Fanny Hill (1983)

There seems to be some interest in this old tale, with the relatively recent BBC drama staring Rebecca Night, which was well made, even though it was devoid of the erotic content of the John Cleland work that I got my hands on soon after. Having caught the Fanny Hill bug, a quick search on a well known on-line retailer, a few purchases and I soon had in my possession two DVDs of two different Fanny Hill productions. One stars Cheryl Dempsey in a Valentine Palmer production, and the other is this production starting Lisa Raines. I am impressed by both, but let's focus on this.Much of what I had thought of writing in this review have been written by many other reviewers here already, so I shall not repeat, criticise nor support. This production is an extremely good production of an extremely explicit erotic novel. It is done with brilliant details of the period, tackling erotically explicit subjects in good humour, and without turning it into a pornographic movie, which it could easily have done. Of course there are naked people, and some scenes can be explicit but not in a hard-core manner, this is, after all, a movie of Fanny Hill, but I don't feel that any nudity was uncalled for.There are some well known actors in the movie, notably Oliver Reed, Wilfred Hyde-White and Shirley Winters, but they were in the movie as mere characters, and I did not feel they were particularly good in the movie, perhaps simply to provide gravitas? The star is the unknown, and sadly, still unknown Lisa Raines Foster. An extremely pretty girl, and a surprising good actress. I didn't think I would say so, but she did carry the movie. Having read the book, and seen the BBC version before watching this movie, I thought Lisa Raines Foster made this movie a memorable one. OK, the cynics amongst you would say that I am swayed by the nudity, by the numerous full-frontal nude scenes of a beautiful woman. To a point, yes, she is very very sexy. But thinking for a moment, this has not been the reason. Lisa Raines Foster is a very good actress. She could act, with or without her clothes on, her smiles, her eye expressions made me feel her feelings, and this is special. It is such a shame she has not made more movies.Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

I have to admit that I was one of those people who, let's say, were not very best pleased when Fanny Hill was first released. Some of the thoughts that came to mind, I am afraid, I cannot repeat. So what's changed? A few weeks ago, I heard that a extremely talented screenwriter is adapting Fanny Hill for one of the main TV channels here in the UK, I decided to do some researched. I got myself the John Cleland book, and the DVD with Lisa Foster, expecting the worse. The book is very good, go read it. The DVD was fantastic, go watch it! The storyline is good, it was very well filmed with lots of good period pieces, quite authentic as well, and follows quite well the book. Having read the book first and then watch the DVD, I was not disappointed. I thought the erotic aspects, of which there were lots, with lots of nudity, were tastefully presented.The acting? Surprisingly good. Let's put aside the over acting by big names like Oliver Reed and Shelley Winters, they were good and amusing, but at best were the support act. The star's Lisa Foster, or Lisa Raines. I thought she was very beautiful, with an excellent body, and you can see a lot of her. The movie, the story, called for lots of nudity, and I did not feel that any nude scenes were unnecessary, or out of context. She showed what a good actress she is. Nudity aside, she could act, the story line required the show of innocence, a sense of naughtiness, excitement, adventure, sadness, elation, Lisa Foster showed all of these. I am very surprised by her entry in this database that this was probably her most major piece of work. What a shame. I am sure that when the movie was first released, Lisa was probably put into some sort of category like 'actress who likes taking clothes of', and may have accounted for the lack of good roles after that. Shame that she made the movie 20 years too early.As a woman, and a married woman with kids, I am not afraid to say that Fanny Hill is a very good movie, and Lisa Foster is a very good actress. I have since seen the movie again, with a bunch of friends who had the same thought as me when it was first released, and they loved it too.If you have not seen the movie, go watch it.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of this movie is the appearance of veteran Wilfred Hyde-White, one of those individualistic character actors who,like his friend Robert Morley, never fail to entertain even in the most pedestrian film. Fanny Hill isn't great cinema, but it is great fun, and Hyde-White is hugely enjoyable to watch. Shelley Winters is clearly relishing her role, and between them these two reliable veterans prove that a film that might easily become reliant on nudity to make an impact has chosen, like so many British sex comedies, to use actors of experience and talent to make more of a movie than its sexual content can provide. An enjoyable romp.

I can't remember seeing the entire film, or the reason for the rather amusing sexual sounding title, but I do remember that there were a couple of good moments of female nudity and sex. Oliver Reed starred in it somewhere, but he obviously wasn't my concern when I saw it. I only cared about it because of the amusing named title, and the mention of quite a few sexual references. There are no scenes I can really remember that well, but I think there was one where two girls are seeing many people have sex through their above windows. I did not see any of Oliver Reed as far as can remember, but I don't think this is his type of film anyway. Okay!