Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly
United States VHS cover
Directed by	Freddie Francis
Produced by	Ronald J. Kahn
Written by	Brian Comport
Starring	Michael Bryant Ursula Howells Vanessa Howard Howard Trevor Pat Heywood
Music by	Bernard Ebbinghouse
Cinematography	David Muir
Editing by	Tristam Cones
Distributed by	Cinerama Releasing Corporation
Release date(s)	February 12, 1970
Running time	101 min
Language	English

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly, released as Girly in North America, is the name of a 1970 British horror-comedy cult film. Based on a stage play by Maisie Mosco entitled Happy Family (which was later adapted into a novella by screenwriter Brian Comport as "Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly"), the film is a dark and playful allegory of the breakdown of the nuclear family of the 1950s as a result of the free love movement of the 1960s.^{[citation needed]}

Plot

The film's principal characters are the members of a wealthy English family living in a secluded manor house in the English countryside, and whose names are synonymous with their roles within the family: Mumsy (the mother, Ursula Howells), Nanny (the nanny, Pat Heywood), Sonny (the son, played by Howard Trevor), and Girly (the daughter, Vanessa Howard).

Despite being in their twenties, Sonny and Girly act like prepubescent children, dressing in English school uniforms and sleeping in giant cribs in a room full of toys. The family's lives are built around an elaborate role-playing fantasy, called "The Game", which is structured around a set of ill-defined yet strictly enforced rules. Because a rich childhood is incomplete without friends, Sonny and Girly regularly seek out male loners, the homeless, and hippies to lure back to their house (using a scantily clad Girly as lure), where they are then forced to play "The Game". Should the "new friends" refuse, they are "put on trial" and then "sent to the angels"-- a euphemism for being made the victim in snuff films produced by Sonny in which he ritualistically hunts down and murders the men on the manor grounds.

One night, Girly and Sonny stake out a swinging London party, where they encounter a male prostitute (Michael Bryant) and his latest client (Imogen Hassall). An instant attraction develops between Girly and the man, who convinces his client to accompany the siblings for a night of carousing. Girly and Sonny take the couple to a playground, where they murder the woman by throwing her off of a large slide. The next morning, Sonny and Girly convince the hungover man that he murdered the woman after a night of heavy drinking, and convince him to return to the manor with them. The prostitute—rechristened "New Friend"-- is outfitted in schoolboy clothes and subjected to an indeterminate period of torment "playing the game," during which he is repeatedly presented with his client's body as a reminder that the family has incriminating information about him.

After Mumsy makes sexual overtures to New Friend one evening, he gets the idea to turn the family against itself. "New Friend's" plot succeeds, as he creates sexual jealousy between the women after first sleeping with Mumsy and then Girly. Sonny, left out of the sexual politics, petitions to have New Friend "sent to the angels," resulting in Girly bludgeoning him to death with an antique mirror. Nanny attempts to secure New Friend for herself by murdering Mumsy with acid-tipped needles, but the attempt fails and Girly hacks Nanny to death with an axe and cooks her head for use in baked goods.

Rather than turn on one another, Mumsy and Girly declare a truce, deciding to "share" New Friend by alternating what days of the week each woman will be permitted to have sex with him. The two women agree, though ponder what will happen should either of them ever become bored with New Friend, with Mumsy delcaring it as an inevitability. Preparing for this day, New Friend settles into Mumsy's room with the acid-tipped needles Nanny had attempted to kill Mumsy with, content to bide his time enjoying the womens' company.

Production

Due to its proximity to Bray Studios, Oakley Court was used for exterior work and establishing shots in a number of British film productions requiring a gothic castle, most notably a number of Hammer horror films. One of Hammer's regular directors, Freddie Francis, became enamored of the building, and decided that he would like to take full advantage of the house as a setting for a movie. Francis resolved to break tradition by filming inside of the actual house instead of using sets or alternate locations for interiors, as had been done on all productions shot at Oakley Court in the past.

Francis hired screenwriter Brian Comport to write a script, with Francis' only condition being that it had to take place at a location modeled after Oakley Court and take full advantage of the house's interiors and grounds. Comport was unsure what kind of script to write until he saw a production of the short-lived play Happy Family by Maisie Mosco, about a woman who leads her children, maid, and friends in an elaborate role-playing game after her husband abandons her following a hysterectomy. Neither comport nor Francis particularly liked the play (which itself drew influence from Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle), but found it to be a good jumping-off point for "the kind of story" that would take place at Oakley Court.^[1] Little of the play's source material remains in the film, beyond the principal characters' names and the concept of a family bringing home people to join their role-playing game (notably, Sonny dies midway through the play, there is a female "new friend" who appears in the second half, and the play ends with Mumsy and Nanny professing their suppressed lesbian love for one another and deciding to poison everyone so that they can be together). Modern film critics point to the film as a possible influence on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, for a scene in which Nanny hacks through the panel of a door with an axe, exposing her face to the room's occupant; the scene predates the infamous "Here's Johnny" sequence in The Shining by over a decade.^[2][3]

Comport's decision to imply incest in an early scene between Sonny and Girly led to difficulty with censors, and helped to hinder the film's promotional campaign and reception of a wide release. Comport had initially toyed with the idea of making the siblings' incestuous relationship more overt (the siblings are openly incestuous in the source play), but ultimately decided against it. Coincidentally, another British horror film released concurrently with Girly, Goodbye Gemini, also dealt with themes of consensual sibling incest, and the two films fell victim to a campaign against indecency in cinema.^[4]

The film received a limited release, including a brief run in North America as Girly, where it opened to positive reviews, including one in Variety. The film was subsequently released to VHS in North America (again under the title of Girly); copies proved difficult to obtain in the United Kingdom, as the organizers of a Freddie Francis film festival in 2004 were unnable to turn up a print or VHS copy of the film to screen. Around 2006, bootleg copies of the film began to surface on the internet. Shortly thereafter, Salvation Films announced that they had obtained the rights to release Girly on DVD. The release entered development hell, with Salvation promising the film's upcoming release on its website for the next three years. In the interim, Freddie Francis passed away, eliminating hopes of a potential director's commentary. Salvation ultimately sold their rights to Scorpion Releasing, who recorded an interview with writer Brian Comport and obtained a radio interview with Francis regarding the film to be included as special features. The DVD was released on March 30, 2010, with remastered audio and video.

References

1. ^ Comport, Brian. Writer's commentary. Girly DVD. Scorpion Releasing, March 30, 2010.
2. ^ DVD Beaver: Girly
3. ^ British Horror Films: Mumsy Nanny Sonny and Girly
4. ^ Comport, Brian. Writer's commentary. Girly DVD. Scorpion Releasing, March 30, 2010.

• "Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly". American Film Institute. http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=23485. Retrieved September 26, 2011. 
• Hardy, Phil, ed. (1995), The Overlook Film Encyclopedia, 3, Overlook Press, ISBN 0-87951-624-0, http://books.google.com/books?id=3-ehQgAACAAJ&dq=overlook+film+encyclopedia 

External links

• Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly at the Internet Movie Database
• Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly at AllRovi