Ben Dover Video Titles - A Note

The following are deductions based on what videos I've seen and various items of information picked up from newsgroups and David Flint's interview with Ben in Babylon Blue.

The first Ben Dover video was soft, at least in the form it was released. Some scenes may have been filmed hard or at least harder than it was permitted to release under the 18 certificate. This was Brighton Babe Watch and it featured Teresa May in a lesbian scene with Gilly Sampson at the end of which they are advancing on Ben's trousers.

This seems never to have been re-released.

Then the video releases diverge between hard core numbered volumes and 18-certificate titled videos such as Ben Dover in London. Many scenes in the soft-core titled videos were based on hard-core scenes released in the numbered volumes, but some were only ever soft, e.g. ones involving Lana Cox and Rasheen Kerim-Koram. The soft-core titled videos have continued to the present, one of the latest being English Porno Groupies (a name previously used for a hard core re-packaged video). There is a similar relationship between the Television X programmes and the hard core releases - some of these are edited versions of the hard core releases; some are separate scenes with the same girl or girls and some girls have only ever appeared for Ben in the TVX programmes.

The numbered volumes usually contained three scenes, sometimes four if some were short, but almost always only three girls, or pairs of girls. These continued up to number 29. But five numbers are missing because they were used by the distributor for two Sex in Public Places titles and three Henry's British Tarts titles. These had credits beginning (without Ben's knowledge or permission, it seems from a post he made on the forum) "Ben Dover Presents ...".

At some point Ben decided, or was asked, to release his videos in the USA. This seems to have had two effects. First some scenes had to be cut - those featuring golden showers. (Some of these were also cut from some releases of the numbered versions.) Second the videos needed to be longer. Therefore he began to re-package his videos for the American market.

Given the above, this meant that a straight re-packaging could not usually be done. Occasionally all three scenes of a numbered video went into a titled video with a scene from another added, but it was usually more complicated than that.

Some newer titles have a mixture of new and re-packaged scenes. Some are entirely re-packaged and the most recent are entirely new. Most titled videos, new or re-packaged have four scenes. Bummed Out in Britain had four scenes but only three girls, all re-packaged. Some scenes have two girls which means that there are sometimes more girls than scenes. The reverse is more rare. Some of the recent videos have five scenes. Usually one is then short, oral only.

Recently a further complication has been introduced with the legalisation of hard core under the R18 certificate in the UK, mid-2000, and the timidity of Ben's distributor in the USA since the election of George W. Bush. Ben has released some older material in R18 versions, sometimes with minor cuts insisted upon by the BBFC, in particular scenes of female squirting. Initially his R18 releases were only two scenes. Then he abandoned this practice. He has also produced themed R18s, e.g. Ben in Black, which has four scenes from four different previous releases. Sometimes the self-censorship by VCA has been stricter than the BBFC guidelines; so that there may be minor differences between versions - e.g. the BBFC now allows pissing but not urolagnia, but VCA cuts any pissing. Thus far we do not indicate the VCA/R18 distinctions in the database, but do try to indicate where a scene has been repackaged in an R18 video which has a different title from the original VCA release. Conceivably the same scene (with small variations) could appear in a numbered volume, a VCA release and under a different title as an R18 release and the European release could be slightly different from all three in content.

I hope the above is clear. It means that when an entry occurs which says, for example,
Ben Dover's British Connection repackaged from Ben Dover Volume 21
it is the scene which is referred to not the whole video (in this case Charlotte).

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