The softcore and hardcore movies of Claude Mulot that have been cut or banned in Australia. He directed some of these under the name Frédéric Lansac.
The X-rating, for hardcore sex, was introduced in February 1984.
Pussy Talk
aka Pussy Talk – Le sexe qui parle
Directed by Claude Mulot / 1975 / France / IMDb
In January 1976, a 2513.60-meter (91:37) print of PUSSY TALK was banned because of ‘indecency’.
Filmways was the applicant.
Hardcore video release?
In August 1984, Blake Films had an 88-minute video of PUSSY TALK passed with the newly introduced X-rating.
It was awarded for sex, which was found to be:
Frequency: Frequent
Explicitness/Intensity: High
Purpose: Gratuitous
It is unclear if this version was ever issued.
Censored VHS
Palace Entertainment Corporation was no doubt aiming for an R-rating when they submitted a 70-minute ‘edited version’ in August 1988.
Instead, they received an X-rating, despite the sex now being classed as:
Frequency: Infrequent
Explicitness/Intensity: High
Purpose: Gratuitous
A 70-minute video passed with the same rating and for the same reasons in September 1988. This had presumably been further edited.
On the same day, a slightly more censored 69-minute version received an R-rating for sex, which was now found to be:
Frequency: Frequent
Explicitness/Intensity: Medium
Purpose: Gratuitous
This R-rated Palace Vibrant release ran 69:26.
Review & alternative footage
Mike reports
Alpha France (fr) – DVD (French language) – 88:20
Palace Vibrant (au) – VHS – (English dubbed) – 69:26
Sexually voracious Joëlle (Pénélope Lamour) is disenchanted with the sex life with her husband Eric (Jean-Loup Philippe) and tries risky sex with strangers. At just about the same time her vagina develops a voice of its own and tells her husband and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity, about her past and present sexual exploits.
PUSSY TALK may not be the first adult film about a woman with talking genitalia – that is generally agreed to be ANGEL ABOVE, DEVIL BELOW (1974) – but it’s certainly the best known and strangest, and its history in Australia suggests that it posed some novel censorship issues for the Film Censorship Board.
The runtime of the version submitted by Filmways in 1976 shows that it must have been the hardcore version and it clearly never stood a chance of being passed. The fairly large amount of hardcore sex would have been only one of the issues. Others include the following.
1. Many close-ups of Joëlle’s vagina when we hear it talking. We sometimes even see the lips moving.
2. The language used by her vagina is very graphic at times and may have been regarded as indecent.
3. Joëlle goes to an adult cinema and sits in the front row while masturbating two strange men who are sitting on either side of her. The film which is playing depicts a man breaking into a house and raping a woman at knifepoint. This becomes a consensual sex scene after a while.
4. Joëlle’s aunt Barbara (Sylvia Bourdon) is an artist. In one scene we see her pleasuring two naked male models after which she gets so excited that she penetrates herself first with a paintbrush and then with one of her shoes. In a later scene she seduces two female naked models and has sex with one of them with a large strap-on dildo.
5. We see various graphically illustrated episodes from Joëlle’s younger days which she flashes back to while masturbating. These include a scene in which she and another schoolgirl seduce their male geometry teacher and one in which she talks a priest into having sex in his confessional box. The most problematic shows her penetrating herself with a toy model of Pinocchio, whose nose is afterwards seen covered in blood.
So there is a large amount of unusual sexual behaviour and even when it’s more conventional it would have been much too strong for the mid-1970s. The version passed with an X rating for Blake Films in 1984 could well have been the complete hardcore version, although since it’s maybe a minute or two short it might possibly have precut the knifepoint rape scene.
The differences between the complete version of PUSSY TALK and the Palace Vibrant (PV) VHS are interesting and go some way beyond the presence or absence of hardcore footage.
Alternate footage
1. In an early scene Joëlle is talking to a male co-worker and to his surprise she unzips his flies and performs fellatio. In the uncut version the camera moves continuously around the scene so that we see the sexual action from time to time. In the PV VHS, the camera remains fixed behind Joëlle’s head which blocks out the evidence of the hardcore.
2. In the uncut version, after Joëlle has performed oral sex on the two men in in the porn theatre they take her to the gents’ bathroom for an unsimulated threesome. In the PV VHS, the bathroom scene is much shorter due to the removal of the real sex, but we also see a group of cinema patrons standing in the doorway watching. They are not seen at all in the complete version.
3. Late in the PV VHS we see Eric walking around the sex shop district of Paris. He picks up a prostitute and while she is undressing he becomes angry for no apparent reason and threatens to physically assault her. When she tells him that he’s crazy he realises what he’s doing and flees, throwing bank notes at her. In the uncut version we only see Eric walking around and the incident with the prostitute is not seen at all.
Non-hardcore material removed
1. The PV VHS has removed any trace of male lower body nudity. All penises have been edited out, including the flaccid and non-sexual ones. Even a short scene of a man taking a shower is missing.
2. The film playing in the porn cinema removes the non-consensual setup involving the menacing with the knife. In the PV VHS it plays as a slightly rough but consensual sex scene.
3. We are told that Joëlle has long-standing sexual trauma which may explain her interest in risky sex. The uncut version shows how this started. We see a scene in which her younger self (played by an adult) is in bed when her father enters and tries to seduce her. He removes her top and begins to fondle her genitals. She says, ‘No, not that’, but he persists. Shortly afterwards her mother walks in and shoots him dead after he attempts to defend his actions. This softcore scene is completely missing from the PV VHS and is revealed only via a TV news report. Joëlle has become a media celebrity after her psychiatrist spilled the beans about her talking vagina to the press. A TV station, being watched by her husband, mentions she was victimised as a child and that she saw her mother shoot her father.
Since the PV VHS removes material which the Board would have passed and also includes alternate shots and additional scenes, it seems their print must have been the official softcore version prepared by the filmmakers rather than one that Palace edited for themselves.
One mystery concerns the versions of 69-70 minutes submitted for an R rating by Palace in 1988. These were already missing all the hardcore, yet the Board not only found something more suitable for an X than an R in the submissions but also gave it an X despite the sex not being ‘frequent, high and gratuitous’. This might suggest it raised issues that hadn’t been faced before.
It’s largely speculation but I think the blood on Pinocchio’s nose may have been the issue for the Board. In the PV VHS we see a simulated scene of Joëlle pleasuring herself with the erect and extended nose of a Pinocchio puppet. This is part of a flashback to when she was younger. In the uncut version we don’t see her remove the puppet but we do see her holding it shortly afterwards with the nose covered in blood. We then see a closer shot of the puppet placed on the bed and the blood can be seen dripping. No blood is seen in the PV VHS and removing this part of the scene would have meant cutting around 00:10. This may have been enough to reduce the runtime from 70 to 69 minutes, to the nearest minute.
Blue Ecstasy
Directed by Claude Mulot / 1976 / France / IMDb
In May 1977, a 1939.50-meter (70:42) print of BLUE ECSTASY was banned because of ‘indecency’.
A 1645.00-meter (59:57) ‘reconstructed version’ was passed with an R-rating in October 1977.
Consolidated Exhibitors were the applicant.
Review
Mike reports
Alpha France (fr) – DVD as GAMES FOR AN UNFAITHFUL WIFE – 64:01 (Hardcore, English dubbed)
Unknown source as PERVERSE SPIELE UNERSÄTTLICHE MÄDCHEN – 78:30 (Hardcore, German dubbed)
Joëlle (Mari-Christine Guennec) and William (Jean-Louis Vattier) are a married couple whose relationship is going stale. We see this illustrated by the sex they have to celebrate each wedding anniversary from the first to the fourth. It becomes less enthusiastic over time and by the fifth anniversary William is overseas with his mistress and has completely forgotten about it. He sends his wife some flowers and a telegram encouraging her to do whatever she needs to make her happy. She does so by exploring her sexual fantasies until he returns.
Christophe Bier’s DICTIONNAIRE DES FILMS FRANÇAIS PORNOGRAPHIQUES & ÉROTIQUES (2011) confirms the original runtime of BLUE ECSTASY as 84 minutes and mentions there was also a softcore variant in circulation. So it would appear that the 1977 submission by Consolidated Exhibitors was either of the official softcore cut or of one which they created themselves by editing the hardcore version.
It is fairly straightforward to see why the softcore version didn’t meet with the Film Censorship Board’s approval as the sex scenes were just a little too strong in for 1977. These include a scene in which a man is having vigorous rear-entry sex with a woman in the kitchen while another woman becomes so aroused by this that she penetrates herself with a cucumber. There is also a scene in which Joëlle parks her car in the middle of Paris (there are a lot of vehicles and pedestrians around and a gendarme can be seen in the background directing traffic) and graphically masturbates while passers-by gather round and watch. There are also a few scenes, involving more than two participants that may also have been too strong.
Shocking
Directed by Claude Mulot / 1976 / France / IMDb
In September 1978, a 1945.70-meter (70:55) print of SHOCKING was banned because of ‘indecency’.
Blake Films were the applicant.
Review
Mike reports
Alpha France (fr) – DVD as LA DERNIERE NUIT – 58:55
Alex (Jacques Insermini) and Juliette (Emanuelle Pareze) are holding a middle-class dinner party. It’s a time of peak Cold War tension with the US and Soviet presidents threatening to press the nuclear trigger, and there is fighting in the streets of Paris. The party guests decide to take advantage of what may be their last night on earth by having as much sex as possible. This is interspersed with footage of tanks, explosions and rioting.
The Alpha France DVD of SHOCKING is missing around fifteen minutes of footage, but it’s clear why this film was problematic in Australia. The main reason is the almost constant hardcore sex and even when the orgy participants take a break they do so by watching a porn film. There’s also a slightly unsettling atmosphere caused by the continual intercutting of real sex with images of violence on the streets and bomb damage. The sex and explosion themes combine perfectly in the final scene in which the US president is being given a blowjob by a prostitute and accidentally presses the nuclear button.
The sex is strong in other ways too. In the intro we see Patricia (Karine Gambier) penetrating herself with a lit candle, and there is a bedroom scene later on designed to show that Alex and Juliette are drifting apart and having difficulty communicating – she pleasures herself very graphically with a telephone receiver while he masturbates into the sink.
SHOCKING would have almost certainly been uncuttable so it makes you wonder what Blake Films were thinking. It is pretty much sex from start to finish and even with the hardcore removed, the remaining sex would still have been much too strong.
La Grande Baise
Directed by Claude Mulot / 1977 / France / IMDb
In November 1976, a 2262.00-meter (82:27) print of LA GRAND BAISE was banned because of ‘indecency’.
Warner Brothers Australia was the applicant.
Review
Mike reports
Alpha-France (fr) – DVD – 60:20 – English dubbed
Dolly (Karine Gambier) and Jean-Jacques (Guy Royer) were in a relationship which broke up exactly a year ago. They celebrate the anniversary by meeting up again and reminiscing about their sexual past and all the other people they have slept with since they last met.
When Alpha-France reissued their 1970s adult films on DVD it was common for them to be much abbreviated versions. Their release of LA GRANDE BAISE is missing 22 minutes compared to the Australian submission, but we can still see why it caused censorship problems.
The plot is rather flimsy to say the least and the film is pretty much one sex scene after another. Almost all of these are hardcore and shot in such a way that removing the real sex would make the scene incomprehensible. Even the scenes in which penetration is not directly seen are far too explicit and enthusiastic for Australian standards of the 1970s.
We see sex taking place between Dolly and her new boyfriend Peter (Alban Ceray) who sees himself as a working-class hero who is trying to bring down capitalism by fighting the police, between Jean and his new girlfriend Alice (Barbara Moose), and between Jean and various women who he slept with to make Dolly jealous. There is also an eight-person orgy featuring some of the characters we met earlier. There is no explanation for the orgy and it seems to have been extracted from Claude Mulot’s earlier film SHOCKING (1976).
In the final scene of this truncated version, Dolly and Jean get back together and have sex immediately. This scene is intercut with all of the previous sexual encounters we saw earlier in the film, including the orgy. Cutting that scene to remove the hardcore would have been impossible.