Sex (1969, released 1970), also known as Bizarre, is a British film, directed by Antony Balch, an experimental filmmaker and frequent collaborator with William S. Burroughs. The film is narrated by an Egyptian mummy (voiced by Valentine Dyall). After directing the Burroughs-influenced shorts Towers Open Fire (1963) and The Cut Ups (1967), Balch approached producer Richard Gordon in 1968 to direct an anthology film running just over an hour, titled Multiplication. After the script was rewritten to bring the film up to feature length and the budget doubled (32,000 pounds) filming took place over 14 weeks in 1969. Released in February 1970, it was a huge success in the UK, running for six months at the Jacey Cinema in Piccadilly Circus alone, during which time it recouped its entire production cost. The film remained in circulation in the UK throughout the 1970s, sometimes appearing in a half hour edited version that played on the second half of double-bills. Five writers are credited with the script, although several other people, including Brion Gysin and Ian Cullen (writer of Cruel Passion (1977) and husband of Yvonne Quenet, who plays Mary-Claire in the film) also claimed to have worked on the writing. Many of the actresses who appear nude in the film, such as Nicole Austin and Maria Frost, were mainly topless models who had begun to get minor acting roles in British sex and horror films of the period. Frost, who plays Lindy Leigh in the film, was so horrified she’d been given a major role in the film that she reportedly told Balch “I’m a model, I can't act.” She had previously appeared in two Harrison Marks shorts, Maria and Scouts Honour. The dinosaur sculptures that feature in the “Strange Young Man” segment are the famous Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. Commenting on the film in an unpublished 1975 interview, Balch claimed “this is a very uneven film, but three episodes and a single shot, are good. I liked the ones with the photographer, Elliot Stein, and the Lady in the Greenhouse. The episode of the monster baby is a bore, but the single shot of it, at the end is brilliant.”