Very well executed

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This movie has the triple distinction of being one of the 72 (though some sources state there were really 74!) infamous "Video Nasties" crackdown that took place in England during the first half of the 1980s, one of the 39 among them that were successfully prosecuted and subsequently suffered from a long-term ban, and also the only British film to actually make the list! Now that I have watched it for myself, I cannot say the picture does in fact deserve all the attention that comes with such notoriety but, considering the quality of the sheer majority of those "Video Nasties", this is definitely a step-up! Incidentally, EXPOSE' has a couple of other more appropriate monikers: TRAUMA and THE HOUSE ON STRAW HILL (which is the title borne by the copy I acquired), and I am pretty sure the latter was intentionally evoking both STRAW DOGS (1971) and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972), two even more infamous films of the era; to be fair, it does owe something to each of them but, to the movie's credit, it also has its own identity.The plot deals with a novelist (a dubbed Udo Kier – as it happens, the star of yet another "Video Nasty" i.e. FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN {1974}) who has acquired instant celebrity status with his first book and is having a hard time following it up (though how he pretends to even be considered for the Pulitzer Prize with a piece of erotic fiction filled with such descriptions of someone engaging in the sexual act "like a virtuoso on his Stradivarius", to say nothing of blatant errors in typography picked up in close-ups, is beyond me!). To this end, he retires to a county house in England and, in order to speed up the writing process and meet his publisher's deadline, he is sent a secretary (Linda Hayden). The girl, however, has an agenda of her own – tied up with the nightmare that Kier himself keeps having (his neurosis extends to donning rubber gloves while making love to his girlfriend, softcore superstar Fiona Richmond!) – and soon proves to be even more disturbed than he is! The STRAW DOGS connection is particularly evidenced by the scenes involving a couple of yokels – one of whom, amusingly, sports a T-shirt boasting the inscription "I'm a Vampyre") – who importune Hayden when she arrives at the train station and then get to rape her in the fields outside Kier's house. The incident, however, does not traumatize her in the way that it should (which is, perhaps, another clue to her unhinged state-of-mind) since, for one thing, she disposes herself of the duo pretty easily but, also, because she had been repeatedly masturbating to the photo of the man who appears as a murder victim in Kier's visions (she even absents herself from typing to go have a 'quick one', with her employer subsequently pointing out "You've been a long time", to which she giddily quips, "In coming?"). One wonders why Hayden does not just 'get it on' with Kier (even if she does, eventually, as well as Richmond when the latter turns up at the house!)...but, of course, it has something to do with her mission there – which is to see the novel through before the revenge (I predicted the outcome of this, by the way: Kier is, in fact, a fraud who has not only stolen the manuscript of the true author and passed it off as his own but he has even killed the man, who happens to be Hayden's hubby) can be actuated. An interesting scene in this regard has the leading lady so into her work by the end that she literally finishes the book for the hero.Therein, then, lies a typical problem with this type of fare: even if, deep down, we sympathize with Hayden's motives, her extreme methods still decree that she is made out to be a villainess and, consequently, has to pay for her actions – but it also means that Kier himself, whose selfish/callous behavior actually put the whole thing in motion, is ultimately let off the hook (despite being the recipient of several knife wounds which will surely make him think that much harder on his next career move!) thanks to the eleventh-hour and, frankly, WTF intervention of one of the rapists who has unaccountably survived a gunshot to the face!! Apart from those instances already mentioned, the violence – not all that gory given its reputation (incidentally, my copy ran for 80 minutes, which I take to be a PAL conversion of the original 84-minute duration) – is directed at an old and nagging housekeeper (when she refuses to leave) as well as Kier's girlfriend (after Hayden has tricked her employer so that the two can remain alone). The sex, on the other hand, is ample and rather strong for the time but still too-obviously simulated (especially Richmond performing fellatio on Kier). For the record, Hayden and Richmond would later reunite for the same director in LET'S GET LAID (1978) – with the film he made in between, HARDCORE (1977), being a fictionalized biopic of Richmond (who even portrays herself)!

As others have said this is the only British-made film to have been banned in Britain during the "video nasty" scandal. Ironically, all the other films that the British government tried to ban are extremely popular today in Britain , even though most of them are completely worthless dreck (i.e. "The Dorm that Dripped Blood", "Forest of Fear"). But this film, while popular in Britain, is virtually unknown outside of the UK unfortunately--the idiot British censor only really managed to effectively ban one of the halfway-decent "nasties" from the rest of the world.The movie features Udo Kier as a weird neurotic writer who wears rubber gloves (but apparently not a condom) during sex. Linda Hayden plays a psychotic secretary he hires, who seems to have some very dark ulterior motives. Kier is always pretty good, even if this isn't one of his best performances. Hayden though is GREAT. She has often expressed regret about this role, perhaps because for a RADA-trained actress, she spends a lot of time naked and/or masturbating. She also takes a lesbian roll in the hay with Kier's statuesque girlfriend (Fiona Richmond), and gets raped "Straw Dogs"-style by two local yokels (perhaps this might partly explain the alternate title), but right afterward she turns into Camille Keaton in "I Spit on Your Grave" (although this movie was actually made before that one). It's kind of hard to complain though that the lovely, lovely Linda Hayden would appear in such sexually graphic role, but really any number of actresses could have done THAT. None of them, however, could have equaled her performance here as a scary psychotic minx.Strangely, the original British release of this was called "Expose" and prominently featured Richmond, not Hayden or Keir, in the promotional material, even though she is barely in the movie and couldn't act to save her life. At least, her hot sex scenes with Hayden and with a be-gloved Udo Kier are memorable. (Hell, today, in America at least, they'll take some talent-free pin-up queen like Richmond give her a much bigger part in a much more lame movie and then NOT have her even take her clothes off, so everyone will "take her seriously as an actress". Baaah!) This isn't a great movie (and I prefer the alternate title "House on Straw Hill"), but it's definitely a very decent Brit exploitation film and one of the few "video nasties" that really DESERVES to be seen outside the UK.

Udo Kier is a novelist who opts to stay at his secluded country house while he's trying desperately to write his new book. After a new secretary (Linda Hayden) is sent by his agent to help make the novel get done quicker, a series of ghastly murders occur. This film is at turns boring, tedious, and pretentious. The only reason I would conceivably recommend it is for just the sheer beauty of Fiona Richmond. But if that's all you want, seek out James Clarke's "Hardcore" from 1977, wherein her role is meatier. Furthermore, the movie didn't score any points at all for dubbing over Mr. Kier's great voice.My Grade: D- Eye Candy: Linda Hayden and Fiona Richmond both bare all

Unimaginative slab of sexploitation horror has nubile (if slightly pudgy here) Linda Hayden as a disturbed woman who comes to work as secretary for pretentious writer Udo Kier. After a slow buildup, peppered with repeated scenes of Hayden masturbating, she gets to work on knocking off the supporting cast. Hayden's charisma goes a long way to making the film watchable, but it's all a very dry exercise, with little effort in either suspense or characterization making the whole thing seem rather pointless, and the final twist revelation making all of the antics that came before somewhat questionable in motivation. In a supporting role, Fiona Richmond occasionally wears clothes.