Die Llolas is a blue movie with a comedy vibe, its infamous on account of one of its male cast members resembling and acting very much a certain John Cleese. Of course a second glance reveals it isn't the real John Cleese, who presumably was doing something completely different like sitting at a desk in the middle of a field, at the time. Cleese lookalike aside the real selling point of Die Llolas was the diminutive, large chested Israeli Clyda Rosen, a popular nude model and pornster of the time.
Die Llolas finds Clyda attempting to transport a suitcase full of smut through HM Customs. Luckily for her the bumbling customs man (the Cleese clone) seems more suspicious about Clyda's unnaturally large chest and insists on the top coming off. Suitably impressed ("holy cow wow!") he goes on to cop a feel before an outraged female customs officer walks in on the naughtyness and boots the letch out. Taking over the strip-search the woman gets a little lost in the moment too ("you'll pass customs with flying colours") and the pair of them end up making love on the inspection desk. Incredulously these graphic scenes are inter-cut with baffling comic relief in the form of two of hippies arguing at the customs desk. Possibly the most unlikely looking hippies outside of Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw at the end of Carry on Camping, the pairs' squabble comes to a suitably bizarre finale when one of them steals the others teddy bear and throws it over the desk.
The second half of the film serves up some hetero hi-jinks as Clyda returns home with the goods to her idle, porn obsessed boyfriend. Fired up by the stash, he quickly jumps into bed with Clyda whilst projecting a blue movie over their heads. In the joke punch line Clyda catches a glimpse of the blue film within a blue film and IDs her boyfriend as one of the stars. It is in the words of Blue Peter 'one he made earlier' while she'd been using her feminine charms to get his smut through customs. "You bum" Clyda complains "you could have waited for me".
Arguably worth seeing for Clyda's sexy presence alone, explicit scenes married to a No Sex Please We're British-esquire storyline give Die Llolas the time capsule quality of being from an era when dirty movies really earned that description and were smuggled into the UK by nervous, horny holidaymakers. In these less complicated times the film currently enjoys a second life as an internet download.
Given the clandestine nature of such things its not entirely surprising that the identity of Die Llolas director remains a question mark. A possible clue is that Clyda worked extensively for the heavy drinking nudie photographer turned reluctant pornographer George Harrison Marks, which along with Marks' hardcore loop Duty Free sharing the same storyline and even some footage from Die Llolas does point to old George being the man behind the camera here. The outlandish costumes (one of the hippies sports a orange fright wig and a fez), seaside postcard exchanges, exaggerated comic expressions of the customs officer and corny gags like a woman being called Miss Durex, certainly fit with Marks' 'music hall meets pornography under the influence of scotch' style. During his 'blue' period in between making The 9 Ages of Nakedness and Come Play With Me, Marks directed lots and lots of 8mm sex films, soft and hard, from his home studio. Not adverse to directing duo versions of the same 8mm film Marks would shoot full colour hard versions to be sold overseas by the Colour Climax company, as well as softcore black and white versions sold domestically by Marks' own Maximus company. Maximus, or rather 'The Maximus Film Club' regularly advertised out of the back pages of Continental Film Review, readers could 'enjoy 8mm continental style films in your own home' by sending a SAE to Marks' studio in Faulkner's Alley, Cowcross Street. Punters who wanted to see versions that contained both colour and climax, would however have to take Die Llolas' characters lead, which dare I say is why cheap holidays to Copenhagen were also advertised in the back pages of Continental Film Review. Just to add to this puzzle there exists a short little film that fits the Maximus MO (silent, b&w, soft) that has the same plot as Die Llolas, stars Clyda but has a different actor playing the customs man. The mystery deepens.
British horror film connoisseurs as well as fans of large breasted Israeli ladies might like to note that Clyda also played a mad scientist's creation in Dolly Mixture, an obscure Frankenstein themed blue movie shot by Marks in 1973.
Die Llolas finds Clyda attempting to transport a suitcase full of smut through HM Customs. Luckily for her the bumbling customs man (the Cleese clone) seems more suspicious about Clyda's unnaturally large chest and insists on the top coming off. Suitably impressed ("holy cow wow!") he goes on to cop a feel before an outraged female customs officer walks in on the naughtyness and boots the letch out. Taking over the strip-search the woman gets a little lost in the moment too ("you'll pass customs with flying colours") and the pair of them end up making love on the inspection desk. Incredulously these graphic scenes are inter-cut with baffling comic relief in the form of two of hippies arguing at the customs desk. Possibly the most unlikely looking hippies outside of Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw at the end of Carry on Camping, the pairs' squabble comes to a suitably bizarre finale when one of them steals the others teddy bear and throws it over the desk.
The second half of the film serves up some hetero hi-jinks as Clyda returns home with the goods to her idle, porn obsessed boyfriend. Fired up by the stash, he quickly jumps into bed with Clyda whilst projecting a blue movie over their heads. In the joke punch line Clyda catches a glimpse of the blue film within a blue film and IDs her boyfriend as one of the stars. It is in the words of Blue Peter 'one he made earlier' while she'd been using her feminine charms to get his smut through customs. "You bum" Clyda complains "you could have waited for me".
Arguably worth seeing for Clyda's sexy presence alone, explicit scenes married to a No Sex Please We're British-esquire storyline give Die Llolas the time capsule quality of being from an era when dirty movies really earned that description and were smuggled into the UK by nervous, horny holidaymakers. In these less complicated times the film currently enjoys a second life as an internet download.
Given the clandestine nature of such things its not entirely surprising that the identity of Die Llolas director remains a question mark. A possible clue is that Clyda worked extensively for the heavy drinking nudie photographer turned reluctant pornographer George Harrison Marks, which along with Marks' hardcore loop Duty Free sharing the same storyline and even some footage from Die Llolas does point to old George being the man behind the camera here. The outlandish costumes (one of the hippies sports a orange fright wig and a fez), seaside postcard exchanges, exaggerated comic expressions of the customs officer and corny gags like a woman being called Miss Durex, certainly fit with Marks' 'music hall meets pornography under the influence of scotch' style. During his 'blue' period in between making The 9 Ages of Nakedness and Come Play With Me, Marks directed lots and lots of 8mm sex films, soft and hard, from his home studio. Not adverse to directing duo versions of the same 8mm film Marks would shoot full colour hard versions to be sold overseas by the Colour Climax company, as well as softcore black and white versions sold domestically by Marks' own Maximus company. Maximus, or rather 'The Maximus Film Club' regularly advertised out of the back pages of Continental Film Review, readers could 'enjoy 8mm continental style films in your own home' by sending a SAE to Marks' studio in Faulkner's Alley, Cowcross Street. Punters who wanted to see versions that contained both colour and climax, would however have to take Die Llolas' characters lead, which dare I say is why cheap holidays to Copenhagen were also advertised in the back pages of Continental Film Review. Just to add to this puzzle there exists a short little film that fits the Maximus MO (silent, b&w, soft) that has the same plot as Die Llolas, stars Clyda but has a different actor playing the customs man. The mystery deepens.
British horror film connoisseurs as well as fans of large breasted Israeli ladies might like to note that Clyda also played a mad scientist's creation in Dolly Mixture, an obscure Frankenstein themed blue movie shot by Marks in 1973.