Who is Alan Bell?

UPDATE (July 2022):  Nick Urzdown, the author of Spanks for the Memories, which I've read, as well as Good Times with Girls and A Spanking Good Life, which I haven't read, sent me a comment on the original version of this post.  I have updated the post to incorporate the information that he provided.

I have spent the last few months reviewing some of the Roue Classics movies.  Depending on how you count them, these are the 18 or 20 movies that were released by Roue in the early eighties (two of them, First Week of Term and Uncle George, were originally released in two parts).  All but three of them (Jane and the Tutor, After Hours and Tutor’s New Pupil) are available from the Roue website as well as some other sources.

The name ‘Alan Bell’ is closely associated with the early years of Roue.  Bell is one of the major figures of the British spanking movie scene from the late 20^th century and he is on a par with George Harrison-Marks (Janus and later Kane), Christian Fennington and Michael Harry Smith (Spanking for Pleasure), Ivor Gold (Red Stripe), George Harlow and John Kirkwood (Moonglow and Moonglow West respectively) and others.  All of these names (some may be pseudonyms) are probably well known to most British spanking movie aficionados and some aspects of their lives are equally well known but Bell is more of a mystery.

So that raises the question ‘who was Alan Bell’?  He has a page on the Spanking Art Wiki (spankingart.org) that reads:

"Alan Bell was owner and editor of the British spanking magazine Roué in the 1970s and 1980s. He also worked a director of spanking videos by Roué Videos in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1982, he edited four editions of the Janus spanking magazine.  Under the pen name Mr. X, he also worked as a spanking artist, drawing M/f spanking art."

That’s it.  That’s all there is.  And even that is more than I had known before I read that page; I hadn’t known he was also an artist.

I can expand on the Spanking Art Wiki a little.  Roue was most likely founded in 1978 and it began producing movies around 1980.   I received a comment on the original version of this post from Nick Urzdown who informed me that:

"The magazine was started by a married couple and when the husband died his widow had no wish to edit the publication, so Roberts was brought in."  ['Roberts' is Alan Roberts who edited Roue in the late 80s.]

If so, then what I had believed was some type of management dispute was probably the death of the original owner and the sale of the magazine.  I'm not certain how Alan Bell was involved with Roue.  He may have been editor of the magazine but he certainly directed, and often appeared in several Roue movies made during that time including both parts of First Week of Term.

George Harrison-Marks stepped down as editor of Janus in 1982 about the same time that Roue temporarily suspended publication.  Bell stepped in to edit four issues of Janus while Roue was shut down, this information comes from both a history of Janus and a biography of GHM.   Roue resumed publication near the end of 82, or maybe early in 83 but I don't know if Bell had any involvement with the revived Roue.  Bell also directed a few movies for Blushes around the same time, these include Term End Punishments, Big Girls do Cry and The Detention Room.  I have been trying to put dates on the Blushes movies based on when the accompanying photostories appeared in the magazines and what I have been able to do so far indicates that Bell's Blushes movies were made in 1983 which would be just after his brief tenure as editor of Janus.  This suggests that he might not have had any role in the relaunch of Roue.

I learned from The Spanking Art Wiki that Bell was also an artist who used the name Mr. X for his spanking art.  That article contains a link to some of his drawings on the Encyclopedia of Spanking Art which identifies Blushes as the source of those drawings.  Unfortunately, there are no dates on any of the drawings so I have no idea when they were created.  I have some information that Bell also appeared as a dom/top in photostories that were published in Blushes and some of its sister publications.

After his time with Blushes, Bell and Mr. X seem to disappear from the scene.  I’ve read several books and articles on the British spanking scene in the eighties and nineties but Bell wasn’t mentioned in any of them.   I have searched the web for more information with little success.  I did find one lead that appeared promising at first.  In March 2014, an exchange on the Janus Twitter account suggested that Bell was dead:

Unfortunately, no more information was given and, in the response to a follow-up request for more information on the history of Roue, ‘Tarquin’ only said “a story I'd love to tell but sadly there aren't too many people left around to tell it”.  [I’m assuming that anyone reading this knows the story of Janus publisher Gordon Sergeant and his nephew Tarquin.  If not let me know and I’ll write a post on that story.]

So, I am still left with the question ‘who was Alan Bell’.  If anyone can tell me more. I would love to hear it.

The Beating of Rosie Keller

  

“The Beating of Rosie Keller” is a 30-minute movie released by Roue in 1984.  Its’ release was announced on pages 60 and 61 of Roue 33.  British spanking magazines of the eighties didn’t put dates on their issues but I believe Roue 33 would have been published around August of 1984. (Roue 35 is a Christmas issue and the Editor’s note talks about 1984 in the past tense so I date it to December 1984.  Roue was published at roughly 2 month intervals during this period so Roue 33 should have been published in late summer.)  “The Beating of Rosie Keller” is currently available on DVD through the Roue website at www.roue.com.

“The Beating of Rosie Keller” features a cast of two women but I don’t recognize either.  It has a simple premise and most of the movie is filmed in a single office.  A schoolgirl named Rosie has been involved in a prank that resulted in damage to a school cloakroom.  The movie begins with Rosie sitting outside Miss Parker’s office.  She is called into the office and Miss Parker demands to know the identity of the other girls involved in the prank.  Rosie refuses to identify the other girls so Miss Parker reminds her that she has ways of getting Rosie to identify them.  There is a cane sitting prominently on Miss Parker’s desk so there can be no uncertainty about what she means.

Miss Parker doesn’t waste any time and Rosie’s skirt is up and her panties are down in very little time.  Miss Parker begins with a hand spanking that lasts nearly 4 minutes.  There is some questionable camera work during this segment and one significant continuity gaffe when Rosie’s panties change position over the course of an edit.  Once it is obvious that the hand spanking won’t produce the desired result, Miss Parker threatens the use of the cane.

Miss Parker orders Rosie to bend over her desk.  After Rosie delivers one almost comical “No, Miss Parker, please” in a close up, she takes her position over the desk and Miss Parker begins the caning at about the 7-1/2 minute mark of the movie.  The strokes of the cane are is firm to hard but pace is leisurely at best and sometimes painfully slow.  After only two strokes (which require nearly 4 minutes) Miss Parker has Rosie kneel on the desk for the third stroke.  Then Rosie is back over the desk for the next stroke but she is back up on the desk before that stroke is delivered.  Rosie alternates between bent over the desk and kneeling on the desk for the rest of the movie.  Eventually Rosie receives 6 or 7 strokes of the cane but they are spread out over nearly 12 minutes of screen time.  The endless inane chatter about the ‘next stroke’ that is coming and the bouncing back and forth between ‘over the desk’ and ‘on the desk’ becomes extremely tiresome and it was hard to resist the fast forward button.  Finally, Miss Parker has Rosie stand facing the wall and then gives her a another, very brief hand spanking while threatening her with more strokes of the cane.  But after the spanking Miss Parker gives up and storms out of the office.  I can’t help but suspect that this ending might have been the result of the woman playing Rosie refusing to take any further strokes of the cane.

This movie is a disappointment.  Aside from the slow pace and lack of action, there is a problem with the camera work.  The camera is obviously hand held at times since the image shakes and is occasionally out of focus.  It is hard to avoid comparing this movie with the earlier Roue movie “Rebel at St. Angela’s”.  The two movies have a very similar story, a school girl being punished by a teacher who is determined to ‘beat something out of her’ but Rebel is a far better movie.  As I have watched the Roue movies from the eighties again in the course of writing these posts, and I have usually watched them in the order that they were released, I have noticed that there is a dramatic difference between the movies made before the 1982 management shakeup at Roue and those made after.  I consider many of the movies made before the shake up, including “Room 2D”, “First Week of Term”, “Rebel at Saint Angela’s” and “Dorset Cottage”, to be among the best British spanking movies of the eighties while those made after the shake up are generally disappointing.  I have an idea why that may be but I’ll save that for my next post.

Schoolgirl Nieces

 

“Schoolgirl Nieces” is a 22-minute movie released by Roue late in 1983 (the first paragraph on page 3 of Roue 28 ends with “See you in 1984”).  It’s release in announced on page 3 of Roue 28 and there is a photostory on pages 28 and 29 of that issue.  British spanking magazines of the eighties didn’t put dates on their issues but the paragraph at the top of page 3 ends with “See you in 1984” which is why I'm certain that Roue 28 was the last issue of 1983.  “Schoolgirl Nieces” is currently available on DVD through the Roue website at www.roue.com.

 

Despite the use of ‘schoolgirl’ in its title, “Schoolgirl Nieces” takes place in a domestic setting rather than a school.  There are two girls, a dark-haired girl named Sue (who also appears in "Nurse's Remedy" and "Private Lessons") and a blonde named Jane (played by Pricilla Eastwood who also appeared in the Janus movies “The Dressing Lesson”, “The Piano Lesson” and “The Naught Au Pair”), together with their Aunt and Uncle.  The movie opens with Sue and Jane being warned by their Aunt that she will not tolerate any misbehavior while the girls are staying in her house.  Of course, we all know what is going to happen next.  The girls start to get ready for bed and both are soon naked while they plot what they can do to evade their Aunt’s house rules.  Cut to downstairs where the girls' Aunt and Uncle hear a noise and the Aunt goes to investigate.  She goes upstairs and finds the girls in the midst of a pillow fight.  She is furious but the girls can’t help laughing.  Their Aunt orders them to stand at the end of the bed and bend over while she gives both a hand spanking.  The Aunt returns downstairs to inform her husband what was happening and then this segment end at about the 6-minute mark of the movie.

The following evening (according to the title card), the four are sitting in the Living Room and Jane says she wants the TV on.  Her Aunt says no and Jane stamps her feet and says she is bored.  More petulance follows until Jane’s uncle decides it is time for action.  He picks up a slipper that just happens to be handy and orders both to kneel on the settee.  The slippering doesn’t seem particularly hard so the girls’ reactions seem excessive for the punishment they are receiving.  Both struggle throughout and their panties come down part way through.  The slippering is lengthy and, before he sends the girls off to bed, he warns them that they will be caned if their misbehavior continues.  This segment has also lasted about 6 minutes.

During a short segment titled ‘the next day’, the Aunt calls the girls’ school and discovers that they have cut school.  ‘That Afternoon’, the Aunt tells her husband about the girls skipping school.  The girls arrive home immediately afterward and their Uncle calls them into the Living Room.  After a very brief conversation their Uncle tells them to take their skirts and blouses off.  Soon, Jane is over his knee and he pulls down her panties for a mild hand spanking.  Sue is next and she receives the same but his wife complains that he isn’t being firm enough.  She tells him to leave them to her.  She has the girls kneel on the settee and she takes off her leather belt.  She demands to know who had the idea of skipping school and uses the belt to encourage them to answer.  This punishment is harder than the slipper and eventually Jane reveals that it was Sue’s idea to cut class.  The Aunt leaves to get a cane and she returns to tell Sue to kneel on the settee.  Sixteen strokes of the cane follow before the movie fades out; most are moderate but the last few are firm.  Jane watches in horror but she is never caned.

This movie is better than “Nurse’s Remedy” or “Private Tuition” but it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of “Room 2D”, “Dorset Cottage” or “Rebel at St. Angel’s”.  The lighting and camera work is good but there is still some room for improvement.  The movie does have the advantage of multiple characters and settings, and the editing is decent, but none of this can compensate for the disappointing punishments.