Filmed after 'dramatised documentary' The Wife Swappers but a few years before the success of the 'Adventures of' series of careerist sex comedies, the tone of Stanley Long's 1972 Sex and the Other Woman rests, sometimes uneasily, between the two. A downtrodden man's encounter with a blow-up doll, which probably gave unwanted self-realisation to the film's original mackintoshed audience, kicks things off before master of ceremonies Richard Wattis introduces four tales vaguely linked by the theme of adultery. In the first Lisa a big-busted secretary with a thing for married men makes a bee-line for an office co-worker, in the second Maggie Wright plays a gold-digger out to bag a wealthy tennis pal, breaking up his marriage in the process. Alas the luckless man is left penniless after the divorce and the moment she gets wind of this Maggie heads for the door. The third tale ventures into John Lindsay territory, albeit in a more socially acceptable (i.e. softcore) fashion, as a stripping schoolgirl proves too much a temptation for her best friend's middle aged father. Surprisingly humourless for a Stanley Long production, Sex and the Other Woman is enlivened by star turns from Jane Cardew and Felicity Devonshire who cause their male 'victims' to fall off the marriage wagon with minimum effort. In fact the film's depiction of men as universally weak willed and women as powerful vamps is such that the final episode involving a cheating hubby whose wife and mistress are happy to live under the same roof can't help but feel like implausible, wishful thinking.
Its worth noting that the film was the victim of over nine minutes of British censor cuts the last time this was released on video in the UK (in 1988). Although, unless the DVD is also censored, it's hard to see what they got their knickers in a twist for! Extras on the disc include Sex and the Other Woman's original US trailer (it wasn't released stateside till 1980) and trailers for two forthcoming Salvation/Image titles; Norman J. Warren's Prey and the dull Cruel Passion (under the title De Sade's Justine).
