Secrets of a Windmill Girl

The Road to Ruin, early 60's style, that typically has its cake and eats it by intercutting jaunty excerpts from the Windmill's old repertoire with police inspector Derek Bond investigating the downward plunge of former Windmill Girl Pauline Collins into a "burnt-out husk verging on a nervous breakdown".

Just a couple of years later it would all have looked much sleazier, but the cheerful Eastmancolor photography and beehive hairstyles still evoke the recent Profumo era; although the men are now coarser and more uncouth and elegantly-dressed bohemians like bow-tied lesbian Teddy who hits on Miss Collins are becoming thinner on the ground than louts like Harry Fowler, who petulantly snaps at Linda "Grow up baby, it's been done before. You're nothing special!"

Almost unwatchable - Pauline Collins at her most dreadful deciding whether or not to take her top off for a show. In the end she doesn`t but don`t let that put you off wasting precious time sitting through this rubbish. This film is like so many of the era which pretended to be a soft-core turn on but were actually not even that. If you really want to see what the Windmill show was like try "Murder at the windmill" which has most of the acts doing their stuff but again virtually no nudity.

This film goes to show that if you are hard-faced enough to put garbage work behind you, you can still make a living as an actor - making glossy garbage.

The distinguishing feature of this film (1966), historically unseen, is that it opened The Windill Theatre as a cinema after its famous and legendary history as a live entertainment house. A modest film was required but 'wit da quality' as best as it could be decided upon to be made. To this end a classy little piece of ass was found in the cast of "Passion Flower Hotel" a musical at the Prince of Wales Theatre and the entire enterprise was set upon. While 'ísnt this terrible....!' may very well be the subtext partout it is not to deride director Arnold Miller's charming barrow boy's patriotic effort. The atmosphere created by Arnold in the theatrical sense is precisely that found by Jacques Rivette in the pocket theatre scenes in "Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau" (1974) and , indeed, can he have scrupulously avoided making recognition of a debt to Jean-Luc in the opening sequence of two young people, 'morts', in the front seat of their crashed sports car? ("Le Mépris" 1963). Mystery and marbles!