When I first heard about The ABCs of Love and Sex Australia Style, many years back, I found myself wondering just what sort of twisted perversions the Aussies got up to that they needed their own specific sex education film. Weird rituals involving dingoes, wombats and kangaroos? Didgeridoo deviation?

Thankfully (or sadly – we’re not here to judge), there’s none of that in this late Seventies addition to a genre that had been all the rage in America and Europe a decade earlier, and would be revived in Britain in he early Nineties with The Lovers Guide and a slew of imitators. Under the stewardship of sexploitation vet John Lamond, the film is a mix of well-meaning sexual liberation cheerleading, education and good old-fashioned exploitation, and as such manages to be considerably more entertaining than it should be. It’s certainly a step up from Lamond’s previous sex documentary, Australia After Dark.

Topped and tailed by some unsettlingly creepy claymation, the film takes us, letter by letter, through the world of sex – some letters obvious (O is for Orgasm; L is for Love; M is for Masturbation) and some perhaps less so (A is for Anatomy; F is for… fun?). The scenes are a mix of the sort of straight-faced educational stuff you could show in a classroom and dramatic / humorous scenarios that include some mild nudity, all backed with the sort of breathlessly enthusiastic narration that anyone who has seen any sex education videos will know only too well. In fact, the structure of this film is not unlike those later productions – much moreso than the rather drier films like The Language of Love or Love Variations that had been made previously.

Things take a sudden swerve when we get to the letter L. For this sequence, Lamond decamped to Sweden to film some pretty explicit stuff – though the shots are brief and definitely not eroticised, this is hardcore sex – again, much like the stuff you would find in those later sex ed films and delivered with the same solemnity from the participants that always made those films acceptable as educational – show people enjoying sex and the viewer might presumably start to feel turned on. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this scene was cut on original release.

There are other odd moments that stand out for various reasons – R is for Rape, and looks like it’ll be horrendously exploitative… which it would be if you removed the contextualising narration. As it is, the scene is a pretty unequivocal condemnation of sexual violence – but you wonder why it’s here at all, unless men in the 1970s really did need to be told that it was unacceptable. Less forward-looking is H (for Homosexual), where the narrator assures us that homosexuality is normal and acceptable but the screen shows us a collection of mincing stereotypes and transvestites bitching and a couple of naked lesbians going at it, somewhat undermining the message of tolerance and normality.

Still, on the whole this is entertaining stuff. None of it is at all sexy of course – the sex scenes range from dull to unintentionally hilarious – and much of it is dated – the hairstyles in particular (on the head and pubic) are very much of their time, for example, and the music is pretty abominable. But much of the information here remains valid, the defence of sexual freedom (and condemnation of those who bring their kids up to be narrow-minded prudes) is admirable and the structure still works. There may have been no need for a Aussie-specific sex education film, but I’m glad one was made, and I’m glad it’s been dragged out of obscurity in an uncut print.

DAVID FLINT

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