Eskimo Nell (film)
| Eskimo Nell | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Martin Campbell |
| Produced by | Stanley Long |
| Starring |
Roy Kinnear Anna Quayle Katy Manning Christopher Timothy Michael Armstrong Terence Edmond Rosalind Knight Diane Langton Richard Caldicot Christopher Biggins |
| Music by | Simon Park |
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Release date
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17 January 1975 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Eskimo Nell, also known as The Ballad of Eskimo Nell and as The Sexy Saga of Naughty Nell and Big Dick, is a 1975 British 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 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 film's 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. 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 the film's writer Michael Armstrong in 1969 during the making of Armstrong’s directing debut, The Haunted House of Horror. In Eskimo Nell Heyward is parodied as "Big Dick", a crass, foul-mouthed 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 and model using her married name Mary Maxted, has a small role in the film as 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 magazines including Titbits and Cinema X.
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