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Veteran director Val Guest decided in the early 1970s to venture into the then popular market of sex comedies, and having watched Danish box-office successes Bedroom Mazurka after a recommendation from BBFC censor John Trevelyan, set about writing a British variant in similar style based on a raunchy storyline by self-proclaimed ‘King of Sexploitation’ David Grant. Guest subsequently attempted to distance himself from Au Pair girls and claimed he’d never direct a sex comedy again. Yet two years later he helmed one of the biggest movies of his long career, Confessions of a Window Cleaner. The cast includes RADA-trained Gabrielle Drake, a recognisable face from Gerry Anderson’s UFO tv series, emerging from a water trough in a clinging wet dress.

Val Guest, veteran director of many interesting British films covering a multitude of subjects, joined the nudie-cutie bandwagon of the 1970s with The Au Pair Girls. Anyone who's taken first-year French will probably know that the title refers to young foreign girls living in England who perform domestic chores in exchange for room and board and the opportunity to learn the English language. In this film, the girls' "services" range far beyond mere light dusting. It's the 1972 equivalent to those old stag reels of the 1950s with titles like Lucky Pierre Goes Fishing. Among the au pair girls in this R-rated effort are Gabrielle Drake, Astrid Frank, and Me Me Lai.

Gary Tooze

September 18th, 2012