Search - Sex & The Other Woman on DVD

Unhappy ever after!

11/27/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Filmed after `dramatised documentary' The Wife Swappers but a few years before the popular `Adventures of' series of careerist sex comedies, comes Stanley Long's 1972 Sex and the Other Woman whose tone rests uneasily between the two. An embarrassing episode involving a blow-up doll, which probably gave unwanted self-realisation to the film's original mackintoshed audience, kicks things off before master of ceremonies Richard Wattis introduces four tales vaguely linked by the theme of adultery. In the first Lisa a big-busted secretary with a thing for married men makes a bee-line for an office co-worker, in the second Maggie Wright plays a gold-digger out to bag a wealthy tennis pal, breaking up his marriage in the process. The third tale ventures into John Lindsay territory, albeit in a more socially acceptable (i.e. softcore) fashion, as a stripping schoolgirl proves too much temptation a for her best friend's middle aged father. Surprisingly humourless for a Stanley Long production, Sex and the Other Woman is enlivened by star turns from Jane Cardew and Felicity Devonshire who cause their male `victims' to fall off the marriage wagon with minimum effort. In fact the film's depiction of men as universally weak willed and women as powerful vamps is such that the final episode involving a cheating hubby whose wife and mistress are happy to live under the same roof can't help but feel like implausible, wish fulfilment. Its worth noting that the film was the victim of over nine minutes of british censor cuts the last time this was released on video in the UK (in 1988). Although, unless the DVD is also censored, it's hard to see what they got their knickers in a twist for!
Extras on the disc include trailers for this film and two others; Norman J Warren's Prey and the quite dreadful Cruel Passion (under the title De Sade's Justine)."