SPOILERS Derek Ford's two films of 1975 appear to have been conceived as showcases for two little known starlets in an attempt to turn them into the hottest, newest star. The Sexplorer promotes' Monika Ringwald and Diversions aka Sex Express promotes' Heather Deeley. Both actresses appear in every scene of their respective films, with the focus centred around female protagonists-a rarity in British sex cinema. Ford was a contradictory case, who had little positive to say about the type of films he made nor the audiences who enjoyed them, reiterating how boring he found filming sex scenes. However from 1963's The Yellow Teddybears to 1990's Attack of the Killer Computer, you're unlikely to find many Derek Ford credits that aren't in the sex or horror exploitation realm.
Heather plays an apparent prisoner travelling by train, accompanied by two guards, a man (future Eastender Derek Martin) and a woman whom she's handcuffed to. Bored by the journey, Heather starts dreaming up a series of wild fantasies. In the first she's being chased around a barn by a poetic stud-who seems to fancy apples more than our heroine. What a berk!
The second fantasy, inspired by one of Deeley's fellow travellers reading a Vampirella' comic is the one that made Diversions notorious. In this Deeley plays a wartime nurse gang-raped by soldiers. The experience leaves her totally deranged, to the degree that she murders her sexual partners, like hardcore-loop perennial Timothy Blackstone who she knifes to death and castrates. Heather, naked and dolled up in blue eyeshadow, sensually rubs stage blood over herself after the kill, an image of eroticism and grotesquery. When we next see Heather she's driving around London (great vintage footage of Piccadilly Circus). She spots a man dressed like a magician and beckons him into her car. Back at her house she repeats her sex/snuff act, but this time the knife just bounces out of the man on top. Heather looks up to discover she's having sex with a Vampire (you meet all sorts in Piccadilly Circus). The next fantasy is a Commuter Husbands era sex farce-centred around a room-for-rent advert being mistaken for a girl-for-rent one.
Back onboard the Sex Express, Heather visualises the ticket collector as a gun crazy Nazi. Inspired' she then daydreams herself as a sex slave of two Nazis and their female superior during WW2. A savage scenario by any yardstick, it's unlikely any British sex actress, bar Deeley, would have agreed to be filmed this way. The DeWolfe music cues used for the Nazi sequence are more familiar from their use in 1970's horror films-which seems appropriate. Finally Deeley buys a vintage camera from a brick-a-brack shop, takes it home,does some sexy poses in front of the antique, and ends up seduced by the camera's previous owner a Tod Slaughter-look ghost (Anthony Kenyon).
The end of the journey, the handcuffed escort and prisoner are separated. Heather is revealed to be the escort, not the prisoner. While her captive is taken away, Heather homes in on a male passenger.
Diversions was a minor release in the UK, it received pans in The Monthly Film Bulletin' who thought it silly, even Cinema Blue' was disappointed with what they considered more mild than wild filmmaking. Such opinions give the impression Britain's critics were watching a different film-and to a degree they were. Ford cut two edits of the film-Diversions' a 87 minute variant to be shown only outside the UK, and Sex Express' the truncated 50 minute UK release version-with the Nazi scene omitted and the castration sequence notably reduced. The significant difference is that Sex Express is a softcore film, Diversions has Deeley, Blackstone, et al acting out the sex scenes for real. Ford was extremely secretive about shooting hardcore for export prints-previously his films had such material inserted by foreign distributors-(i.e. Pimps of Perversion' the Gallic edit of Groupie Girl')-by the mid-Seventies Ford quietly cut out the middle-man.
Seen in its complete, expanded version Diversions is neither silly,mild nor seemingly the work of someone who found sex scenes boring.
The lengthy silent sections and zig-zagging between fantasy and reality, give Diversions a dreamlike surreal slant, unexpected from Ford whose films usually are heavily narrative-led. With the overseas edit Ford, free from worry about his reputation within the British Film Industry, doesn't know when to stop, finding in Heather Deeley a willing participant. Out of the blue moments of hardcore sex and horror contribute an off-balance but highly intense tone. Ford's sideline in cranking out horror film scripts was never more obvious. The Timmy Blackstone murder is remarkably similar to the butchering of the prostitute in the Ford scripted Corruption'(1967). Both sequences repeating a blood on breasts motif, and presenting violence in the manner of a sexual kink. More troubling is that Deeley acts as much the playful sex kitten in the mutilation aspects as she does the sex.
For its director and star however, Diversions was pretty much the beginning of the end. In the Eighties, with the British Film Industry being dismantled piece by piece, Ford took to anonymously working on sex and horror quickies in Italy and Sweden, like the ski-resort gore film Blood Tracks'. Eventually he abandoned film work altogether turning to penning paperbacks like The Casting Couch'-centred around the alleged sexual favours of Jean Harlow and Betty Grable. Much as he tried to deny it, exploitation film blood ran through the veins of Derek Ford, right till the end. Diversions hasn't been seen in the UK since the late seventies. Neither has Heather Deeley, an incredibly popular girl in the mid-Seventies, forgotten and vanished by the decade's end. Nobody knows what became of Heather. Her final role was in the Fiona Richmond vehicle Hardcore'(1977)-where she plays a swinger who watches sex on close circuit TV- a sad and lonely image.
Diversions is Derek Ford's zenith as a sex and horror man, and he tried his best to make sure none of his fellow countrymen ever found out about it.
Heather plays an apparent prisoner travelling by train, accompanied by two guards, a man (future Eastender Derek Martin) and a woman whom she's handcuffed to. Bored by the journey, Heather starts dreaming up a series of wild fantasies. In the first she's being chased around a barn by a poetic stud-who seems to fancy apples more than our heroine. What a berk!
The second fantasy, inspired by one of Deeley's fellow travellers reading a Vampirella' comic is the one that made Diversions notorious. In this Deeley plays a wartime nurse gang-raped by soldiers. The experience leaves her totally deranged, to the degree that she murders her sexual partners, like hardcore-loop perennial Timothy Blackstone who she knifes to death and castrates. Heather, naked and dolled up in blue eyeshadow, sensually rubs stage blood over herself after the kill, an image of eroticism and grotesquery. When we next see Heather she's driving around London (great vintage footage of Piccadilly Circus). She spots a man dressed like a magician and beckons him into her car. Back at her house she repeats her sex/snuff act, but this time the knife just bounces out of the man on top. Heather looks up to discover she's having sex with a Vampire (you meet all sorts in Piccadilly Circus). The next fantasy is a Commuter Husbands era sex farce-centred around a room-for-rent advert being mistaken for a girl-for-rent one.
Back onboard the Sex Express, Heather visualises the ticket collector as a gun crazy Nazi. Inspired' she then daydreams herself as a sex slave of two Nazis and their female superior during WW2. A savage scenario by any yardstick, it's unlikely any British sex actress, bar Deeley, would have agreed to be filmed this way. The DeWolfe music cues used for the Nazi sequence are more familiar from their use in 1970's horror films-which seems appropriate. Finally Deeley buys a vintage camera from a brick-a-brack shop, takes it home,does some sexy poses in front of the antique, and ends up seduced by the camera's previous owner a Tod Slaughter-look ghost (Anthony Kenyon).
The end of the journey, the handcuffed escort and prisoner are separated. Heather is revealed to be the escort, not the prisoner. While her captive is taken away, Heather homes in on a male passenger.
Diversions was a minor release in the UK, it received pans in The Monthly Film Bulletin' who thought it silly, even Cinema Blue' was disappointed with what they considered more mild than wild filmmaking. Such opinions give the impression Britain's critics were watching a different film-and to a degree they were. Ford cut two edits of the film-Diversions' a 87 minute variant to be shown only outside the UK, and Sex Express' the truncated 50 minute UK release version-with the Nazi scene omitted and the castration sequence notably reduced. The significant difference is that Sex Express is a softcore film, Diversions has Deeley, Blackstone, et al acting out the sex scenes for real. Ford was extremely secretive about shooting hardcore for export prints-previously his films had such material inserted by foreign distributors-(i.e. Pimps of Perversion' the Gallic edit of Groupie Girl')-by the mid-Seventies Ford quietly cut out the middle-man.
Seen in its complete, expanded version Diversions is neither silly,mild nor seemingly the work of someone who found sex scenes boring.
The lengthy silent sections and zig-zagging between fantasy and reality, give Diversions a dreamlike surreal slant, unexpected from Ford whose films usually are heavily narrative-led. With the overseas edit Ford, free from worry about his reputation within the British Film Industry, doesn't know when to stop, finding in Heather Deeley a willing participant. Out of the blue moments of hardcore sex and horror contribute an off-balance but highly intense tone. Ford's sideline in cranking out horror film scripts was never more obvious. The Timmy Blackstone murder is remarkably similar to the butchering of the prostitute in the Ford scripted Corruption'(1967). Both sequences repeating a blood on breasts motif, and presenting violence in the manner of a sexual kink. More troubling is that Deeley acts as much the playful sex kitten in the mutilation aspects as she does the sex.
For its director and star however, Diversions was pretty much the beginning of the end. In the Eighties, with the British Film Industry being dismantled piece by piece, Ford took to anonymously working on sex and horror quickies in Italy and Sweden, like the ski-resort gore film Blood Tracks'. Eventually he abandoned film work altogether turning to penning paperbacks like The Casting Couch'-centred around the alleged sexual favours of Jean Harlow and Betty Grable. Much as he tried to deny it, exploitation film blood ran through the veins of Derek Ford, right till the end. Diversions hasn't been seen in the UK since the late seventies. Neither has Heather Deeley, an incredibly popular girl in the mid-Seventies, forgotten and vanished by the decade's end. Nobody knows what became of Heather. Her final role was in the Fiona Richmond vehicle Hardcore'(1977)-where she plays a swinger who watches sex on close circuit TV- a sad and lonely image.
Diversions is Derek Ford's zenith as a sex and horror man, and he tried his best to make sure none of his fellow countrymen ever found out about it.