< Diversions 

• Gefangenen Express Mike Hunter, box cover title
• Sex Express UK (soft), West Germany (hard, screen title)

• Gilly Sykes plays the maid in the Victorian photographer sequence
• Heather Deeley plays Imogen
• Jacky Rigby plays the prisoner

(Title of the hard core export version of Sex Express, though the German-dubbed hard core version was also titled Sex Express)

Males -

• Jeffrey Morgan, plays the student (and the boyfriend in the barn scene)
• Timothy Blackstone, plays the first victim (and the passenger reading a vampire magazine)
• James Lister, plays the vampire (the second victim)
• Tim Burr, plays the caller (the client at the apartment)
• Terry Walsh, plays the Mercenary officer
• Christopher Gilbert, plays the African Officer
• Derek Martin, plays the prisoner escort
• Tony Kenyon, plays the Victorian photographer

Several British soft core films of the 70s had hard core 'inserts' added later, such as Sex Thief aka Handful of Diamonds. But usually the hard core was only in close-up as the main actors and actresses refused to take part. The hard core close ups were often filmed specially for the occasion rather than ripped off from some other film and thus could be spliced in with attention paid to continuity, and look realistic, especially at a time when genuine hard core often cut from distant views to close ups in any case. With Diversions however, all three actresses and some of the actors took full part in the hard core proceedings.

A woman prisoner is being transported by train with escorts. The train is one with a side corridor and compartments and Imogen (Heather Deeley) looks at her fellow passengers and fantasises (or possibly in some cases mixes fantasy with reminiscence) about sexual liaisons with them.

1. Down on the farm as a teenager, her boyfriend chases her into a barn and she hides in the loft. Her boyfriend entices her down with some talk about comparing her to some apples he picks up from the floor. She takes offence and proves she is tastier than any citrus fruit by stripping off and having her way with him on the floor. This is realistically lit (i.e. hardly at all), but one sees enough to know that the real thing is going on, especially when she rides him in the cowgirl position.

In the train she sees one of the passengers reading a vampire magazine.

2. She is making love on a leather sofa with Tim Blackstone (professional porn stud of the time who appeared in many John Lindsay loops, but who looks enough like a young slim Dick Nasty to be disturbing, and this scene will become disturbing enough in any case). Penetration is clearly seen as she rides him in the cowgirl position. In a sepia-tinted flashback within a flashback she dreams of walking through a battle as a civilian girl, then suddenly she is dressed as a nurse and accosted, groped and, by implication only, gang raped by a truck load of soldiers. No penetration is seen in this part of the scene. The film cuts back to the couple on the couch and maybe one is meant to think that the memory of this experience makes her hate all men. Blackstone is now on top of her and, in a bit of business foreshadowing Basic Instinct, she gropes under the sofa for a dagger and stabs him in his side. Blood spurts out and she rolls him off her. She then fondles her own body with her bloody hands, rubbing it over her breasts and masturbating with the dagger. She then gets off the sofa and straddles the corpse and amputates its penis (faked, but well-faked). Then in one of her only two pieces of oral action, she sucks the amputated cock.

We then see her showering and cleaning herself up and disposing of the corpse in the country using a golf buggy. It is not explained how she managed to get the corpse into the buggy.

This scene continues with her driving her car around a city (it's a left-hand drive sports job) and picking up another stranger, another victim (she thinks - he is wearing a red suit and cape). She takes him back to her apartment and seduces him, getting his cock out and playing with it near her face, but not sucking it. They fuck on the same sofa and she tries the knife trick again but it doesn't penetrate his skin. We do not see penile penetration here either, but do see withdrawal and a cumshot over her belly (possibly using a stunt stud). Then her pick-up smiles at her and we see that he is a real vampire.

Back to the train. The chap opposite is reading a paper and she can read an advert for a flat to let.

3. Cut to Imogen moving in to a flat just vacated by a prostitute who has advertised her services in phone boxes. The telephone number is the same and she has to field several calls from potential clients, telling the last to 'Bugger off.' The door bell rings and it is another client (she thinks), but she fancies him; so she lets him in and tries to act the whore. They have sex on her bed. (Penetration, but no cumshot.) But he turns out to be someone who has also answered the flat to let advert, but late, and lots of the dialogue is now revealed to have been a misunderstanding.

On the train a ticket inspector arrives at the compartment and his uniform triggers a fantasy about torture by Nazi or Russian officers - two male and also the woman to whom she is handcuffed in the compartment (Jacky Rigby). Imogen is forced to suck on the barrel of a machine gun. She is stripped to stockings and suspenders, fondled by the female officer and tied to a post. The female guard then strips as well and the two have lesbian sex including the 69 position, at which point, with Imogen underneath, one of the male guards penetrates his female colleague from behind (including anally) and cums over Imogen's chest.

On the train a man passes along the corridor with a camera and this sets off a fantasy about Imogen visiting an antique shop and buying and taking home an antique camera. She playfully poses in front of it, but it turns out to be a magic camera and when she gets up in the middle of the night, there are photographs of her posing lying next to it. This segues into a sequence of her posing for Victorian saucy pictures with the photographers amid joining in and stripping off as well. The maid (Gilly Sykes) gives the photographer a blowjob. It's a bit of a struggle to get him hard, but eventually she does and then she rides him, with Imogen giving her encouraging kisses from the side.

Back to the train. They arrive at journey's end and it turns out that Imogen is the police officer and the other woman is the prisoner.

This film has a mixture of sex and violence that would not be allowed in porn (soft or hard) today. The sex is mostly definite hard core, but it is not shot as hard core sex would be today. This is a feature of most hard core films of the period and is partly the result of the cumbersome nature of the equipment. In this case it is also the result of the fact that the performers, apart from Tim Blackstone, were not seasoned hard core performers. The men thus may have had difficulty keeping wood and producing cum shots on demand and the women may well have been reluctant to perform oral sex. Also the parameters of the hard core genre were not so firmly established (all to the good in my view). However, if you want to see hard core sex integrating properly within a real film and a gorgeous woman who can act and is also willing to do the deed in reality on film, then this is one to watch. However, you would have to buy a copy from the USA.

Note: The German release has the penis amputation part of the vampire scene removed and a scene of (simulated) urination into Heather's face, in the Nazi prisoner scene, inserted.