If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Blistering performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

I really think this film has really taken a bum rap. It's sad to think, two of the main actors actually committed suicide, one shortly after this. I loved the saucy and cheeky nudity, full frontage, in a film that barely ceased to exist as a Roadshow title. As a thriller it really works. Some nutter is murdering sexy bare bodied girls who feature in the nudie magazine, Playgirl, where each month brings a cover girl victim, so it's not long before authorities figure the pattern, only this psycho is really clever, his method of kill- inflicting strangulation, bringing among suspects, one, a young photographer, with a bit of a dirty S and M record who does nudie sessions with models, one involving a rocking horse, you will never forget. So they send in a undercover cop posing as a budding model, where now things get quite risky. There are some terrifying edge of seat moments, if watching on a first view. I really like how Londoners make these B grades, whether psychological and sexual thrillers, or just saucy sex films, and The Playgirl Murders is quite tightly plotted. How's this? The chief detective who him and his partner work the murders, loves to have a bit of a gamble, where too another suspect, likes betting the horses too. This chief detective who used to play Frank Spencer's warring neighbor in Some Mother's Do Ave Em' would rather do this, than work a murder scene. The undercover cop audition was funny and sexy, and TPM really has it's moments. I really like this film a lot. Pity no one really agrees with me on this one. Jazzy soundtrack.

Recently,when I was looking at the filmography of Harry H.Corbett,I spotted a film that sounded like a very enjoyable Giallo-style mystery film called Cover Girl Killer,as I read up about the film,I found out that a film made in the seventies,which had a very similar plot,and also had a good amount of Sitcom stars had just been brought out on DVD.With having now seen the film,I feel that it did not get anywhere near to the potential that it could have reached.The plot: When police go to investigate a murder of a model,they discover that she has had a number written on her head.As they look into her career,it is revealed that she has posed nude for an occult-themed center fold in a magazine,which was published on the month that matches the number that was written on her head.Due to not wanting to raise any suspicious,the detectives decide to send an undercover police officer,to work at the magazine as a model.Although,when it is announced that she has been chosen to be the next center fold,the detectives start to wonder if they may have given the killer his next opportunity...View on the film: The people that I feel easily deserve a huge amount of praise for this film,is the DVD company Odeon Entertainment.Whilst the film is very low- budget,Odeon has treated the film with a huge amount of respect,which has included a surprisingly very impressive remastering,that has made the film look very shiny and (almost) new.My main disappointment that I have with this film,is that for having a plot that should offer a huge bundle of thrilling moments,the film is shockingly very dull,with the plot moving at an excruciating slow pace,even though the movie is only 90 minutes.Thankfully the cast is able to put a few bright moments into the film,with "The Major" from Fawlty Towers and Windsor Davies bringing a sense of fun,in the short scenes that they are featured in.The film is also helped by its lead star Mary Millington,who lights up the film with her excellent charm. Final view on the film:A extremely disappointing story,that completely destroys any potential that it should have reached.

This is a curious mixture of sex comedy and giallo crime story, with a lunatic stalking and killing cover-girls from top-shelf magazines and a couple of clueless coppers going after him; they get nowhere, so a luscious policewoman is sent undercover to infiltrate the sex trade and track down the killer.There's something strangely compelling and entertaining about The Playbirds. The 70s mores on display are very redolent of that bygone era, with pornographers waging an ongoing battle against the forces of repression, prudery and censorship. As this film was produced by Britain's most successful pornographer David Sullivan, it doesn't exactly debate an even argument - the anti-porn characters are either psychotic or hypocritical. The film is in essence one of the most daring product placement campaigns in cinema history - the murdered girls appear on the cover of Playbird magazine, a real mag published by Sullivan whose industrial, mass-production printing presses are the most compelling things on screen here, spewing out copy after copy of his nudie mags. The film stars the doomed Alan Lake as a Sullivan surrogate and the equally doomed Sullivan pin-up model and business associate Mary Millington plays (one can't quite say acts) the part of the undercover policewoman. With Millington in the part, the policewoman was never going to have any difficulties with the sexual side of her assignment, and she (the character and the actress playing her) throws herself with brio into various gratuitous sauna, bed and nude posing scenes.The giallo aspect of the film begins well, with some creepy stalking, nasty deaths and a colourful array of suspects. Yet it all goes rather pear-shaped in the final third, with a loss of suspense, a number of ludicrous plot-turns and a final twist ending which doesn't earn its place at all, although it does leave a compellingly nasty taste in the mouth, as Millington is violently strangled in her bath followed by the end credits - a genuinely shocking denouement.The film has a good pace, and some fantastic exterior location work which really does convey the bleak abandoned industrial awfulness of the UK in the 70s. The set dressing in the interiors leave something to be desired - check out the Police Chief's office for a case study of an unbelievable design, although with "shut up!" Windsor Davies playing the top cop, I suppose that realism was always going to be in short order in these scenes.There's no way a film as technically ragged and politically incorrect as The Playbirds would get into national cinemas now, which is a a shame, as under all of the propaganda and the poorly-thought-through amateur dramatics, you do leave the film with a genuine feeling for the atmospherics, values and tensions of the time it was made.

SPOILERS INCLUDEDA confusing, credits heavy read the recent BFI book ‘Pop Music in British Cinema', is chiefly notable for some eyebrow-raising inclusions into its cinematic survey, namely a few pretty obscure Derek Fords and most of the output of porn baron David Sullivan. While it's a stretch to consider Sullivan's productions Great British Pop musicals his ‘The Playbirds' does manage to be a stalker horror film, sexed up remake of 1959's Cover Girl Killer, Mary Millington vehicle and publicity machine for its maker.The Playbirds casts the most popular faces from Sullivan's sex magazines, appropriately as models all vying to be the cover girl of soft porn magazine ‘Playbirds' (a much plugged real-life Sullivan publication). The downside?-a limping,cloth cap wearing psychopath is on a mission to snuff out Playbirds' cover girls. Pat Astley starts the ball rolling, strutting her stuff around London before being strangled in her kitchen while making a cuppa tea. Two detectives-one clueless (Gavin Campbell) the other bad tempered (Glynn Edwards), are on the case,and find a chief suspect in Astley's boss-a wealthy porn baron and sex magazine publisher played by oily Alan Lake-in a role he clearly didn't have to look far for real life inspiration. The detectives also have a large hi-tech computer system (by 1970's standards) which comes up with a few more suspects like Terry Day a photographer with a violent past, Dudley Sutton's ‘Creeping Jesus' street preacher,and George Ransome-a‘clean-up' campaigner,amateur astrologer,and even more amateur pervert (when one character dubs Ransome ‘a simple voyeur' you half expect someone to quip back ‘there's nothing simple about voyeurism'). Ever willing to give the public want they want,oily man of polyester suits and gold medallions Lake gets a suspicious eye from the police when his latest pictorial turns out to be focused around witchcraft-represented here by a man in a joke-store werewolf mask being pleasured and dialogue like ‘sex, witchcraft and horses,the unholy trinity'. While getting to the bottom of this old black magic,Campbell and Edwards are introduced to Playbird Lena Cunningham (Suzy Mandel) a girl who knows how to get herself noticed-wiggling her backside at oily Alan in order to become Astley's cover girl successor,and also finding favour with her milkman when she answers the door in a see-through nightie and reminds him ‘I get it everyday' (she means a bottle of cream.) Campbell puts her under 24 hour surveillance,but while he can't keep his eyes off her when she's prancing around naked at Satanic photo opportunities,later when his back is turned she becomes victim No.4 (for those counting two other Playbirds have ended up Deadbirds off-screen).Combining their mucky minds Campbell and Edwards cook up the idea of sending a policewoman ‘undercover' into the sex industry in order to get her on the next Playbirds cover. Enter WPC Lucy Sheridan (Mary Millington)-who eager to expand her horizons in the force gets the cheeky coppers hot under the collar with an impromptu striptease. Sent working undercover in a massage parlour,Lucy takes to her new life ‘like a duck to water' rubbing down School for Sex man Derek Aylward and even finding time for a Sapphic moment with fellow masseuse Foxy (soon to become victim No.5). This behaviour may require a bit of explaining to her superiors, but Lucy's exploits do eventually lead her to the cover of Playbirds via Lake's bed. In the meantime, her male counterparts make a hash of the investigation, shaking down for information Tony Kenyon (in his trademark dirty old man role),arresting Sutton for the murders,and impounding Lucy's issue of Playbirds in order to preserve their colleague's modesty. Unfortunately all of this proves in vain, as the real killer whose obviously got the early edition, plays Lucy a surprise visit in the shower (‘sacrifice pretty girls'). The film ends with Lucy dead and topless in the bath, a gross parting shot that recalls the unpleasant ‘cute but dead' scenarios from Robert Hartford-Davis' The FiendThe Playbirds boasts a lengthy B-movie cast, which apart from the people already mentioned also includes Derren Nesbitt, Windsor Davies, Kenny Lynch, Faulty Towers' Ballard Berkeley and faded Devil Doll glamour girl Sandra Dorne. While it's not beyond the realms of possibility that some of those names brought in a few punters, the main selling point is of course the ‘Playbirds' themselves. Ex-Benny Hill girl Suzy Mandel pulls off a nifty little bit part despite having to play all her scenes in peek-a-boo clothes. Mary Millington struggles,but gives an enthusiastic performance in the only role that really reflected her star status. Sadly very few of the ‘legit' cast share Millington's enthusiasm and most are merely going through the motions. Chubby and bearded Derren Nesbitt is barely recognisable as Lake's right hand man,a role which significantly he took not long after the faux pas of putting everything he owned on the line in order to finance autobiographical sex film ‘The Amorous Milkman'.Willy Roe's amateurish direction, evident in cheaper efforts like 1979's-‘Queen of the Blues' benefits greatly here from a large-ish budget and richness of incident. Although The Playbirds' structure is as haphazard as the later movie with choppy, half finished look scenes, and randomly filmed (but often quite curious) padding including snapshots of real-life religious fanatics in Hyde Park and Lake and Ballard Berkeley reacting to footage of Newmarket horse racing. Long-time showbiz crony and Max Miller biographer John M.East, also manages to sneak himself a small but telling role as a downmarket journalist getting a salacious scoop on sex queen Lucy (Do you have a normal sex life?.....Are you a lesbian?.....Any kinks?).Superfluous Newmarket coverage aside however Roe manages to cut,clip and paste The Playbirds together with few dull moments,and a delightfully cheesy theme song, copious nudity from British sex queens and moments of unintentional hilarity (the killer escapes by bicycle at one point!) all add up to the most consistently entertaining of all the Mary Millington vehicles Although a box office performer in its day,The Playbirds has only recently begun to be rediscovered.