Julie Mason (Georgina Ward) owns her own health clinic, but to make extra cash she also offers sexual favours and even sadomasochism for her clients should they be willing to pay for it. She is planning to make her fortune with this, which is fertile ground for blackmail after all, and today one of her older clients is trying to persuade her to go further with him, but she is more interested in the envelope of notes he has for her and politely tells him no. However, her most persistent customer is a middle-aged lady called Elsa Farson (Carmen Silvera) who Julie is having trouble putting off...
Watching Clinic Exclusive, which sounds like a top people's health farm but in practice here looks to be more of the kind of place you would go to clear up an STD - or catch one - and you can see why most films that fell into the sexploitation bracket during the nineteen-seventies opted to make their material humorous. Or tried to, anyway, but with this it's all played deadly seriously, to the extent that you'll be wishing for a little one-liner or item of saucy slapstick to break up the straightfaced monotony.
It's funny the type of actor who turns up in these kinds of things, for among the recognisable faces here is Windsor Davies of British sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum fame as a chap with a medical condition who sadly cannot afford to go to Julie's establishment. But far more alarming is the presence of Carmen Silvera as an ageing and obsessive lesbian who is practically forced to give up her fortune - and more - by Julie because although she services the lady, she hates herself for doing so. Did we really need to see Edith from Allo, Allo topless? I don't know if we did, but that's what's on offer here.
If you can put that image to the back of your mind, then you are given plenty of chances to see Miss Ward starkers, as every man she meets apparently wants nothing more than to whip off her clothes and plant their face between her breasts, something that happens with quite some regularity as if it was the filmmakers' only idea of foreplay. Julie being the ice maiden she is, this is all strictly business for her and she doesn't mind trampling others underfoot to get what she wants - which is more money - but then a new man strides purposefully into her life.
He is Lee Maitland (Alexander Davion), and he leads her to believe he is rich, so it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out there's something not quite right here. Ward is a raven-haired beauty, and that hairdo is quite something which might make you think she's wearing a large wig, but nope, she jumps into a swimming pool and takes a shower and it looks to be all hers. Anyway, her pulchritude is the main reason to keep watching because otherwise Clinic Exclusive, also known as With These Hands or Sex Clinic, resembles a feature length episode of vintage Crossroads written by Jackie Collins. Actually it was written by the U.K.'s voice of Saturday afternoon wrestling Kent Walton and Hazel Adair, best known for creating, yes, Crossroads. So if you want your sexploitation from the seventies to lean heavily on the melodramatic, then this is tailor-made for you. Music by Ted Dicks, and check out that psychedelic title sequence.
British director best known for directing fantasy favourites Jason and the Argonauts and One Million Years B.C, both of which featured groundbreaking Ray Harryhausen effects. Chaffey also directed Hammer's Viking Queen, but much of his work was in television, both in the UK (The Prisoner, Man In a Suitcase) and, later, the US (Charlie's Angels, CHiPs, Airwolf). Also made kids' favourites Greyfriars Bobby and Pete's Dragon for Disney.
