David Grant

A notorious character, David Hamilton-Grant was Britain's self-proclaimed 'King of Sexploitation' who from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, distributed and produced all manner of pornography from London's West End. Unlike most of his contemporaries Grant reveled in his second hand car salesman as pornographer image and was not well liked. Grant began his career in photography, his self-published photo-book 'Love Variations' was an early sex education manual. Using the name 'Terry Gould', Grant directed a film version of Love Variations (1970) in 1969. Viewed today the film is more than a little tedious, as a couple dispassionately demonstrate sexual positions and a phony 'family doctor' yaks on and on, but on account of the film's taboo breaking use of full-frontal nudity (male and female) the film was a success and allowed Grant to continue his career. With the help of sexploitation jack of all trades, Ray Selfe, Grant formed 'Oppidan' pictures which distributed home grown soft-core like "Confessions of a Sex Maniac" (The Man Who Couldn't Get Enough (1974)) and heavily cut foreign items like Pussy Talk (1975). For his own productions Grant assembled an eclectic workforce, which included 'Village of the Damned' director Wolf Rilla, 'Roobarb and Custard' animator Bob Godfrey and 60s TV satire director, Joseph McGrath. Grant's productions like Snow White and the Seven Perverts (1973), Girls Come First (1975) and The Office Party (1976), are distinguished by threadbare production values, plots Xeroxed from other British sex comedies, scant running times and Grant's lewd sensibilities. Grant became absorbed by sexploitation, and personally shot hardcore scenes for most of his film's overseas release. By the mid-seventies a loophole in the law meant hardcore films could be shown in 'Membership Only' sex cinemas in London. Seizing the opportunity Grant and (reluctantly) Selfe became co-owners of several such cinemas, seven straight one gay and all playing wall-to-wall hardcore. According to Selfe, most of the films that played these cinemas came from America and were shot by either moonlighting television people or randy film students. Mostly they were credit-less and titles had to be made up. 'I was a Teenage Bride' (Selfe's title) which packed them in for five months was actually a title Selfe and Grant used for three different films all playing under the same title. The audience didn't complain. Both Oppidan productions and the sex cinemas brought in vast amounts of money, most of which Grant spent on his love of gambling, but on both the casino floors and in the film world he hardly had the Midas touch. Attempts at mainstream filmmaking - Grant produced The Great McGonagall (1975) with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan - proved financially disastrous. Grant's career became riddled with bad moves, he hired future Oscar winner Jonathan Demme to direct Naughty Wives (1973) but then abruptly fired him, and in 1979 plans to import Deep Throat (1972) director Gerard Damiano for a sex drama called "Love is Beautiful" - came to nothing. When the age of cinema sexploitation passed Grant shed Selfe and went it alone forming 'Video World of 2000', a video distributor of exploitation titles including several of Grant's old productions. But it was Video World of 2000's release of "Nightmares in a Damaged Brain" (Nightmare (1981)) an ultra-violent US horror film in which a psychotic has a drooling fit in a sex shop - that caused all the controversy. Grant came up with an outrageous competition to publicise the release in which people had to guess the weight of a real 'damaged brain' - where Grant managed to procure such an item remains best unanswered. Such a tasteless stunt, along with the release of this extremely graphic film couldn't have been more badly timed, for this was in 1984 the year of Britain's 'Video Nasty' hysteria. Grant and several of his associates were arrested on obscenity charges, and Grant was eventually sent to prison for 18 months. After his release Grant's life in 1980s Britain became a chaotic blur of legal charges and police hassles including arrests for drink driving, video copyright offences and assault. Grant eventually disappeared later resurfacing as a delicatessen owner in Cyprus, only to be then deported to Turkey. In his absence Grant was a fixture of sensationalist UK newspaper articles, each claiming he was involved in more nefarious activities than the last. What the 'King of Sexploitation' made of this slice of exploitation more closer to home remains unanswered, Grant fell silent in 1991 his death like so much of his life was in mysterious circumstances.