Emmanuelle in Soho


Emmanuelle in Soho is a 1981 British sex film directed by David Hughes and produced by David Sullivan, and starring Angie Quick, Julie Lee and John M. East. Sullivan had originally intended Mary Millington to star in the film.

Plot

The film tells the story of half-Chinese Kate Benson and her photographer husband Paul who share their Bayswater home with a nymphomaniac stripper, Emmanuelle. The two women attempt to find work in the sex industry in London's Soho district, and get mixed up with a sleazy, and unscrupulous theatrical agent, Bill Anderson.

Cast

  • Angie Quick as Emmanuelle of Soho
  • Julie Lee as Kate Benson
  • John M. East as Bill Anderson
  • Kevin Fraser as Paul Benson
  • Gavin Clare as Mr. Cole
  • Timothy Blackstone as Derek
  • Geraldine Hooper as Jill
  • Anita Desmarais as Sheila Burnette
  • Georges Waser as Tom Poluski
  • Erika Lea as Judy
  • Kathy Green as Sammy
  • Suzanne Richens as a Showgirl
  • John Roach as Albert

    Release

The film premiered in Sheffield and transferred to London where it ran for 10 weeks at the Eros cinema on Piccadilly Circus followed by 25 weeks at the Moulin in Great Windmill Street. There is also a hardcore versions of this film - such a version was released in Hong Kong cinemas where it ran for nearly three years. The US release included a 6-minute mini-documentary prologue about the sex industry in Soho.

Reception

Emmanuelle in Soho was one of the last British softcore films to receive a theatrical release before the abolition of the Eady Levy and the growth of home video led to the virtual disappearance of British low-budget exploitation film-making. In a contemporary review, the Monthly Film Bulletin described the film as "of marginal interest for its unabashed portrait of the neighbourhood's tawdry illicit wares". The review noted that the "slipshod scripting is about par for the course".