The Cane and Mr. Abel

‘The Cane and Mr. Abel’ is a 25-minute long movie directed by George Harrison-Marks in 1982.  It is often identified as an ‘Imprint’ production although there is no evidence of that at either the beginning or end of the movie.  It was distributed through Phoenix magazine and bookshop in the UK and it was released by CalStar in the US in 1986. 

 

Last week I posted a Janus filmography that I’ve been developing.  I’ve been working on several others and that effort started with an attempt to sort out the films of George Harrison-Marks.  Marks was a photographer and film maker who made the first Janus films starting in 1976 and served as editor of the magazine following the death of A.G. Van Okker in 1980.  He left Janus in 1982 to start Kane which eventually released 101 spanking movies under the ‘Kane International’ banner, and Mark’s daughter and her partner released 35 more under the ‘Top Marks’ banner after GHM’s death.

Peter Henderson describes the beginning of Kane International in a biography of George Harrison-Marks that appeared in The Wellred Weekly (http://www.wellredweekly.com/index.php?article=369):

Despite a successful launch and a growing circulation Kane did not generate a substantial profit during its first year of publication. It did, however, provide an ideal platform from which he could promote and sell home movies again.

George concluded that, in order to provide his customers with what they really wanted, he would have to produce and direct the films himself. In 1984 he acquired the services of a videographer and shot his first video, The Cane and Mr. Abel, starring celebrity model Linzi Drew as a games mistress who nevertheless ends up on the receiving end of a good spanking.

Another three videos followed but financing the production costs continued to be a problem. Fortunately, towards the end of 1985 George was offered a partnership with a professional cinematographer he had worked with in the sixties and together they formed Kane International which would go on to produce all future Kane CP videos.

“The Cane and Mr. Abel” is only one of the movies that GHM produced in the time between leaving Janus and starting Kane International and I have been trying to trace their origins.  I’ve also been going through some of the other spanking magazines that competed with Janus during the 1980 including ‘Phoenix’.  In an article entitled ‘The Rise & Fall of the Spanking Mag: A UK writer's perspective” (http://www.wellredweekly.com/index.php?article=339), Nick Urzdown describes the beginnings of Phoenix.

Following the death of the editor of Janus, Alan Van Okker, an attempt was made at a coup by the magazine's writers. An adult film maker named George Harrison Marks was brought in as a stop-gap editor but he had little interest in spanking publications, or the 'fladge' as it was referred to in the trade. The writers went off to set up a magazine of their own which ran under the name of Phoenix for some years, but it never reached the heights of Janus which seemed to go from strength to strength.

These two projects recently came together when I was looking through a copy of Phoenix 16 (probably published in 1982 or very early 1983) and I found the following ad on the last page.

‘The Cane and Mr. Abel’ opens with a teacher, Miss Margaret Daly, played by frequent GHM collaborator Linzi Drew (Warden’s End, Slaves of Mistress Monique, etc.) cleaning a blackboard in a classroom while she impatiently waits for a student named Fiona.  Fiona has written a letter recounting the latest gossip about Miss Daly’s love life but the letter has fallen into Miss Daly’s hands and now Fiona is going to pay the price.  Fiona begs for forgiveness so Miss Daly offers her the option of six strokes of the cane in the classroom instead of a trip to the Headmaster’s office which could lead to expulsion.  Fiona agrees but continues to beg when she learns it will be a bare bottom caning.  The caning drags on a little long, mostly due to the Fiona’s whimpering.  Fiona isn’t played by a very good actress but Drew is at her seductive best as she administers the caning.

The Headmaster, Mr. Abel, (who is not played by George Harrison-Marks despite the frequent suggestions that he is) walks into the classroom just as Fiona’s caning ends and he is, of course, outraged that Margaret Daly has caned a student without his permission and he demands her resignation.  She has no intention of resigning and he flirts with him while she coyly suggests an alternative.  He finally gets the message and tells her to be in his office at 7 p.m. that evening.

The clock chimes 7 as Margaret arrives at Mr. Abel’s office dressed in very different attire than she had been wearing in class.  Mr. Abel decides that her dress should come off before he takes her across his knee for a hand spanking.  It isn’t a hard spanking but she makes a good show of it.  Eventually her panties come off but it the punishment doesn’t go any further than that.  The scene ends with Margaret and the Headmaster moving on to other activities that are left to the viewers imagination.

I love this movie and Linzi Drew’s performance in particular.  The punishments aren’t particularly hard but the movie is erotic and GHM’s sense of humour is evident as is his background in ‘glamour’ photography and films.  Unfortunately, no one is making movies like this at present.  I only wish I could find a better copy than I currently have.  It is currently available in two parts through the ‘Classic British Spanking’ store on Clips4Sale (http://www.clips4sale.com/studio/3907/classic-british-spanking/) but I haven't bought it because it appears that a couple of minutes may have been edited out.