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Too much of everything

Absolutely brilliant

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A talking mummy (voiced with plummy and commanding aplomb by Valentine Dyall) guides the viewers on a very colorful and unusual grand tour of the epic ongoing battle between the sexes. Director/co-writer Anthony Balch accurately captures the brash and cheeky irreverence and bold "try it, do it" off the wall experimentalism of the swingin' 60's with this genuinely offbeat cinematic potpourri of humor (the broad spy spoof segment rates as the definite campy highlight), horror (a hunky male model gets the unnice slice, a lady gives birth to a hideously malformed mutant baby), and eroticism (naturally, there's a plethora of nudity from both gals and guys alike). Moreover, Balch further spruces things up with plenty of funky psychedelic visual flourishes and such kinky stuff as bondage, torture, and hot chicks in dressed in shiny black leather. Better still, there's a pronounced peculiarity to the whole eccentric enterprise that's really something to behold (a gaggle of go-go dancing honeys are pelted with vegetables by a gang of disapproving dudes who also advance on them while brandishing machine guns!). David McDonald's splashy cinematography makes fine use of ripe bright colors. De Wolfe's stirring dramatic score likewise hits the overwrought spot. A truly unique and enjoyable one of a kind oddity.

This oddity is more 'interesting' and of social significance than it is enjoyable to watch. I had great difficulty maintaining interest despite plentiful nudity and the fact the segments are not over long. I suppose the fireworks inter-cut with an orgy at the end is the easiest part to watch. Now I think about it I am not sure why I didn't enjoy it more but I think it's basically because nothing really worked. Even though the sections were less than quarter of an hour long they moved rather slowly and uncertainly. I seemed to be for ever trying to work out what was going on only for the part to end with some seeming significant statement regarding the 'battle of the sexes'. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. I understand the commentary on the DVD is worth listening to, so I shall be able to give it another go AND there are those William Burroughs shorts. Still, they will probably be more 'interesting' than enjoyable too! DVD originates in US and has extras

You would expect Antony Balch, who collaborated on some experimental short films with William Burroughs, to make a weird horror film. And it is indeed pretty kooky, though doesn't often strike one as experimental.Some of the more experimental, or at least odd touches include: a voice-over saying "Imagine yourself having sex with this girl. Imagine yourself having sex with this boy. Imagine yourself having sex with this girl." etc. for some time, with images of mod young people in various states of undress. It then repeats with slight variation, "Imagine this girl having sex with you" etc. In another segment, there are shots of planes taking off and landing intercut throughout. It's unclear if they're meant to represent sex, or the threat of the man's wife coming home, or that the man's house is under a flight path, or if they're simply filmic non-sequiturs.The movie has a mummy narrating, telling about the battle of the sexes. The segments all have to do with men and women at odds with each other in various ways, sometimes fatal. The opening segment has an Arabian judge who believes his wife may have a lover hidden in a trunk. He has the trunk buried without opening it. This is perhaps the origin of the mummy (though how he comes to be mummified would be a mystery, but the producer on the commentary track indicates we should not give it that much thought).There are women photographing a male model in various states of torture. There's a sexy spy who's supposed to find secrets in a foreign embassy. There's a young man with a strange fetish rooted in a childhood incident.Offbeat, and definitely for those that like that. It was quite well-received at the time! Now, it does seem awfully 1960s, but that lends it a new sort of charm.

SPOILERS INCLUDED Antony Balch was the famed abominable showman of the swinging London era- as a distributor and cinema programmer his niche lay in retitling Euro-sexploitation fare with 'bums on seats' titles like Do You like Women, Don't Deliver Us From Evil, When Girls Undress and The Weird Weirdo. In the early months of 1970 Balch released his own first feature length film, a contentious film about the battle of the sexes, executed in portmanteau style. Supremely offbeat by nature- Secrets of Sex has survived all these years essentially in anecdote form- not that its hard to see why- for no one forgets the only British sex film narrated by an Egyptian Mummy easily. Locked in a chest to hide from the husband of his lover, the narrator ended up buried alive- emerging thousands of years later as a Mummy who has observed the war of the sexes and become drawn to the more 'bizarre aspects of human behaviour'. Voiced by Valentine Dyall the Mummy watches a girl strip, theres further cut- aways to lovely ladies and shirtless men with machine guns- over which the Mummy repeats 'imagine you were making love to this girl, imagine you were making love to this boy' as a form of mantra atypical of the films ambiguous sexual view. 'When the Saints go Marching in' is heard as go-go dancing girls get cabbages and tomatoes thrown in their direction- the machine gun men advance, a girl draws a cut-throat razor- the battle of the sexes begins. Our man in bandages laments how people 'will go to any lengths to get what they want' with that we're spirited off to a photoshoot with a torture chamber theme. A male model feigns pain for an older photographer who seems a little too much into her work- the creepy situation is added to by her assistant, a not unattractive girl who nevertheless comes across as a Caligari somnambulist. 'Norma go get me the Spanish horse' she says prompting the arrival of this torture device- a sort of hobby horse with a blade down the middle which the suspended victim has to straddle- gradually the horse will dissect its victim between the legs (ouch). The ghastly inevitable happens with the model left to die this horrible death in the contraption while the women chat away during dinner, returning to find a dead bloody mess that makes the perfect book cover- some people really do have to suffer for their art. With horror movie shots of lightening we're onto the second tale- Mary-Clare a female scientist despises her older husband Sacha for his greed and privilege. Sacha longs for a son but when Mary-Clare discovers she carries a defective gene she knowingly gives birth to a freak monster son instead- raise that thing daddy-O. Next up a young man catches a female thief looting his house 'Christ, a bird'. The allure of the bad girl proves too much for our Genet reading hero who joins her in an amorous shower and some risque bedroom antics. After sex, the girl continues robbing, he threatens to call the police but both know things have gone a little too far for that- they won't buy his story but the girl drawing his attention to a picture of his wife imagines someone will. Following that is a detour into the misadventures of spy Lindy Leigh-Agent 28 complete with comic book like intertitles charting her missions - whether its donning white knickers to creep around a foreign embassy or checking out 'Bedroom Beauties of 1929' a nudie silent farce- in a sex cinema. Lindy seduces a military attache, slipping him a mickey finn 'sleep well sweet jerk' and tries her hand at topless safecracking, only to end up locked in the safe where she finds agents 1 to 27 'that military attache wasn't so stupid after all'. Then we have 'the strange young man' who rings up for a call girl- enter little dolly Sue Bond- whose bemused by this nerds attempts at 'hip' speak which includes referring to her as 'pigeon'- but all goes wrong when he gets out his pet lizard 'Pangy' telling her how permissive it would be if the reptile watched or better still joined in their lovemaking. 'Not for all the coffee in China' is Sue up for the geeks plan and makes for the door while he considers writing to the Financial Times- outside Sue runs into an old women saying sweet nothings to her own lizard 'beddy byes'. Finally a dotty dear relates how she imprisoned the souls of former lovers in potted plants to her valet- the one way conversation turns to the one man who escaped her. He is, of course the valet who strangles her 'die you filthy, alien garbage heap'. Arriving full circle back to the machine gun men and the go-go girls 'armies are disarmed' and the battle turns into a free for all orgy intercut with shots of fireworks- 'so it goes on, and on, and on'. Secrets of Sex encapsulates every aspect of Balch's gloriously outrageous career- from his early experimental shorts made with William Burroughs, to his life long love of horror movies and the censor-baiting exploitation film distributor. Mostly-improvised the film comes across as a freaky yet very personal chain of thought, spanning everything from the sweet Lindy Leigh episode to horrific imagery that rivals any 1970 horror movie- a dynamic penchant for tongue in cheek humour cuts through the film like its mascot spanish horse. An incredible headtrip to lay on audiences- Secrets of Sex lives up to everything you'll ever read about the film and Balch himself who by all accounts, was as colourful as his films. Secrets of Sex is a terrific film for people who like their movies with a healthy disregard for normality.