Michael Bowen has just notified me of the death of Cincinnati-born Audrey Campbell, best remembered for playing Madame Olga in the sexploitation "roughie" trilogy consisting of WHITE SLAVES OF CHINATOWN, OLGA'S HOUSE OF SHAME and OLGA'S GIRLS -- all made in 1964. She was also featured in Joe Sarno's macabre SIN IN THE SUBURBS. Audrey died last Thursday in a New York City hospital at the age of 76.

I once wrote an essay on the OLGA films for VIDEO WATCHDOG and I was able to get Audrey's address from my friend, ECCO editor Charles Kilgore. I sent a copy to her and she rewarded me with a three-hour phone conversation, during which she told me (among other things) that my essay was the finest thing she had ever read about those films. She also told me a lot about the early days of live Cincinnati television. It was all on my dime, but I'd gladly have paid for it a second time if I could have had a tape recorder running. Fortunately, Don May and Synapse Films had the foresight to record her audio commentary for OLGA'S GIRLS before it was too late.

Audrey was an amazing person; I liked her and wish I had known she was ill.

In the mid-sixties, my family had a cleaning lady named Olga. When those lurid movie ads (for OLGA'S HOUSE OF SHAME) appeared in our "family newspaper," I would show them to everyone. Our poor old Olga was mortified by them, so my mom told me to stop doing that. I was only about 12 years old then, far too young to be allowed to attend those films. They became a kind of "forbidden fruit" to me, and had departed the theatrical circuit by the time that I came of age. I was tremendously excited when they finally began to resurface in the early nineties.

Would it be correct to say that the Olga series was first to display BDSM behavior in an American feature-length film? I can't think of any instances beyond, say, peep show loops (such as the jokey Bettie Page loops for the Klaws) or something that was way underground.
Audrey Campbell can be considered a sort of pioneer, and all adherents and dillettantes of the gothic fashion should be asked to leave their boot-laces at half-mast in respect to our fallen mistress.

It's not really depicted as a lifestyle preference. Olga Petroff is more of a descendent of the evil female villains that Myrna Loy played in the 1930s, like Fu Manchu's cruel and nymphomaniacal daughter Fah Lo See or the Phibesian femme fatale in THIRTEEN WOMEN. She doesn't indulge in S&M per se; she's the sadistic head of a crime syndicate who employs inventive means of punishment for her enemies and those who betray her, usually resulting in their deaths. Not the same thing as BDSM behavior, though the films themselves would probably pleasure those of a BDSM disposition and Audrey herself certainly has iconic value in the role.

Tim,

Which issue of Video Watchdog has your OLGA essay?

Thanks,

Dylan

It was in #32, Dylan... which is unfortunately one of our "sold out" issues.