Nu-West/LEDA Wrap-Up

I’ve written 10 reviews about a total of 13 Nu-West/LEDA movies over the last few months and I think its time to take a break for a while.  But, before I do, I should probably make a few final comments.

Over the life of this blog, I’ve reviewed 16 Nu-West/LEDA movies (3 of the reviews covered 2 or 3 related movies):

• Whipping Day at Table Mountain (FCV-096);
• More Whipping Day at Table Mountain (FCV-101);
• Corporal Punishment in Women’s Institutions, Part 1 (NWV-097);
•  Three Naked Women (FCV-029);
•  Katie Birched, Whipped and Strapped (NWV-280);
•  More Hard Labour Whipping (FCV-112);
•  Barn Whipping (FCV-105);
•  More Barn Whipping (FCV-107);
•  Naked Barn Whipping (FCV-114);
•  Drop your Breeches (NWV-366);
•  My Barn, My Rules (FCV-100);
•  Helen’s Whippings (FCV-005);
•  Discipline South African Style (NWV-143);
•  Spanked for Jack (NWV-398);
•  Under Rhodesian Law (NWV-077); and
•  Kyrie’s Last Session (NWV-164).

There are many more I could review and I will probably come back to some of them later. 

I first discovered Nu-West 25 years ago.  I didn’t buy tapes at first because of the price and concern about having them intercepted in the mail.  I recall that Nu-West tapes sold for $49.95 at the time, allowing for inflation, that would be about $80 today.  I’m told that prices for the early 8 mm films were as much as $89.95, depending on the year that could be $300 today.  I did start to buy DVDs when prices came down and my small collection includes 6 movies that are no longer listed on the website (I haven’t reviewed any of them).  I tried to add up how many of Ed Lee’s movies I have seen over the years and I think it's just under 200 but many of those were borrowed. 

That does raise the question of how many movies did Ed Lee make?  If you add the number of videos in each series there are 1240 videos on the website, and the site is announcing that 9 more are coming, but if you add the highest number in each series the total is 1416.  Of course, both of these totals include compilations and mini-movies which consisted of one scene taken out of a longer movie.  Even so, that means Ed was producing about 40 movies a year over the course of his career as well as distributing them which would have been time consuming in the days when that meant duplicating and mailing 8 mm films and VHS tapes.  He also produced private commissions but I have no idea how many of those he made.

I am generally not a big fan of Nu-West/LEDA films and Ed’s earlier movies in particular.  I find that they lack subtlety; it’s just ‘let’s get right to it’ with little build-up.  I can’t help thinking that the shear volume of work he produced meant that very little time was available to develop a story line so he simply didn’t bother with one.  That is a big drawback for me because I prefer a movie to build up to the punishment scenes.  The cheap sets, low technical quality and the poor state of preservation of many of those early works certainly doesn’t help either.  But there are other issues as well.  Ed obviously has a fondness for the whip that I don’t share; I much prefer a leather strap (a little lighter than a prison strap) or the American School Paddle.  I would also like to se the spray birch used more often but I seem to be a lone voice in the wilderness on that subject.  Finally, I find some Nu-West movies are a little severe for my taste.  Certainly not Mood/Elite severe but they are sometimes toward the upper end of what I want to see.

Despite all that, there are a few Nu-West movies that are among my favorites, particularly Barn Whipping (FCV-105), Naked Barn Whippings (FCV-114), the two Whipping Day at Table Mountain (FCV-096 & 101) movies and More Hard Labor Whipping (FCV-112).  It is interesting to note that those were all made in the last decade of Ed’s career.

So, what’s next?  British spanking movies have always been my first love.  I’ve managed to find copies of some early Janus, Kane, Roue and Blushes movies and a number of newer movies released under the Spanking for Pleasure and Moonglow banners that I have never reviewed.  I also starting to collect Red Stripe movies because I’ve managed to ignore that company till now.  Those will probably keep for going for quite some time.