Eskimo Nell (film)

Infobox Film
name = Eskimo Nell


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director = Martin Campbell
producer =
writer =
narrator =
starring = Christopher Timothy
Roy Kinnear
Katy Manning
Christopher Biggins
Christopher Timothy
Michael Armstrong
Beth Porter
Mary Millington
music =
cinematography =
editing =
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released = 1975
runtime =
country = flagicon|UK UK
language = English
budget =
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website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0072953

"Eskimo Nell", a.k.a. "The Ballad of Eskimo Nell" a.k.a "The Sexy Saga of Naughty Nell and Big Dick" , is a 1975 UK film directed by Martin Campbell and produced by Stanley Long. Though inspired by "The Ballad of Eskimo Nell", the movie owes little to the original bawdy song.

In Campbell's film, a writer, a producer and a director are hired by a seedy erotic film producer Benny U. Murdoch (Roy Kinnear), to make a dirty movie based on the poem. However, they run into difficulty when each of the production's backers want a completely different style of film made. Then Murdoch makes off with the money, and the three have to produce four "different" versions of the movie to keep everybody happy - a gay Western, a hardcore porno, a family version and a Kung Fu-style production.

Many of the films characters are based on real personalities of the time, Lady Longhorn and Lord Coltwind -the backers of the wholesome family version- are thinly veiled caricatures of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford. While Benny U. Murdoch is loosely based on Tony Tenser, head of Tigon films. A more obscure figure the film ridicules is Louis “Deke” M. Heyward, the London representative of AIP (American International Pictures) who had previously clashed with Eskimo Nell’s writer Michael Armstrong during the making of Armstrong’s directing debut The Haunted House of Horror in 1969. In Eskimo Nell, Heyward is parodied as “Big Dick” a crass, sweary American producer from “A.W.P Films”, and the backer of the hardcore porno version. A similar character had previously appeared in Armstrong’s script for The Sex Thief in 1973.

A pre-fame Mary Millington, then just a jobbing actress/model using her married name Mary Maxted, has a small role in the film, playing a stripping traffic warden who auditions for a part in the film within a film. Although Millington appears only fleetingly (with her audition speeded up for comic effect), stills from her scene were used to publicize the film in the likes of Titbits [Titbits (No. 4613, August 1-7 1974, "Eskimo Nell"] and Cinema X magazine.

The film is not to be confused with Richard Franklin’s 1975 film The True Story of Eskimo Nell which was released in the UK as “Dick Down Under”. Campbell’s film was re-titled "The Sexy Saga of Naughty Nell and Big Dick" in Australia.

References

"X-Rated - Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker" by Simon Sheridan (Reynolds & Hearn books) 2008

"Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema" by Simon Sheridan (Reynolds & Hearn books) (third edition) 2007

External links

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* [http://i313.photobucket.com/albums/ll387/vidmarc/EskimoNell.jpgUK Poster]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZheiWTvST00 Opening Scene]