The film with my accompanying essay (containing a lot more historic background detail to the release) is posted here under Fair Use / Fair Dealings doctrine for review purposes, a relic from the tabloid-led political furore surrounding Sara Dale, and study of this still-unreleased COIL soundtrack project. No copyright assumed by myself under this upload of mine.

An unofficial 45min remaster from the 1992 VHS video release of "Sara Dale's Sensual Massage: The Stroke of Pleasure", featuring the commissioned (but still unreleased) COIL soundtrack, this is posted on Archive.org with accompanying essay as a worthy relic from the 1990s UK VHS Sex Education boom - a pop culture media phenomena originally devised to circumvent the restrictive Ferman-era BBFC's rules of the time.

A classic example of early-1990s Sex Ed kitsch aesthetics, this short video tape feature should now be regarded in the digital age as currently "lost".

I'd suggest that it's worth experiencing the Sara Dale film and soundtrack fully at least once each, if only for the 1990s softcore kitsch overdose, a great example from a weird 1950s-esque sex ed boom in UK pop culture history, and for the great third section of COIL's soundtrack. I hope that a good quality transfer of the tracks eventually surface, as it does possess some artistic worth, it is competently performed and deserves its own peculiar place in COIL's peculiar discography. Whether the Sara Dale tracks planned for a COIL CD release are just going to be taken from a high quality video transfer or from a higher quality DAT transfer I cannot be sure without making further enquiries, as I can't find any record of COIL having still been in possession of a DAT of those commissioned Sara Dale tracks after the project was finished.

COIL never did anything quite like the Sara Dale soundtrack again, though certain tracks from the abandoned mid-1990s 'Backwards' sessions such as 'Crumb Time' and 'Egyptian Basses' sound like a segue between (or hybrid of) the Dale and 'Gay Man's Guide...' soundtracks. If anything, the 1992 ‘Sensual Massage' sessions have more in common with the music recorded for TV commercials in the mid-1980s, similarly done by Sleazy to bring home the bacon, than anything else in the COIL catalogue.

See accommpanying essay for much more detail about the history surrounding this film project and COIL's involvement.

Kind regards,

Phil Barrington
Barrington Arts
Live COIL Archive

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