I’ve been away from this blog for quite awhile now. That often happens in the summer, because I have other things to do, but this summer was also a time for home renovations that have taken up a lot of my time. Now it’s time to get back to this blog but it’s also time to start something new. I started actively researching Cavern Spanking near the beginning of 2020 and I wrote my first review of a Cavern movie in May 2020. Since then, I’ve written 23 reviews, covering 26 movies, and assembled a filmography. Assembling the filmography was complicated by the fact that many Cavern movies were also released by either CalStar or 6666 Productions (or both), often under different names and sometimes after being extensively re-edited.
During the course of this work, I’ve come to believe that Cavern produced 41 movies along with a number (at least three) of short clips. The 41 movies were released on 35 videotapes; 30 with a single movie on the tape, 4 with two movies and 1 with three short movies. I believe that I have now identified all 41 of these movies and I have updated the filmography to include all of them.
I have also worked through the 10 Moonglow North Compendium tapes that contain re-released Cavern material. They contain a total of 31 segments. Three of the segments were short clips and 26 were from Cavern movies although some were re-edited (usually shortened) versions of one of the movies. In one case, I think the edited version that appears on the compendium tape (The Joy Riders) is much better than the original movie (Spanked Lesbians). I find it very interesting that two of the segments on Moonglow North Compendium tapes; ‘Discipline School’ on Moonglow North Compendium Three and ‘Caned by Camila’ on Moonglow North Compendium Six do not come from Cavern movies. ‘Discipline School’ is from the Spanking for Pleasure movie ‘Class of ‘94’ and ‘Caned by Camila’ is from the first Red Stripe movie ‘Please Don’t Cane Me, Camila’ (aka ‘Am I Going to be Spanked, Frank?’). Both of these movies feature Ivor Gold and he may be part of the answer to one outstanding question; who made the Cavern movies? Over time, I came to believe that there were several, probably three, film makers contributing to Cavern. My reason for believing that is that the Cavern movies have distinctly different styles and they seem to fall into three groups. That’s not a terribly reliable basis for my conclusion but it’s the best I had to work with. So, who were these three film makers?
The first answer to that question comes from George Harlow’s history of the Moonglow videos in Volume 1, Number 12 of The Wellred Weekly (http://www.wellredweekly.com):
“In 1998, we were approached by Mel, the boyfriend of the splendid Alison, who was an asset in any video. Mel was selling his output to Paradox, who were based in Brighton. Moonglow is based in the Midlands; to Mel this halved the journey from his eyrie in Wigan. Thus Moonglow North was born and we purchased his highly earthy output. The gritty productions were very successful more often than not.”
Alison and Mel were from Wigan which is a small town located between Manchester and Liverpool and north of Birmingham where Moonglow was based. Alison, who sometimes used the name Liza Wigan, is often described as being Irish but people who know English accents much better than I do tell me that she is actually from Liverpool. There was a migration of people from Ireland to Liverpool in the 1830s and 40s and the accent that developed, know as Scouse, was strongly influenced by Irish.
Later, I found a November 2020 comment to a May 15, 2014 Spanking Film Review post on 'Beating from a Blackmailer'. I quoted that comment in a May 2021 update to my January 2021 post on ‘Beating from a Blackmailer’. As I said there, I can't vouch for the accuracy of the comment but I don't have any reason to doubt it either.
I can’t help but to suspect that ‘the couple’ mentioned in this post are Alison and Mel. The comment also refers to a statement in the original post that said that the actor known as 'Anthony Lawton', who the commenter identifies as 'Paul', was Scottish but the commenter identities his accent as Mancunian which is from the area around Manchester, including Wigan. Anthony Lawton appeared in at least seven Cavern movies and, largely based on this post, I suspect that he was another of the principal figures behind Cavern Spanking.
I don’t know who third person was but it does appear that Ivor Gold may have played some role in the early years of Cavern Spanking. My evidence for this is thin but Gold appeared in two Cavern movies (‘Severity School’ and ‘Spanked Lesbians’) and in two non-Cavern movies ‘Class of ’94’ and ‘Caned by Camila’ that were included on the Moonglow North Compendium tapes. All four of these movies were made in 1994 which was also the year when Ivor Gold started Red Stripe. My guess is that Ivor may have had some involvement with Cavern at the beginning and then he left to found Red Stripe, but that is just my guess and it’s possible that I’m completely wrong. However, it could mean that Cavern retained some interest in ‘Class of ‘94’ and ‘Caned to Camila’ which could explain how they end up on the Moonglow North Compendium tapes.
So, what’s next? I‘ve spent some time working through the Janus movies but I’ve barely touched the Roue movies and I haven’t touched the Blushes movies at all. I would like to spend some time looking at Roue and Blushes, and a couple of the other English producers who shut down after the UK Video Recordings Act of 1984. I have looked at some of the Kane and Moonglow movies but there are more that I would like cover. Also, I haven’t spent any time looking at the Red Stripe movies even though I have an almost complete set; I’m only missing ‘Behind Closed Doors 2’ which was actually released by Boys Behaving Badly but it fits between Parts 1 and 3 which were Red Stripe movies so I include it with Red Stripe. Then, there is always Spanking for Pleasure. I’ve been working on a filmography which is approaching 450 titles and it’s still growing. There are also the early Strictly English movies and I don’t know much about them so that would be an interesting project. And so on and so on and …, I’m sure I’ll find something to do.
