User reviews

AU PAIR GIRLS is a pretty decent example of the British sex comedy film of the 1970s, especially when compared to other entries in the genre during the decade. It has strong production values - thanks to being produced by the great Tigon Pictures studios - and even better direction courtesy of veteran helmer Val Guest, just before he went on to make possibly the ultimate example of the genre in 1974, CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER.

What stands out about AU PAIR GIRLS is the unusual and highly watchable plotting. Instead of having a single plot strand dragged out to feature length, this is a kind of anthology movie which follows the misadventures of four foreign au pairs who arrive in England and each find themselves in an unusual situation with their new-found employer. Chances are that if you don't like one of the stories then at least one of the others will be more appealing.

The arresting Gabrielle Drake stars in the most typical of the story lines about a girl who gets into various run-ins with the son of her new employer, played by Richard O'Sullivan. There's a lot of slapstick humour in this tale, and ample nudity from the beautiful Drake. Astrid Frank is a Swedish au pair who causes Geoffrey Bayldon to get hot under the collar before falling in with Trevor Bannister's photographer. Next up we get the oddest tale, an oddly touching story starring the one and only Me Me Lai (star of those Italian cannibal films) who has never looked more lovely and who falls in with a child-like man. The last tale, by far the darkest, involves Nancie Wait's virginal young woman who ends up being introduced to the sleazy side of the music world.

The supporting cast is quite good, with the ubiquitous John Le Mesurier popping up in a cameo and future CORONATION STREET actor Johnny Briggs doing his best to pick up the girls. There are bit parts for John Standing, Marianne Stone, and Milton Reid, plus the unusual sight of Ferdy Mayne playing a sheikh. What impresses most is that although the four actresses are all picked for their looks and willingness to go nude, they're actually quite talented performers who convince in their roles and evoke emotion in the viewer. More than your usual sex comedy, then.

You can pick apart this film for the cheesiness of some of its scenes, the not so great acting, especially the fake accents, and general flimsy story, but somehow this all works. The absolutely gorgeous Gabrielle Drake (sister of the late, great singer/songwriter Nick Drake) is so sexy, you forget her Scandinavian accent is pretty awful. There is copious nudity here, but there also is a story. I especially liked the scenes with Nan (Me Me Lay) and piano prodigy Rupert, they are more sweet than overtly sexy. The 70's brought a lot of these sex comedies, but this one is far less sleazy than many of them. Its not meant to be a classic, but it is in its genre. If you like these films, its worth watching. The ladies are amazing, which is meant to be the draw in the first place.

So, it's cheesy sexploitation from the 70s, but it is really funny. It's like watching Benny Hill with nudity. The nudity is all part of the comedy.

Gabrielle Drake manages to lose her clothes in a barn with the employer's son after they break down in the country. They never do make it home.

Astrid Frank is with an older couple. She has no qualms about parading around naked. Even when she is dressed, knickers are optional. She manages to get picked up by a sheik on her first night.

Me Me Lai of cannibal fame is with a very wealthy family. The son is a pianist - and a virgin! He gets lucky before everyone else.

Nancie Wait is in the hands of a wild daughter her first night. She ends up rocking away her virginity with a rocker.

Lots of laughs.

'Au Pair Girls' is a cheesy "naughty" sexploitation comedy from the early 70s. During this period before hard core porn was readily available these kinds of movies were very popular in England. They mixed unsophisticated slapstick comedy, Benny Hill-like double entendres and lots of naked babes. Thirty years later they are enjoyable as kitsch but have little else going for them. 'Au Pair Girls' story concerns the misadventures of four beautiful girls sent to England to work as (yes, you guessed it!) Au Pair girls. They are Randi (Gabrielle Drake), Astrid (Anita Sector), Nan (Me Me Lay) and Christa (Nancie Wait). Randi ends up losing her clothes in a barn after the son of her employer (Richard O' Sullivan from the popular 70s sit-com 'Man About The House) gives her a lift and his car breaks down in the country. Astrid, a nutty Swedish girl obsessed with colour TV, gets picked up by a Sheik (Ferdy Mayne) while on a date at a casino. Nan is hired by Lady Tryke (Rosalie Crutchley) to be a companion for their socially inept but musically gifted son (Julian Barnes), who quickly falls in love with her. Christa is taken to a club by her employers liberated daughter Carole (Lyn Yeldham) and is seduced by a rock singer Ricky Strange (Steve Patterson). People raised on British sit-coms of the 60s and 70s will notice several familiar faces in the supporting cast, most notably John Le Mesurier ('Dad's Army'), who plays Richard O'Sullivan's Dad, and Trevor Bannister ('Are You Being Served?'), who plays his photographer pal. Of the four girls Gabrielle Drake, sister of legendary folk singer Nick Drake, and a cult figure in her own right from appearing as the purple wigged Lt.Gaye Ellis in the series 'UFO', is the most beautiful and shows some genuine flair for comedy. I've had a crush on her for many, many years and her full frontal nude scenes are reason enough to watch this movie! I didn't recognize the actresses who played Astrid or Christa, but Me Me Lay went on to become a cult figure from her appearances in the cannibal movies 'Man From Deep River', 'The Last Cannibal World' and 'Eaten Alive' as well as co-starring in Lars Von Trier's 'The Element Of Crime'! Another interesting thing about 'Au Pair Girls' is that it was directed and co-written by none other than Val Guest, the man behind the early Hammer classics 'The Quatermass Xperiment' (aka 'The Creeping Unknown'), 'Quatermass 2' and 'The Abominable Snowman'. I must admit that the involvement of Val Guest and Me Me Lay aside, the main attraction here is the utterly gorgeous Gabrielle Drake. Apart from that it's pretty average.

I remember rather enjoying this a few years back but coming to it again, I wonder why. I guess it always looks good and the girls do rather well but the men do rather let the side down. Why oh why in so many English films about sex do we have to have such inept men along side the pretty girls? What is more this begins predictably enough as a sex farce similar in vein to the Confessions films but about a third of the way through (whilst we are beginning to enjoy the presence of the lovely Me Me Lai) the film asks us to start taking it seriously. Not only that but the central rock club and cannabis sequences are very forced and just look stilted. In short this is neither as innocently silly or as intelligently serious as it seems to intend. Richard O'Sullivan maybe, as such a central figure, could have helped but I reckon this to be one of his worst performances. Just worth it for the ladies.

The plot has already been described by other reviewers, so I will simply add that my reason for wanting to see this film was to see Gabrielle Drake in all her undoubted glory.

Miss Drake has to be one of the sexiest, prettiest examples of "posh totty" to have been committed to celluloid. Of her era and ilk, only the equally exquisite Jane Asher comes close. What was it about actresses with musical brothers? (Nick Drake and Peter Asher) For those who like me have admired Gabrielle, her scenes in this movie will not disappoint. She has a magnificent figure and none of it is left to the imagination here.

As a whole, the movie is very poor and being of its time, very cheaply made. The song that covers the opening credits seems to go on forever and is appalling.

I decided to check this movie out on Netflix in spite of the uninspiring description given for it, which made it sound like a typical grade B- exploitation flick, just because I wanted to see Gabrielle Drake in something other than reruns of the 1960's TV series *UFO*. But granting that I'm an American too young to have seen much of this genre of films from this era, I found this movie much more enjoyable than I expected. It was thoroughly professionally produced, with consistent and thoroughly professional acting, editing, photography and comedic effects and timing from one end to the other. The plot -- actually, plots (here there are four of them) work perfectly well for what they are, are not especially predictable, and are light on the clichés, and there is some pretty witty dialog, too. Several times I caught myself laughing out loud. Moreover, the, er, mature parts actually fit the true definition of that word for a change, as it seemed to me that the filmmakers were not the least bit shy about how they handled them, being quite unembarrassedly frank to the point of in-your-face (not to mention actually more believable in certain small details than typical American-made Cinemax 2:00 AM fare) in the way they were handled. It may not be high art, but like, say, *Gilligan's Island*, I thought it was quite good for what it was. I'm not surprised to learn that the director actually seems to have a reputation for doing good stuff in other genres.

Pretty foreign girls take au pair jobs in England and get seduced into naughty situations by a variety of local louts.

The look is cheap and the whole proceedings are played for sensationalism and cheap laughs, rather like a D-list Carry On film, which incidentally was how this piece was advertised when it first played on cable TV in the 80s. The characters have little depth, and there is nothing in the way of a story, just random episodes leading to shedding of clothes. For its genre it wasn't terrible, and the girls are pretty attractive (especially the obviously British Gabrielle Drake playing a Scandinavian, and the amusingly named Asian actress Me Me Lay), but keep expectations low.

Ribald remarks about au pair girls and milkmen used to be a mainstay of 1970s Britain, and just as Derren Nesbitt wrote and directed a film called 'The Amorous Milkman' (from his own novel!) a couple of years after this, here the hilarious subject of au pair girls gets a film to themselves in the hands of veteran writer-director Val Guest.

Despite his background with Will Hay, Guest's thrillers were always better than his comedies; and you know what sort of territory you're in when even before the credits are over you've already seen a mike shadow before you've heard any dialogue. But it's a disarmingly good-natured affair in bright colours, and both Gabrielle Drake as a Danish au pair (far sexier on TV a few years earlier carrying a clipboard while dressed as a dominatrix in 'UFO') and Astrid Frank as a Swedish one manage to be charmingly ditsy and stay in character even when starkers.

Gabrielle Drake! NAKED!!!!!!! What more do you want????

I watched this movie the same day I first saw The Day the Earth Caught Fire, quite unaware that both movies had the same director. Had I not been alerted to this fact, I would never have guessed. It is a spoof of soft core British porn films to an extent, but also injects interesting dramatic material. The story is of four gorgeous girls who come to England as au pairs (doubtless using the Gorgeous Woman Only au pair service). Each of them only keeps their job for one day, for various reasons. Danish Randi is stranded with the rich kid son of her employer when his car breaks down, her clothes are soaked and they end up spending the night in a parking lot. Swedish Anita (a fun, delightful character who seems so liberated that she doesn't realize there's any alternative) shocks her employer by marching about the house nude and ends up being picked up at a casino by an amorous sheik (in the sheik's abode, a man sounds a gong every time he walks through the door). German Christa, a near-prudish virgin, is indoctrinated into London's swinging underground by her employer's daughter who wants to offer her as a sacrificial virgin to a rock star. Chinese Nan is taken to a manor house and begins a sad little affair with a sheltered pianist man-child, who seems to have the emotional maturity of a child half his age.

The odd thing is that the first two plots are funny and ridiculous, but the second two are tragic, as Christa realizes she has squandered her virginity on the ungrateful rock god and Nan scarcely seems happy to be regarded as a new plaything by her new bedmate. Both stories have tears. What's going on here? This stands in clear opposition to the brassy, fun nature of the other plots (and the atrocious upbeat theme song - you've got to hear it to believe it), and the ending that ties together all four girls in a riotously offhand and silly manner, as they all trot off to be the sheik's handmaidens, no questions asked. Also odd is that there's not all that much sex (though there is plenty of nudity). Anita does not actually have sex at all (and she doesn't seem to mind much, either!), and though the others do, it's hardly explicit at all.

All the girls are likeable, which is more than can be said for the men. Nan's swain, who refers to her as "it" early on, like she's one of his model ships, is a particular repellent creation, although strangely one of the most repellent, who slips his hand into Christina's pants, actually proves quite respectful of her. For a porn film, this is a rather well acted one. Guest handles the actors well, and provides some nice little touches (as when Anita applies a puff of perfume between her legs). The Au Pair Girls is a particular oddity, but not an unrewarding one.

Hard to believe that a man who wrote and directed 'The day the earth caught fire' (1961) could have descended to this absolute rubbish. Very bad 70's attempt at titillation, making carry on films look amazing. Avoid like the plague.

"Au Pair Girls" is an above average Brit sex comedy, a cut above the rest simply by virtue of never being unbearably awful. It is unusually generous with the full frontal nudity, and thankfully spares us the sight of hideous, balding men in their birthday suits that these movies often inexplicably include.

The "plot" is something to do with four sexy "au pairs": young women from around the world staying with host families in England. There's an Asian one, a German one, a Scandinavian one (of course), and another whose origins are not made plain. The Scandinavian is played by the gorgeous Gabrielle Drake - sister of Nick - and she looks so good you may not notice she doesn't even try an accent.

As with all other British sex comedies, this is a comedy in name only. You'll be hard pressed to even detect an attempt at humour, unless someone slipping over is supposed to be funny.

Still, I say no humour is better than painfully unfunny humour.

I downloaded this because of the George Harrison angle (it was filmed on his estate). And I think I was expecting more of a playful cheesecake type of film. Not one that had full frontal stuff in it. And had it often.

So, it was different from what I was expecting. But it wasn't bad. There was sort of a plot, or multiple plot arcs. And who doesn't enjoy watching a movie with four attractive college aged ladies from a simpler time (1970s) doing full frontal?

I'm surprised that I'm rating a nudie film a seven, to be honest. I've only reviewed three or four of them before and never one this highly. But this was enjoyable. And I'll probably watch it again.

What a fun filled, sexy movie! They certainly don't make them like this anymore. 4 sexy au pairs arrive in London and have all sorts of sexual misadventures. The tone is oddly innocent, as the considerable nudity evolves out of stock farcical situations, rather than any overt sexual desire on the part of the characters. It is only when the actresses accidentally lose their clothes that the male characters become rampant. Richard O' Sullivan literally gets 'Randi'(sic). The film certainly betrays the origins of the softcore feature as lying in the nudie cuties and naturism films of the old school. My special interest in 'Au Pair Girls' is that I am a huge fan of Gabrielle Drake. If any actress has ever looked better naked (she's slim but wonderfully curvy), or clothed, come to that (I've loved her since the original run of UFO - who else could carry off a purple wig!), I'll eat my hat.

Reason 1: Boobs. Due to the vintage of this movie, you are seeing all REAL boobs. All other reviews aside, this is a soft core movie. Plot, blah, blah...this is a great boob movie, period. There are many scenes of toplessness and more. Some of the best real, natural boobs ever caught on film. A must have on blu-ray or better for any boob lover.

Reason 2: Bush. Again, the date of this movie dictates forested naughty bits. You do see this, many times. Awesome.

Reason 3: Aviation history. Watch the opening credits to accurately see how people flew before the 747 and other wide-bodies. There's even a Russian airliner shown. Also shown are old terminals and many bygone airlines.

Remember, this is first, foremost and lastly a boob movie. If you love clothed women, watch something else.

A man in in his sixties making a film about sexy young women in their twenties who keep losing their clothes simply to be ogled at might sound rather seedy. It's difficult to argue otherwise but somehow this picture has almost an innocent sweetness to it which you wouldn't expect. Admittedly it's virtually soft porn but it's also a well made little comedy with proper actors, a proper story and directed incredibly by the guy who wrote the Will Hay films in the 1930s. Will Hay was funnier but Gabrielle Drake is certainly prettier!

Dozens of pitiful so-called 'sex-comedies' followed in the wake of this which although generally had much less nudity than this looked cheap, smutty and tacky and they weren't funny. Unlike in those 'Confessions Of...' films and similar, where there's some sleazy guy encountering and then undressing numerous non-entities, the leads in this are the girls themselves so it's the girls who have had their characters written as people not just as objects and so it's these whom we get to know. It would be stretching credibility to say that they're written from a woman's perspective, they're clearly from the perspective of what a man would think his sexual fantasy figure's perspective would be but even so it's better than them just being sex objects. Of course they're not written with particularly deep complex personalities but because you learn enough about them and because you start to think you can relate to them, they become real people and consequently a million times more sexy than the parade of faceless naked bodies you get in those other films.

What's interesting about this is that it's four separate stories with four different moods based around the four girls so it packs a lot of story into its hour and a half. There's quite a sweet story with the Chinese girl and a simple child-like man. Another story that's more effective than you'd expect in something like this is about the German girl, Christa who discovers that the groovy London scene isn't as groovy as she thought. In this story the naïve unsuspecting young German is essentially abused and realises that if you don't want to play the game, the permissive society can be cruel, exploitative and unpleasant. In her exaggerated version of 1971 normal everyday girls like her go to bars wearing tiny skirts without knickers and as they'd walk past men they'd feel sweaty hands casually groping their bare bottoms. The men would carry on drinking and chatting with their mates and the girls would nonchalantly carry on walking. Neither the men nor the girls in this exaggerated 1971 think this is unusual about this, this is just normal. Nobody objects, nobody is offended, nobody is hurt, and everyone is happy. This environment however escalates to a place where 'Christa' doesn't want to be anymore and needs to get out. By integrating this bit of social commentary into the other lighter stories makes for quite an effective jolt of electricity which shakes you from your complacency.

The other two stories are have no deep meaning, they are just sexy and feature Astrid Frank as the sexiest Swede in the universe and Gabrielle Drake as the sexiest Dane in the universe. Miss Frank's character is the epitome of every male fantasy: a sexy gorgeous blonde in a tiny skirt with no knickers and a see through top which tends to fall off whilst also having a propensity to walk around completely naked. Her 'airhead' role isn't going to win any prizes at a feminist convention but I thought she was very funny.

Gabrielle Drake's character however is completely different. She's the epitome of every male fantasy: a sexy gorgeous brunette in a tiny skirt with no knickers and a see through top which tends to fall off whilst also having a propensity to walk around completely naked. She also spends quite some time stark naked in a Rolls Royce which was clearly a personal fantasy of the writer and from this moment on, of mine as well! It's hard to explain but as smutty as this all sounds it's not smutty at all. It doesn't feel like you're watching a dirty movie, it's just naughty. Both these girls come across as sweet and lovely which is maybe what makes them so appealing, they're not the sort of girls who would ever watch something like this!

And just one last time, because what better thought is there to end on: Gabrielle Drake naked in a Rolls Royce!