The Sexplorer


The Sexplorer is a 1975 British sex comedy film written and directed by Derek Ford and starring Monika Reingwald. It was produced by Morton M. Lewis. A hardcore version of the film was also made for the foreign market.

Plot

A Venusian explorer, adopting the form of a human woman, visits planet Earth to study the behaviour and customs of Earthlings. She lands in a Soho sauna, and discovers from the Soho bookshops that humans come in male and female forms. She investigates further, visiting a sex cinema, sex shops and a photographer's studio. She meets and falls in love with a young man, and with him she discovers the pleasures of sex. She decides not to return to Venus.

Cast

Reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote "The ''Sexplorer is meant to be funny as well as erotic, introducing an element of supposed self-parody through the person of its otherworldly sexologist and the 'bizarre' activity on which she turns a quizzical eye, whilst striving of course for the usual quota of titillation. Unfortunately, as it is totally lacking in wit or style, the self-parody acts as a banana skin on which the film slips in its first minutes, falling flat on its face and remaining quite inert for the subsequent eighty minutes."
Film academic Steve Chibnall wrote that the film: "takes a wry look at human sexuality and gender relations through the eyes of a female scientific investigator from another planet ... By setting the investigation in London's Soho, the centre of Britain's sex industry, Ford takes the opportunity to satirise the superficiality of permissiveness. ... The Sexplorer may be a hand-me-down Barbarella'' in Soho, but its celebration of female sexual potential is just as joyful."
The film is on Quentin Tarantino's list of "Top 20 Grindhouse Classics".