Keep It Up Downstairs, a 1976 comedy capitalizing on the successful but quite unrelated television series of similar title, could be described as a film about the financial troubles of the English aristocracy in the early years of the last century. It’s actually a film about the nobility and their servants having a lot of bawdy fun together, strung together with a plot about their efforts to avoid bankruptcy by arranging a marriage between Peregrine, the immature, epicene, science-mad son of the house, and an American oil heiress.
It is 1904, but necessarily without any of the hangups and proprieties of that era. Welcome to Cockshute Towers, where, in line with the pronunciation foibles of the upper classes, the ‘ck’ is silent. We’ll meet many of the minor players in due course, but let’s take the opportunity to get acquainted with a major one, Francoise Pascal.
In the 1970s, she was an all-purpose actress for sexy French girls,
and in Keep It Up Downstairs she plays the sexpot French maid Mimi:
One pleasing thing about Cockshute Towers is the amount of incidental bottom-smacking that goes on. Almost the first thing that happens in the film is a minor kitchen calamity caused after Maud the maid (Sally Harrison) gets smacked by the gamekeeper (Anthony Kenyon) and squeals, upsetting a delicate operation by the cook.
But friskiness isn’t confined to downstairs, and we move on to the butler Hampton (Neil Hallett) giving a sensual massage to the naked mistress of the house, and Mimi having a tumble with the master (Mark Singleton), which ends with another playful smacked bottom.
That’s not quite what’s described in Elton Hawke’s novelization: ‘a smack that echoed down the corridor’ and leaves Mimi ‘rubbing her bottom in what Lord Cockshute could only describe as an erotic motion’.
Another literary moment that’s missing from the film comes when Rogers the groom (Simon Brent) tells the daughter of the house, Lady Kitty (Olivia Munday), about the best way to deal with a stubborn horse: ‘Needs a touch of the whip. Firm hand, that’s what it needs… works wonders.’ To which Lady Kitty replies, suggestively, ‘You must show me how you do it, Rogers… later.’ Forget the demonstration, because we don’t even get that dialog. But never mind, the balance goes the other way in a incident soon afterwards, when we find Maud running delightedly away from Rogers.
The playful pursuit ends in the stables, with a roll in the hay that includes a brief spanking:
In fact, it’s so perfunctory that it doesn’t make it into the book!
Next up is a sword fight between Lord Cockshute and the upstart Australian interloper who controls the family’s financial destiny. Mimi gets in the way, which results first in her getting the flat of a sword across her rear,
followed by an unkinder cut with the sharp edge.
Lord Cockshute just can’t resist…
That does reveal one of the minor causes of the Cockshute money trouble: the maids are helping themselves to Lady C’s expensive bloomers – something to be kept in mind when we get to the main event, which we’ll preview here with one of the movie posters.
But first we have a scene where Rogers catches Mimi leaning out of a casement to beat the dust out of a rug, and lowers the window to trap her.
He then proceeds to take advantage.
Hampton interrupts, sends Rogers on his way and takes over with Mimi. The way Rogers is sent on takes him to the area immediately underneath Mimi’s window, where Maud is doing some scrubbing. Cue another smacked bottom…
And that’s an unwelcome surprise for Mimi, who thinks she’s still getting pleasured by Rogers upstairs. And it appears that something else happened in this scene that didn’t make it into the movie or the book, but is seen in a still taken on set and used in the movie’s publicity:
It’s worth adding an aside that in this scene, Mimi is played by two actresses: the half outside the window is Francoise Pascal as usual, but the half on the inside is Mary Millington, who plays one of the other maids and was a lady with famously few inhibitions when it came to nudity. Nor, it seems, getting her bottom smacked.
But that doesn’t mean Francoise Pascal escaped scot-free. On we go to the key scene, which begins with Mimi trying on some more of Lady Cockshute’s things. The relevant passage of the book starts with a direct statement: ‘Mimi was in her underclothes.’ Within two paragraphs, it contradicts itself: she’s wearing nothing but a diamond choker and high-heeled shoes, without saying anything about the additional undressing that might make things consistent. In the film, however, Mimi is back in the pink bloomers from the sword-fighting scene, which at least gives her better protection than her literary counterpart when Hampton arrives and tells her she has ‘behaved very badly’. And here we’ll let the book tell the story along with pictures from the film, a juxtaposition that will bring out the fundamental discrepancy between the two:
‘Are you going to punish me?’ Mimi sounded almost hopeful.
‘More than likely. Come here!’
Hampton sat with difficulty on the edge of the bed and indicated to Mimi that she should bend over his knee. She did so giggling happily.
‘Now we play more games, yes?’
Hampton didn’t answer but brought the flat of his hand down smartly on her bare seat. Mimi squealed, but Hampton got the distinct impression that she was not really objecting to the spanking.
‘Did… your… father… spank… you… when… you… were… a… child?’ Hampton’s hand rose and fell with each word.
‘Oh, yes,’ squealed Mimi. ‘He liked to do this many times.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Hampton, running his eyes from the smooth shoulders to the tiny waist and on over the cheeks to the superb line of Mimi’s legs. He talked to cover up… but Mimi was not fooled. She squirmed deliberately to increase his problems.
‘My father said,’ said Hampton, ‘”spare the rod and spoil the fun”.’
He let her up. Or rather he had to lift her up off his lap because Mimi made no move to move herself.
‘Now don’t be naughty again or I shall have to repeat the performance.’
‘Promise?’ Mimi was all impish with him now.
It’s not a promise that’s kept in the film, though it is worth noting that the very last thing that happens, just before the closing credits roll, is that Mimi gets her bottom smacked.
But for anyone greedy enough not to be satisfied with the film’s overall tally of six smacked bottoms and two OTK spankings, there’s another treat in yet another overseas poster:
And if you care about how the Cockshutes achieve solvency, the answer is that the undersexed Peregrine’s experiments in rubber lead to the inadvertent invention of a widely useful device not unconnected with the principal leisure activity enjoyed by every other resident of Cockshute Towers…
Vanilla Spanking 