Helli Louise

A once seen, never forgotten Danish starlet, Helli Louise Jacobson first made a name for herself in the Scandinavian sex industry, including a large role in the scandalous Daddy, Darling (1970). A taboo film for its time, Daddy Darling features Helli as a teenager who seeks revenge on her father after he turns down her sexual advances; she does this by seducing her stepmother and passing her boyfriend off as her father. The film's US press book - aimed strictly at selling the film to cinema managers - rather insultingly refers to Helli as possessing 'a pouty, Lolita-like face and breasts like a cow', whether this earned the film more bookings remains to be seen! Helli moved to the UK in the early seventies and her British career remains amazingly eclectic (even if the roles did not). In an episode of The Goodies she can be seen posing on a beanstalk and in a bathtub full of puppies, while in an episode of The Sweeney she's a floozy merrily knocking back the drinks with a doomed police informer. Helli's looks (i.e. 'breasts like a cow') meant she passed an audition for Benny Hill with ease. All this mainstream TV work is quite remarkable given that Helli had a colourful background appearing in hardcore loops in Scandinavia, something she continued to do in the UK where such things were a legal question mark and were known as 'blue movies'. Helli's frequent employer in this field was 'John Jesnor Lindsay', the most public of the blue movie men. At some point in his career Lindsay decided to produce a couple of 'legit' softcore comedies and would flesh out these film's casts with people from his blue movie world. Lindsay cast Helli in his film The Hot Girls (1974), a fake 'expose' on the world of nude modelling. In the film she's interviewed at length on the set of a blue movie (referred to as 'Lust to Kill'). The man posing the questions was the horror film writer David McGillivray. Throughout the years The Hot Girls has acquired a London after Midnight-type mystic on account of all attempts to trace the film coming to nothing - it's now considered 'lost'. McGillivray's head in hands remarks about how wretched and embarrassing the film is has only made sleaze-mongers even more eager to see it. In a familiar career path for John Lindsay 'discoveries' Helli made the jump from blue movie girl to softcore bit player. Most notably she appeared in the above average careerist sex comedy The Ups and Downs of a Handyman (1975), a part that was clearly shot around the same time as her Sweeney role given that she's wearing the same dress. Her 'big' scene in the film, cut from some video versions, is a rather uncomfortable looking bathtub threesome. If you watch the scene closely you can see Helli pull a visibly pained expression as she catches her back on a bath knob. Such hard graft eventually paid off for Helli and she went on to receive the two biggest honours the British Film Industry could bestow on a buxom, Danish actress; - she got to roll around with Robin Askwith in Confessions of a Pop Performer (1975) and made a brief (and briefless) appearance, as a nude woman surprised by Peter Butterworth in the shower, in Carry on Behind (1975). Long out of the public eye, Helli is now believed to be working behind the scenes in the UK music industry.