West End Jungle

I used to go up to Soho and the West End from the late fifties,to watch the big epics being shown at one of the big cinemas. I have to say that I was never approached by a prostitue though there were lots of signs in doorways for models.

It is difficult to take this film too seriously at its mock serious condemnatory tone. The women who speaks on the soundtrack sounds rather like Dick Emery's Mandy.

The censor at the time was John Trevelyan. If you were what he considered a serious artist then he would give you considerable licence. If you were making exploitation films then he would come down on you like a ton of bricks.

West End Jungle is a fake documentary with staged scenes. Set in the West End of London it is a morality story with the intention of showing titillating sex scenes and nudity. Due to the time this film came out there is no real nudity shown just a few underwear shots.

The film mainly features men going to clip joints, seeing prostitutes and it ends with a street walker being picked up by the police. All sleazy stuff backed up by a cynical albeit excellently written narration track.

The version I saw was the Strike Force Entertainment DVD release from the UK. It is rated 15 and features a superb print and good sound which could do with being a bit louder. This is a 50 minute film and it is a bit expensive at £10+

Director Arnold L Miller went on to make London in The Raw and Primitive London which are more of the same and is worth watching. The cinematographer is Stanley Long who made the forgettable British Sex Comedies series The Adventures of...

Straight-ahead exploitation film from a director of nudie flicks (oh and exec producer of "The Sorcerers", which is actually a good movie). Hardly shocking, more comical, although still banned by the BBFC on initial release. England in the early Sixties must have been more prudish than previously thought.

There are some funny moments with a lot of non-actors "doing acting", and the spy-jazz theme tune is a swinging number (it gets replayed many times for extra value). I'd say the real interest, though, is the shots of a long-lost vintage Soho: a world away from today's tourist attraction.

Half marks, for genuine Z-grade/camp/period piece/curiosity value. Seekers of smut should, however, look elsewhere.

This is a really weird little film that should probably be watched in the context of the period but in reality cannot be. Billed as documentary into the seedy side of Soho in the 1960's that was banned outright by the BBFC, I expected quite a hard hitting expose that gets into the world of the hostess and beyond. The truth is that it is nothing of the sort and I doubt it ever was. I don't know the motives of the makers but I'll suggest that they were not strictly coming at this subject from a documentarian point of view. The whole film is played out with what I can only presume are actors and, if not then they are certainly all staged shots. Over this we get a constant narration from a typical "BBC continuity announcer" type and this steady "jaunty" music.

Having already put the idea of a documentary out of my mind, the narration suggested this was going to be a cautionary film for soliciting girls, much like Reefer Madness was for drug use. The narration lays this on thick, making the girls seem dirty ("a girl who could do with a good wash" being one great line) and the men who buy their time in these clubs as idiots throwing their money away. It continues with this but then at the same time it seems to take a certain amount of pleasure in showing the girls in low-cut tops, doing a fan dance and the like. This strange duality hurts the film a great deal because it is too clumsy and conflicted to work as a warning but yet too tame to serve as titillation – even, I'm guessing, for the period.

The only thing that this leaves the film to do is to be a "Reefer Madness" of our period. By this I mean it incredibly dated in its content, style and approach. It is unbearably judgmental and nanny-ish in its tone and the way the voices of the "cast" are narrated on top is laughable. I didn't really get a feel for the scale of the problem (or indeed what the problem was at all) but I did get plenty of amusing moments about how the world has changed. My favourite of these is a reference to the "new status symbol" that brings more prestige than company stationary or anything else – what is it? The credit card! If only they could see us now.

West End Jungle is a dated curio that doesn't deserve the attention it gets from having been banned for as long as it was. It is conflicted in what it is trying to do and ends up doing nothing much of interest or value. Worth a chuckle as a dated piece of nonsense but not anything more than that.

As a time capsule it's one of the most fascinating documentaries (ever coming out of the UK). The controversial subject tackled is vice, prostitution and low-life activity in a grim post-war London. The film was banned for decades, for painting such a bleak and depressing picture but it's well worth watching, despite the terrible and out-dated narration. Choice locations filmed in the West End and Central London. even today it remains such an eye-opener for a more or less a forgotten, seedier world.