'Ave You Got A Male Assistant Please Miss?
'Ave You Got A Male Assistant Please Miss? (1973) - courtesy of the BFI
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This film marks a major step forward for the British sex education film.
Coming out the year after Alex Comfort's famous manual The Joy of Sex, beards are the order of the day.
 | STOP LOOK LISTEN  The Magazine's sex ed film festivalFive excerpts from films from the BFI's DVD The Joy of Sex Education - one a day for a week. The films so far:  |
The protagonist, who heads out on a quest to buy condoms, has plenty of head and face hair, but the chemist he meets has a truly extraordinary level of hirsuteness. This guy makes Jerry Garcia look shorn.
Compared with other films of the era, this effort tries vigorously to be forward-looking.
The central message is an encouragement to buy condoms accompanied by a reminder about the number of abortions that happen every year.
"This is an unreservedly hairy promotion of the prophylactic in avoiding unwanted pregnancies," says James Piers Taylor, curator (non-fiction) at the BFI National Archive.
"A wave of period details situate the film in both time and milieu. The culture of its audience, 1970s students, is evoked and displayed via a mattress on the floor, an ethnic rug, the kilim bedspread, homebrew jars, denim clothes and by hair."
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