Julie Ege Discography

In her hey day Julie Ege released two singles: Love/In One Of Your Weaker Moments (CBS 5431) – an interpretation of the John Lennon song – and, ahem, Touch Me/Stop It I Like It (Starbox SX 1158) in 1977. Producers had subsequently asked her to record an LP (that's a long playing record for all you teenies out there), but Ege refused as she never really considered herself to be a proper singer.

I am personally only familiar with In One Of Your Weaker Moments and, hmmm, what can I say about it without sounding too insulting?

OK! Remember William Shatner singing Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds? Well, Julie Ege’s track isn’t quite that bad… but only just.

She isn’t really singing this piece. She’s more talking through it while mainly being accompanied by a piano. You can get away with this style of song interpretation if you’re a guy and you’re name is Telly Savalas. For anyone else this is a cop out, especially when she does attempt a quasi-singing approach occasionally and consistently misses the right notes.

Based on that performance alone it is no surprise that she had to include a semi-nude picture of herself for her recording of John Lennon’s Love in order to instil some kind of interest in her single. Still, well worth checking out even just for curiosity’s sake. Graham Groom’s discussion group has an MP3 version of the song in their file section.

Ege also appeared as Columbia in the Norwegian language recording of The Rocky Horror Show. Originally recorded in Oslo on October 24 & 25, 1977, there have been several releases, both official and bootleg. The most recent release can be found on CD in 2002 by Universal Music AS (Catalog # 014728 2).

The Rocky Music site is well worth checking out as it has a lot of info on this particular recording. The entire CD is available as an MP3 download from Amazon. The site also has clips to listen to though Ege is not individually highlighted so appears to have possibly only contributed as part of the various artists involved in "Tiden blir skrudd" ("The Time Warp").

Julie Ege Bibliography

The good news: Unbeknownst to many a Julie Ege fan she has actually published an autobiography. There has also been a study out about Norwegian actresses in Hollywood that extensively covers her as well and was also transferred into a feature length documentary that is available on video.

The bad news: Unless you have a penchant for Scandinavian languages you will not be able to understand them as they have only been published in Norwegian.

Julie Ege’s autobiography Naken (“Naked”) was published in 2002 and covers “her childhood, her time as a factory worker, her budding career as a model, and her breakthrough in the Miss Norway contest that lead to an exhaustive movie career. She also writes about the time when she as a mother of small children was pursuing a degree in nursing, life with the writer Anders Bye, herself being diagnosed with breast cancer and becoming a grandmother”. Unfortunately that book now appears to be completely out of print and extremely rare. I can't even locate a cover scan for this anywhere.

Norwegian theatre and film director Niels Petter Solberg (aka the World's Leading Authority on Julie Ege) wrote Norske Filmdivaer in Hollywood (“Norwegian film divas in Hollywood”, 2001). This is a coffee table book that is chock galore with often rare posters, stills and private photos of Norwegian actresses that looked for fame and fortune in Hollywood (and – apparently – Blighty). 26 of the book’s 140 pages are dedicated to Julie Ege. The remainder covers Greta Nissen, Sigrid Gurie, Greta Gynt, Anna-Lisa and Vera Zorina.

Niels subsequently directed a documentary on a similar subject: Norske kvinner i Hollywood (“Norwegian actresses in Hollywood” 2001).

He had also accompanied Ege to the Hammer at Bray II event in 1999 and conducted an interview with her that was published in both Psychotronic Video # 24 and Little Shoppe of Horrors # 15.

Up Pompeii (UK, 1971)

This screen adaptation of the popular British TV series Up Pompeii takes place just before the Vesuvius erupts and buries all of Pompeii. The very loose plot centres around a visit by Nero and a plot to assassinate the Emperor. Documents get mixed up, wrong people get accused and everything ends in pieces when the city gets destroyed.

The film - just like the TV series - is full of double entendres, cheap jokes and titillation. In actual fact, the entire first half-hour is one ongoing orgy joke. ("Everything is laid out but the girls... and the men will see to that.") All the jokes are pretty much in line with similar material from the early 70s such as the Carry On... series or Hammer's own adaptations of On The Buses.

Words cannot easily convey the sheer daftness of Up Pompeii 's jokes. If you’re familiar with the TV series, you will know what to expect in the movie: The jokes are pretty much the same. So switch off your brain, have a few cans and Beware! You may just about start to enjoy these outrageous Shenanigans. It's a journey back in time.... not to ancient Rome, but to early 70s Britain before everything became PC.

Julie Ege is pretty much the only one of the cast not sporting a Cockney accent. Come to think of it: Her thick Scandinavian accent is probably closer to the historic truth than any of the Modern English on display in the film. Not that anyone of the filmmakers really lost some sleep over historical accuracy. In actual fact: The film is full of modernisms: girls wear satin nickers, characters complain about the cost of inflation etc.

Ege received a special mention during the film's opening credits: A sign of her popularity at the time. She plays Voluptia, wife of the pro-consul, and apparently "she has the makings of a pro, too." Although not appearing nude as such, some of her costumes leave very little to the imagination.

Madeline Smith plays Ludicrus Sextus' nymphomaniac daughter Erotica. The first time we see her in the movie she's in her father’s yard with her Ex-Lover and we are reminded that "X is Latin for 10". D'oh! She's got a memorable, short nude bathing scene midway through the movie.

Some of the male Up Pompeii cast has also appeared in Hammer movies. Bernard Bresslaw who plays Gorgo, the invincible gladiator, is most famous for starring in The Ugly Duckling (1959) - Hammer's "lost" comedic take on the Jeckyll & Hyde theme. He was also in I Only Arsked (1959) and Moon Zero Two (1969). Frankie Howerd played in Further Up The Creek (1958), Michael Hordern in Demons of the Mind (1972).

The last scene of the film shows the entire main cast as tourists being guided through modern Pompeii. All act astonished at some of the erotic pieces they discover on the ancient murals, but their inner thoughts reveal that not an awful lot has changed since then. They're still the lusty bunch they were before.

The success of Up Pompeii led to two "sequels" of sorts: Up The Chastity Belt (1971) and Up The Front (1972). The last one again featured Madeline Smith.

Julie Ege (*November 12, 1943 - April 29, 2008)

Gorgeous girl from abroad with little inhibitions decides to trade on her looks and make it to one of the capitals of the Swinging 60s. Following a succession of stunning photo shoots, she becomes the Belle of the Ball and gets the chance to star in a bunch of movies that focus primarily on her beauty as opposed to her modest acting talent. After being the talk of the town for a while, what can she do? Where else can she go?

Well, one option is to “do a Denberg”, get involved with the wrong crowd, speed up a gear or three and enjoy the fast life with drinks, drugs and one man after the other before heading towards the inevitable mental breakdown.

As similar as both Susan Denberg’s and Julie Ege’s career paths at times seem to be, Ege personality-wise appears to have been the complete opposite to her Austrian fellow Hammer Girl. Despite being in the public eye at quite a young age, she eventually comes across as quite level handed. At the height of her career, she even did a complete U Turn and decided to move back to her native Norway and pursue a career as a nurse, an old childhood dream of hers and also earned a degree in English and History from the University of Oslo.

Julie (some sources claim she was originally named Dzuli, but that is completely unfounded) was born on November 12, 1943 in Sandnes, a small fishing village 15 minutes away from Stavanger, located at the coast in the South West of Norway and with just 115.000 people still the country’s forth biggest city. Nowadays Sandnes is known as the “Bicycle Town”: When you visit it you can borrow one of 200 bikes for touring around. It’s also a popular place for BMX tracks and dirt races. But I digress.

Ege started modelling right after finishing school at 15 and at the age of 19 became Miss Norway. She decided to move to London to pursue an acting and modelling career. She also worked as an au pair in the capital. (I know what you guys think now. Stop it!) Her first major break was being in the UK edition of Penthouse Magazine in May 1967 that led to a bit part in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and a small, but memorable and very nude role in the Martin Feldman vehicle Every Home Should Have One (1970).

In 1970 Julie – who at that stage had already been married and divorced twice - was personally chosen by Michael Carreras to be “The New Sex Symbol of the 70s”. In a competition she beat more than 900 other girls worldwide to this title and was offered a contract by Hammer. Prior to this competition her 36-24-36 physique had already generated a staggering 1657 column inches in British papers in a two year period. It remains one of the eternal mysteries why Hammer then subsequently decided to seriously tone down her looks for her prehistoric outing in Creatures the World Forgot. It’s the one movie in Hammer’s prehistoric series in which the female lead purposely does not come across like a Glamour Girl from B.C…. and I’m not talking British Columbia here, folks.

It took Hammer until 1973 before they starred her again in one of their movies. The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1973) is a much ridiculed, but taken in (or with) the right spirits a thoroughly entertaining Vampire/Kung Fu action movie in which she played side-by-side with Peter Cushing in his last performance as Van Helsing. Christopher Lee had already given up his Dracula role to slightly less impressive John Forbes Robertson.

In between the two Hammer movies Ege mainly appeared in a couple of comedies – Up Pompeii (1971), The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971) and Not Now Darling (1973). Her popular It Girl status was confirmed when she was allowed a cameo appearance in The Alf Garnett Saga (1972).

Prior to her move back to Norway she again mainly starred in comedies – Percy’s Progress (1974), The Amorous Milkman (1974) – and Horror/Sci-Fi movies – The Final Programme (1973), Craze (1973) and the truly bizarre The Mutations (1974). She also recorded a couple of songs that turned into minor hits.

Ege regrettably passed away far too young from breast cancer on March 29, 2008, and left behind two daughters, Joanna (who lives in Shanghai) and Ella.

The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (UK, 1971)

The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins is a comedy that in the past has had its fair share of detractors. In actual fact, if you believe most reviews prior to the Region 2 DVD release from a few years ago, you may even expect this to be a complete flop. It is now, however, possible to re-evaluate it afresh and the film comes off as surprisingly imaginative and even inventive. The most fascinating aspect nowadays is that the star studded production offers a glimpse of British comedy at a time when the older “Oooh, errr!” style antics gradually became replaced by Monty Python’s new kind of imaginative comedy. Whereas all the episodes were shot by the same director, they were in fact all written by a bunch of different comedic talents and starred people from backgrounds as diverse as Goons, Carry On and Monty Python. As such it is possible to clearly watch how one style of humour started being transformed into a more contemporary one. In a way The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins is for the history of British Humour what the Missing Link would be for Evolution. (OK, I admit I’m probably stretching credulity here a bit.)

Also of note is that the film was produced by Hammer’s smaller rival Tigon (Curse of the Crimson Altar, Scream and Scream Again).

The knee slappingly hilarious episode Gluttony features Leslie Phillips as an Executive for an international Health Food company opposite Julie Ege as the boss who invites him for dinner (and more?) up to her place. The humour of this piece is primarily based on the fact that Phillips is a gluttonous Gourmand who would love to eat anything but the company’s dry health food that he is made to consume at any given opportunity. Even when confronted with Ege’s charms, he is more tempted by her culinary promises as opposed to the other delights she's offering up. Penthouse Magazine publisher Bob Guccione also has a bit part in this episode showing him during a photo shoot with Penthouse Pet Tina McDowell. Monty Python’s very own Graham Chapman penned this script together with Barry Cryer and was also responsible for the Wrath episode.

Though Ege’s Gluttony is the funniest, the subsequent Lust is the best overall episode of the movie. Yes, seeing pervy Harry Corbett travelling around London and getting kicks out of watching Swinging Chicks of the early 70s is a lot of fun, but Marty Feldman’s script manages to land a vicious punch at the end that’ll have you not only feel sorry for Corbett’s character but also depressed about the general state of the Human Condition. Anouska Hempel has a small part as a Blonde Girl that Corbett tries to chat up.

The episode with the third Hammer Girl, Madeline Smith, in this film – Sloth – is easily the worst and unfunniest, but also blissfully the shortest. Scripted by Spike Milligan, he is up to his usual nonsensical escapades. I know the notion of nonsense implies that it’ll make utterly - well - no sense to anyone, so if you’re into that kind of humour you may see your appreciation of it shoot up. It’s all about people who can’t be bothered: Marty Feldman bounces against a tree rather than walk around it; Madeline Smith plays the unsatisfied wife of a guy who is too lazy to, ahem, make an effort; Milligan himself is a tramp who prefers to starve than to raise his arm and reach for an apple. There’s also an ongoing walnut joke. (Don’t ask: I told you it made no sense.) It’s shot in sepia toned, rapidly cut silent movie style. All the dozen or so comedians in it, including Smith, appear for all but a few seconds. Blink and you’ll miss them. And you just may be better off without it. If the only reason you were going to watch the movie was for Maddy Smith, then learn from the characters in this episode and don’t bother... unless you really need to watch absolutely everything she ever appeared in.

The remaining four episodes do not feature any Hammer Glamour, but are still chokablock with British Comic Talent such as Bruce Forsyth, Bernard Bresslaw, Joan Sims (Avarice), Harry Secombe, Geoffrey Bayldon (Envy), Ian Carmichael, Alfie Bass (Pride), Ronald Fraser and Arthur Howard (Wrath). Pretty much all of them are entertaining and tightly scripted enough as not to overstay their welcome. Pride’s tale of class snobbery on the motorways is the one of the remaining that’ll stick out the most with regards to the execution of general premise.

It is good to see The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins popping up in a budget DVD release here in Region 2 land. It’s a half forgotten film well worth checking out. Quite clearly not a hidden pearl as such, but much better than you have previously been made to believe. Time to judge for yourself if you have so far only heard about it. [Wow, this reviews brings me back a few years. The film has now been on the market for the best part of a decade.]

Creatures the World Forgot (1971)

The one without the dinosaurs..... That's how the third concluding part of Hammer's prehistoric trilogy can best be summarised.

It is hard to really like any of these films. The stories are always weak, bordering on the non-existent. The purely grunting dialogues leave absolutely no room for proper characterisations, humour or any kind of subtlety. Alas, the first two movies - One Million Years B.C. (1965) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) - had enough monsters and female beauty to keep at least the guys in the audience satisfied. Ray Harryhausen's and Jim Danforth's dinosaurs may have been historically inaccurate, but they were certainly wonderful examples of stop-motion animation. And Raquel Welch and Victoria Vetri sure managed to keep the boys awake during the show.

Creatures the World Forgot, unfortunately, lacks on both counts.

The "creatures" of the title are certainly not of the stop-motion kind. And Julie Ege - brunette in this film - sure is a stunner and can easily measure up to her predecessors, but it takes an agonisingly long 55 minutes until we first set eyes on her. Her character in the film is really nothing more than a supporting part and gets very little time on screen, although Ege herself was advertised as the "new star" on the bill boards and also received top billing in the cast list.

The actual story plays over 20-odd years and describes the wanderings of a prehistoric tribe. First we have this dark haired tribe that meets this blonde haired tribe. Dark haired leader and blonde girl give birth to twins, one (you guessed it!) dark, the other one blond. The blond one is the good guy: intelligent, compassionate and good looking. The dark one is sly, devious and cruel and hates the good one's guts. Traces of Cain and Abel everywhere you look. Everything comes to an end when the Good One finally has enough of his evil twin's murderous ways and is locked together with him in a fight to the death. Only one can survive. Can you guess who?

The plot of Creatures sure isn't hard to follow. Therefore, it is quite annoying to be confronted with regular flashbacks that help "explain" the more intricate parts of the story.

By the time Julie Ege enters the scene, the tribe has managed to invent the fire as well as cooking over fire, a net to help hunting animals.... and to the chagrin of the viewers: the fur bikini. Whereas most of the females of the tribes have shown precious little regard for clothing of any kind up to that time, Julie Ege keeps insisting on wearing that stylish bit of prehistoric lingerie. In actual fact: Most of her promotional photos for the film are far more revealing and promising than in the actual film.

She plays the daughter of yet another tribe's chief encountered during their journeys. The Good Blond Guy promptly chooses her as his wife, soul mate, partner.... or whatever else the prehistoric equivalent may be.

What about the acting? Well, the acting is as good and as confident as can be in a film that deals with prehistoric cavemen. No sign of Oscar performances anywhere. Just look nice and grunt must have been the main instruction by the director. At least Julie Ege did not have to struggle with her Norwegian accent for a change.

Where the film does score is in its stunning scenery. Creatures was shot in South Africa and makes the best possible use of the country's awesome countryside. Some of the scenes of the tribe's everyday life - involving hunting and preparation of food - are quite realistic in a MONDO kind of way. I for one am certainly not entirely convinced that no animal was hurt during the production of the film.

The stunts were arranged by Frank Hayden who also plays the son that kills his own father at the beginning of the film and gets the whole show started.

A blurb on the original poster art work boasted: "They don't make them like this anymore.... not in a million years". I guess that could also be said about films of this kind.

Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires documentary excerpt

Looks like my updates these days consist primarily of links to YouTube clips, but some really rare stuff appears to be surfacing lately. This one was pointed out to me throught the BloodyHellofBritHorror Yahoo group and is an excerpt from BBC Shaw Brothers documentary with behind the scenes footage starting after the 4 minute mark. To the best of my knowledge this was never before included as an extra in a DVD release and is exclusive to YouTube.

The actual documentary consists of 3 parts on YouTube. The other two parts can also be accessed through there.

Unfortunately video embedding is not possible for this video so just follow the link.

Julie Ege R.I.P.

It is sad that so shortly after announcing Hazel Court's death I also need to report Julie Ege's passing on April 30, 2008. She died of breast cancer in Norway. I remember meeting her during the second Hammer at Bray event in 1999. For more about her life and career, please check my Hammer Glamour pages.

Here is a wonderful photo tribute from a Norwegian website dedicated to Ms Ege.

The Mutations

I finally caught THE MUTATIONS on Sky Sci Fi/Horror the other day. It’s been eluding me for half an eternity, though it has been on repeatedly, but always late at night and as I don’t videotape stuff anymore, but also don’t own a DVD recorder and am still a bit more than a week away from getting Sky Plus installed I depended on being up at the time when the film was shown in order to watch it. Kind of gave it a 1970s viewing experience when you just had to view stuff when it was shown, not when you wanted it. A quick look at the program guides also shows that it was just as well I watched it this week as it doesn’t appear to be on again anytime in the foreseeable future and I may just have caught the last screening for the time being.

Also known as THE FREAKMAKER, this is a pretty notorious example of Brit Horror 70s style. It’s effectively a hodge podge of every good genre idea there ever was and contains mixtures of FRANKENSTEIN, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, FREAKS, THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, BURKE AND HARE, THE BODY SNATCHERS as well as FUN HOUSE (admittedly a later movie) and a bunch more.

It’s the kind of production that you would not see made in this day and age: Donald Pleasance plays a scientist who believes it is not only possible to clone entire species, but that you could produce a plant/human creature that would make the world a better place. (Yep, every home needs a guy who’s also a Venus Flytrap.) Pleasance’s character lovingly caresses rabbits before throwing them into the mouths of his giant meat eating plants. Future Dr Who Tom Baker - unrecognisable under tons of make up as the world’s ugliest man - assists Pleasance by providing him with new victims to experiment on. Unfortunately he has all of London at his disposal, yet the only victims he seems to catch are students from Pleasance’s college classes. Julie Ege - beautiful, but at times hard to understand with her Scandinavian accent (at least she wasn’t dubbed as usual) - is one of his students and enjoys lengthy baths. Bodybuilder and Peplum star as well as Kommissar X hero Brad Harris plays an American scientist visiting the Professor’s alma mater.

The reason for this film’s notoriety are neither the appalling plant/human monster effects nor the nudey operation scenes nor the occasional moments of gore, but the fact that one of the sub plots involves the members of a travelling “freak” show that involves dwarves as well as a number of real side show entertainers such as the Alligator Girl, Pretzel Boy, The Human Pincushion, Frog Boy and Popeye, a guy who can, well, pop out his eyes at will. The biggest gasps, however, will come when the Skinny Lady, a highly anorexic girl, puts her body on display. The word “exploitation” was created for those kinds of moments, however, the freak community is actually often shown in a very loving and caring light and, politically incorrect or not, those guys give the production a lot of memorable moments and some proper heart and soul.

Also watch out for lengthy scenes of macro photography of plant life that’ll make you want to become a mad scientist.

No idea whether this film really killed director Jack Cardiff’s career, but this would prove to be his last film in that capacity, though he is still very successfully working as a cinematographer up to this day. Not bad for a Nonagenarian.

Anyway, if you haven’t watched the film yet, go and check it out. It is oodles of fun and Julie Ege gets a lot of screentime to make it worth the while for every Hammer horror aficionado. Don’t listen to the naysayers: This is one of the best British Horror movies of the 1970s!