Psychotropic Cinema: The Touchables
Psychotropic Cinema: The Touchables
Robert Freeman was a brilliant photographer & graphic artist, known for his close association & collaboration with The Beatles. He designed & shot the album covers for With the Beatles, Beatles for Sale, and Rubber Soul, and created the title sequences for “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!” as well as Richard Lester’s “The Knack”. “The Touchables” is his directing debut. He excels in mise-en-scene & cinematography, and the film has a unique look and style that leaps off the screen. The camerawork throughout is dynamic & exciting, a feast of lush, gorgeous visuals. Almost every shot is fascinating, with costumes & production design altogether giving the film a fever-dream quality that is in tune with the surreal, nonsensical plot.
Credited to at least 4 writers, the script concerns a “Vice Squad” of 4 beautiful young girls (“The Touchables”) who spend their days pulling pranks/getting into shenanigans. The film opens with the quartet, all decked out in hippie counterculture regalia, stealing a wax figure of Michael Caine from a stuffy record
Almost every shot is fascinating, with costumes & production design altogether giving the film a fever-dream quality that is in tune with the surreal, nonsensical plot.
industry party. They quickly escalate by kidnapping a pop star. Playing the titular gang is a quartet of beautiful young British models, all infamous within the “Swinging London” of the late 1960s. Judy Huxtable plays Sadie, who plays with her gun throughout the film and shoots her pop star hostage during one game that goes too far. It doesn’t amount to anything and may be a dream sequence or hallucination. Esther Anderson plays Melanie, the Jamaican beauty who is the main driving force in the kidnapping of Christian the pop star. Marilyn Rickard plays Busbee, and the lovely Kathy Simmonds plays Samson–her doe-eyed, heavy lashes look was all the rage in the late 1960s. Playing the role of the kidnapped pop star is David Anthony, and his androgynous looks fit his character well. Not an actor, he was, like director Freeman, a fashion photographer.
The girls are friends with a wrestler named Ricky Starr whose home is filled with replicas of famous statues, like Michaelangelo’s David. In fact, a surprising percentage of the film is devoted to wrestling, with an extended scene at a match between Ricky and the masked gangster, the ironically named Lillywhite. The film’s climax also features two wrestling bouts, as Ricky and his tag team partner save the girls and Christian from Lillywhite and his henchmen. They add to the film’s overall strangeness.
The girls set their sights on a young pop star named Christian and proceed to kidnap him at the wrestling match & bring him back to their fantastic living space in the countryside. They pull it off by dressing like nuns. Ironically, the pop star is not too put out by this event and lustily has his way with all 4 nubile hippie
The girls live in a giant inflatable dome and spend most of their time with Christian either servicing him or being serviced by him.
chicks. Meanwhile, he is being pursued by Lillywhite, the gay mobster who happens to moonlight as a masked wrestler. The plot & characterizations are no more than thumbnail sketches, barely given dimension, and the film’s pleasure comes solely through the eye-opening cinematography and supremely groovy production design. No explanation or backstory is given, and the film’s universe is surreal: the girls live in a giant inflatable dome (it really must be seen to be believed) and spend most of their time with Christian either servicing him or being serviced by him. There’s a sense of elaborate games being played, both literally (the girls compete at pinball, ping pong, and of course going to bed with Christian) as well as psychological ones. It’s all titillation & sensuality; there’s a lot of “free love” & promiscuity, no jealousy or possessiveness, and there is a frank embrace of female sexuality that is refreshingly nonjudgmental, extending to the gay mobster (who also happens to be Black) who is also looking for Christian.
There is a freewheeling anarchic sense of humor, and there is some fun banter throughout. The influence of Freeman’s collaborator Richard Lester is palpable. The whole film is psychedelic—the costumes, cinematography, sexuality, surreal humor, and the composition of each shot. Psychedelia extends to the film’s music—with Nirvana (not the 90s grunge band, but the 60s psychedelic pioneers most famous for “Rainbow Chaser”) performing the title song and an extended sequence featuring Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive”.
The whole film is psychedelic—the costumes, cinematography, sexuality, surreal humor, and the composition of each shot.
The plot is nonsensical; the visuals are the film’s main point, and if the viewer engages with it on that level, it is a gloriously mind-altering experience. At one point the girls dance in front of a giant screen projecting a fascinating collage of trippy images. Those looking for a plot, characterization, and a linear storyline will be frustrated. But the camera lingers on the beauty of the four leads and the film is firmly made with the POV of The Male Gaze. The film is effortlessly fashionable and visually stunning.
None of the film’s stars had any significant film roles after. Huxtable was famous later for marrying British comedy legend Peter Cook and they stayed together for over 15 years. Esther Anderson had an extraordinary career, founding Island Records with Chris Blackwell and managing Bob Marley as well as helping produce the famous reggae classic “The Harder They Come”. There’s not a lot of info about Rickard’s post-modeling career. Simmonds was best known as a super groupie, famous for her public relationships with Rod Stewart and Harry Nilsson. She was George Harrison’s girlfriend after his wife Patti left him for Eric Clapton and was heartbroken when George left her after meeting Olivia, who would become his second wife.
Released by 20th Century Fox, clearly hoping for a hit with the counterculture, “The Touchables” was not “Blow-Up”, and it was not a box office or critical success. After its initial run, it pretty much disappeared. It has been shown on some cable movie channels but there has never been an authorized video/DVD release, and it is unavailable for streaming. Certain DVD copies are available online.
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