The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966) watch online HD

Lord- where do we begin? A Hollywood "B" movie with softcore pretensions tries to take on the English aristocratic tradition- and the result is a cinematic road accident.

Why do Americans trying to emulate that the English upper classes sound so kitsch? The general effect is listening to a violin with a broken string playing to an empty auditorium. Let the Brits do the Brits- please! Anyway, this appalling little number fails on almost every level. There is certainly no class, no acting of any description- nor sufficient nudity or naughtiness to make this worthwhile. There was a modest budget for which we are all grateful.

So I can't recommend this film on any level. Do not confuse it with the racier other "Fanny Hill" outpourings which came out over the following 20 years. This is just dull. Even for 1966.

I love Something Weird Video and its vast panoply of strangeness. That said, this DVD is not amongst their best. When I watch a movie that I know is bad, I want the sort of bad movie that my friends and I can sit and mercilessly heckle. And certainly this movie is very bad. The problem with "The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill" is that it is not quite bad enough. It is low budget, fairly tame, but moderately competent softcore semiporn. Skin flicks on Cinemax are racier than this dated outing. What this film really accomplishes is being really magnificently boring.

The second offering in the DVD, "The Head Mistress" is somewhat better at being bad to the point of funny, but still mostly manages to be exhaustively boring softcore. The DVD is also loaded with extras and the trailers here came the closest to making me feel like I didn't waste my money. But overall, I believe this DVD is not worth the effort. Instead pickup the endlessly entertaining "Beauties and Beasts" Box Set.

Saucy young 18th century courtesan Kissey Hill (luscious blonde stunner Stacey Walker), the daughter of famous sexual adventuress Fanny Hill, follows in her mother's footsteps by catering to royal perverts with assorted kinky tastes. Her clients are a colorful lot: A suave duke with a thing for food, a chubby and masochistic Count de Sade, and a shy, bumbling, but hunky peasant who has yet to lose his virginity. The amusingly mild carnal content includes Kissey playing footsie with the duke under a table, lascivious eating, and some tame lesbianism. Both Walker and hot voluptuous brunette Ginger Hale perform sizzling stripteases. Moreover, Walker possesses a strong and captivating erotic presence that positively scorches the screen; the fact that she isn't the least bit bashful about bearing her deliciously supple body adds further spice to this quaint piece of demurely risqué camp. In addition, this picture offers a flavorsome evocation of the period setting, with especially impressive sets and costumes for such a low-budget production. The jaunty score by Chet Moore and Sam Brown keeps things bubbling along. The sumptuous cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs makes striking use of bold and vibrant color. The blithely lowbrow humor raises a few smiles. The surprise bummer ending is quite startling. Nice naughty fun.

When you think of the Victorian Era, you likely think of prim and proper manners, chivalry, honor, and virtuousness. Things that most of us today find a bit stodgy. Well, you won't find any of that in "The Notorious Daughter Of Fanny Hill," but that still doesn't stop it from being a colossal bore!

Sexy Stacey Walker plays the title role of Kissy Hill, the daughter of a notorious madam in 19th Century London, as she carries on her mother's trade with the upper class gentlemen of her day. But all isn't fun and games, in the end.

To call the plot "tissue-thin" would be an understatement. Everything done in the story is simply to service whatever sexual predilection they want to spotlight next. And they do showcase several, such as Sitophilia, Sadomasochism, Voyeurism, and Lesbianism, just to name a few. Stacey Walker might never be known for being a great actress, but the script here really gives her nothing to work with. Her performance in the vastly superior "A Smell Of Honey, A Swallow Of Brine" looks like Shakespeare compared to what she gives here (especially ironic, given the setting of this film, too). All the women found here are more than willing to peel for the camera, so flesh fiends will likely get what they want. And while Stacey Walker is easily the most attractive of the bunch here, none of the women here are hard on the eyes. So, the film has that much going for it.

The worst thing about it is just how slow and boring things become. With a run time of only 72 minutes, you'd think there wouldn't be time to stretch things out, but you would be wrong. Some of the scenes just feel they go on interminably. Director Peter Perry Jr. is well known in the sexploitation genre circles, having directed more than few of them, but this one is an obvious reach. Instead of making things feel sexy, a lot of scenes just seem to linger on beyond their welcome. The one thing I will give it points for, though, is the unexpected bummer ending to what has been a fairly typical, if rather laborious, "nudie cutie" film. Of course, that requires you to sit though a lot of drawn out sexual sequences that, while passable, never really sizzle.

In the end, the film is what it is. And that is a fairly unremarkable sexploitation flick, which tends to annoy more than arouse. I'm sure that the Victorian Age was never quite like this. And, in this case, that's probably a good thing, as it would likely be a lot more stimulating than this outing was.

The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966)

1/2 (out of 4)

Kissey Hill (Stacey Walker) is the daughter of the notorious Fanny Hill and she plans on following her in mother's footsteps as she opens a prostitution house where she tries to cater to the richest of rich men.

THE NOTORIOUS DAUGHTER OF FANNY HILL is a softcore film that I'm sure made a lot of people happy back in the day since it allowed them to see some beautiful women naked and in color no less. With that said, the film holds very little interest today for a number of reasons but the biggest is the fact that the film is deadly dull and its 74-minute running time seems about ten times that length. Even worse is the fact that the movie really doesn't have anything going for it outside of its star.

Looking through her credits on this site, it doesn't seem that Walker stayed in the business for very long. From the range of her films it seems as if she showed up in the big city, worked in films for a year or two and then left. She's certainly the best thing about the picture but sadly she's given nothing to do. Just check out the early sequence where she flirts with a man while the two of them eats. This scene is just so long and so boring and it never comes close to being erotic.

The nudity picks up as the film moves along but by the time it really starts to flow I'm going to guess that most people will have already hit the eject button or at least fast-forwarded through the film. The color does look great as does Walker but that's about all this thing has going for it.

The delectable Stacey Walker was a mid-60s discovery by the Mighty Monarch of Exploitation, a.k.a. David F. Friedman. He put her to good use, but her output ended up being rather minimal before she disappeared, to presumably return to a normal life. Here she stars as Kissey Hill, daughter of an infamous madam, and who is herself a busy courtesan in the 18th century. She has a steady clientele of royals, who are able to indulge in various forms of kink with her. Among these men are the Duke of Roxbury (Ora Kittle), the Count de Sade (Orlando Fenwick), and a golly-gee-whiz peasant (John Andrews).

The opening lets you know that you'll be in for something unusual. Instead of the actors' names appearing as text, each performer states their name for the record. This is the lead in to an interesting exploitation feature that seems to answer the question, "What if Merchant- Ivory made a skin flick?" It has somewhat better production values than one might expect; although it's strictly a series of interior shots, the set decoration and costumes are certainly adequate. It's no surprise that the film does look good, because it was shot by the great Laszlo Kovacs. The dialogue by Jim Markham has an appropriately literate quality, for the most part.

Admittedly, some lovers of cinematic trash might find this much too tame. As it is, it's not particularly depraved. It's actually kind of low key, as well as deliberately paced. Still, it has its amusements, and the ladies do look very nice. If nothing else, "The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill" serves as a solid showcase for the charmingly seductive Ms. Walker.

Another aspect of interest: this ends on a rather dark note.

Seven out of 10.