West End Jungle (Expanded Collector's Edition)

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Review added by
Stuart McLean

Certificate: 15
Running Time: 52 mins
Retail Price: 17.99
Release Date: 30/04/12
Content Type: Movie

Synopsis:
Banned on its original release in 1961, West End Jungle gives the definitive insight into the seedy reality and cunning artifice of the sex-workers of early 60's Soho. Now re-released as special expanded collector's edition with two additional archive "shockumentaries", and a pop promo by the legendary Marc Almond.

The Street Offences Act of 1959 cleared the "over painted harridan face of the West End" - the prostitutes - off the streets of Soho. Genuinely seedy and filmed in the private member's clubs, the 'actual places of vice' - that resulted from the change in the law, West End Jungle bears witness to the array of less than salubrious establishments that offered tawdry strip shows for audiences comprised of "bald heads and moist avid eyes". London railway termini are seen as the ideal locale for pimps to secure "ripe plums for the picking" - naive country girls who can be seduced into a life of vice. Within days, the "weak willed glamour-hungry bumpkins become skillful, heartless gold-diggers".

The striptease clubs are a battlefield, the punters very much seen as 'mugs' to be reeled in by the "hostesses" for all the money they've got! West End Jungle paints a less than complimentary picture of the men who solicit sex workers in clubs which are little more than "high grade cattle markets", one hooker stating, "One of these days I'm going to burst out laughing in one of their stupid faces!" Shrewd businessmen are reduced to lecherous imbeciles in the company of two giggling working girls. Another man pays a tragically poor Marilyn Monroe look-a-like to 'model' for him "only to be entitled to five minutes of peering at a girl who needs a good wash".

Special Features:
Interview with Director
Documentary: Skin Deep (18 mins)
Directed by Arnold L. Miller, this was the first "shockumentary" to document the intricacies of intimate cosmetic surgery in full colour!
Documentary: Get 'Em Off (1976, 26 mins)
Directed by Miller's contemporary Harold Baim, this film goes behind the scenes of one of London's top strip-tease clubs.
Pop Promo: Marc Almond 'Variety' (2010, 3 mins) - Made from footage from 'West End Jungle'.
Newsreel: Clubs Galore! (Soho 1958).
Newsreel: Sir John Wolfenden on Prostitution and the Street Offences Act 1959.
Interview: Director Arnold L. Miller in Conversation in 2009.