UKSG - Blast from the Past (Text Only)

[Nyghtfall]

Now that my new site is up and running, I'm preparing Cinemasphyxia.com for an upgrade, which will likely take a week or more. While cleaning up folders and deleting files I haven't used in over 10 years, I found a web page I set up for UKSG shortly after they contacted me about featuring a sample of their work. This was back when I was rotating clips every week and couldn't afford to keep everything online. I posted their sample as part of that week's rotation, but apparently never deleted the files after the rotation was done.

Since Bluestone is now their only contact with the community, I thought you all might enjoy an interesting read, so I'm only posting it here on FF. What follows is the background I wrote about the company and how I came to be associated with them as the introduction for the clip I posted that week:

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January 6, 2002

Several months ago, a fellow asphyx fetishist, David Prince, was contacted by a representative of a then-unknown, underground fetish production company based in the UK, called UK Strangled Girls. They were looking to showcase some of their work, and asked him to assist them through his web site. Unfortunately for David, he didn't have the financial resources necessary to feature such extensive content. I was very grateful then, when David contacted me, with their permission, and asked that Cinemasphyxia feature what they had sent him. He sent me two clips, both of which I showcased during a single week's rotation. The footage proved so popular that David wound up with a flurry of email from people wanting to know more about the company, and how to obtain copies of their material. Regrettably, David had to take his own site down shortly afteward, due to budget constraints and other factors pertaining to his life away from the web. Since then, UKSG has become barely more than a curious addition to the vocabulary of anyone who had an opportunity to view those clips before they were rotated off of this site.

I recently received an e-mail from another associate of the same company. It turns out that one of the partners, who was David's original contact, is a big fan of Cinemasphyxia.com, and has expressed great interest in finally seeing their material sold to the U.S. market. During our correspondence, their associate shared with me some of the difficulty they've experienced in getting any decent recognition of their work, and finding a distributor here in the U.S. who would be willing to sell it. It seems that most of the rejection they've met with so far centers around the fact that none of the videos they've produced contain nudity. To explain the reason for this requires a bit more background on what the company's about. I'll share with you now, what my contact has told me about this company (bear in mind that most of this information was unavailable until recently. Whether they shared this with David is uncertain, but it's the most information about the company that anyone outside their client base has been privy to, as far as I know).

UKSG have been in business for over ten years, and is believed to be the first independent fetish production company to ever produce material of this type. Even before the advent of email and websites, UKSG were making strangling films on 16mm and low band Umatic a video - a format long since gone.

They commission productions featuring sexy women who play heroines who are convinced that good will triumph over evil. The stories are more or less the same: the over-confident heroines are always strangled in the end. One video in particular involves the strangling of an actress playing Wonder Woman. I've been told that some of their clients have been known to pay upwards of three thousand pounds ($4,300 USD) for a copy of that title alone. "It's gold dust," exclaimed my contact in his description of the video. "It features an actress who is just sex on legs." The video costs as much as it does "because the producers signed a contract with her," in which it states that, "no one should see the film other than paying clients." He went on to offer a full commentary on the film (I've edited it for clarity):

At first I didn t believe it was real, but when Jason showed me a screening copy I became a believer. This is a big production. It has a bike chase, sexy fights, free standing sets and everything. Anyway, the sexy secret agent (and boy do I mean sexy) comes up against all kinds of enemies, all who try to rape and strangle her. They get as far as ripping her clothes in the areas that show a lot of cleavage and legs, but not more than that. Some, she defeats with ease, and some get just so close to killing her. It's breath-takingly erotic. There are six parts in this series, and all end with 'To be continued...', so you have to buy the next one. In the sixth and last part of the film, she gains access to a fancy dress party and dresses up like Wonder Woman to get to the James Bond-esque villain. There is a very long and sexy fight between her and the henchwomen (She takes on three of them). She is eventually captured and taken to Mr Big. With her arms pinned behind her back by the henchwomen, Mr Big takes her magic lasso and strangles her slowly with it. She puts up a good fight, almost breaking free at one point, and, before she dies (very erotically, I might add), she gives up the disk containing the databas of all the other secret agents in her organization. Thus, more strangled sexy secret agent films are made as a follow up. It's fucking great!

He concluded by saying that the video itself has become legendary among their growing list of clients. When I asked him why people paid so much, he explained that the money goes toward covering the production costs of each shoot.

The reason they've been so successful is due to the fact that they have a reputation for making a quality product. The person who started the company knows many people who are very wealthy, and pay handsomely for each film. There are 5 partners who make up UKSG,, and all of them are professional film makers who have successful careers working in the mainstream industry. As such, they do not want it known that they make strangling fetish videos.

They've produced 80 strangling videos to date. Their client list is a closely guarded secret, as it contains the names of some very well known people, including movie stars, pop stars and TV presenters. Every client, famous or no, prefers their fetish kept secret, and it has been for over ten years now. One of their titles stars someone who's become quite successful in the mainstream, though the film they starred in was produced before they became famous. I'm told the actress plays a secret agent called The Cat, and is usually dressed in a black cat suit. She is finally killed (as they all are) in a fight with a huge henchman. Before the fight begins, she says some one-liners and nearly beats him to a pulp. Eventually, her over-confidence is shattered as the henchman gets the upper hand, and strangles her to death with a phone cord. I was also told that, according to one of the partners, the best bit is when the henchman begins to un-zip the cat suit from the dead agent’s beautiful body, pulling it off her slowly, and, just when he’s going to pull off the bra, it fades to black. Apparently this is what the clients want- they want to be titillated and not shown nudity.

Another famous actress is also in one of their movies, in which she is strangled while dressed as a sexy nurse. I'm told that particular title is selling like hot cakes.

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And this is the write-up I did for the clip:

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Title: Agent Jean Blade vs. Agent X
Running Time: 05:22

Cinemasphyxia.com is privileged and honored to feature a sampling of one of their videos, titled Agent Jean Blade vs. Agent X.

Blade returns home in time to answer a phone call. It isn't clear who she's talking to, or what about, necessarily, but as soon as she hangs up the phone, the man playing Agent X comes up from behind and chloroforms her. As she's lying on the floor, Agent X proceeds to shuffle through a collection of CDs, in search of a disk. She eventually awakens from her sleep, at which point Agent X begins interrogating her. They continue bantering about in classic "Bond vs. Villain" style until Agent X becomes restless and decides to kill her. He knocks her to the ground, climbs on top of her, and begins to choke her. During the struggle, she gains the upper hand and almost escapes before he regains control of her. He then pulls a wire garotte from his watch and wraps it tight around her throat. This is where the fun really begins (of course - grin). This isn't one of those "quicky" stranglings, folks. Our Agent X is a connissour in the art of strangling, and decides to take advantage of the moment and torture her while he continues probing her for information. Finally, when he decides he's through with her, he concludes his visit by strangling her to death with the wire. The clip ends with a closeup of her eyes-closed face.

This is a seriously good clip. I'm not sure what I think abot the chloroforming, but the garrotting is, bar none, one of the better ones I've seen from an indie company lately. As for the price, I have to admit I'm hard-pressed to want to spend $4k on any film unless I'm directing the thing myself.

If you'd like to download a copy of this clip, you can find it on my file server on IRC. Please see this link for additional information on IRC and instructions to download the clip.

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That was the last time I hosted a video for any fetish producer through my site. Four months later, financial circumstances forced me to shut it down - bandwidth was averaging $300/month. I think it was a year or two later that UKSG found distribution through thestr.com, and Thestr asked me to be his Webmaster. Part of my job was setting up merchant accounts to sell the videos through. My tenure lasted about a year, during which I went through, I think, six different merchants because our accounts kept getting shut down after discovering what kind of videos we were selling. Tired and frustrated, I resigned. Thestr and I amicably parted ways, with an open invitation to reclaim my position. He has long since shut his site down. By 2004, hosting fees had plummeted, and I re-launched my site on August 1.

I forgot I had an IRC server. Wow. Times certainly have changed - thankfully for the better.

[Bluestone]

Thanks for the slice of history, Nyghtfall. I came into the picture much later, when UKSG had left the public domain entirely. Luckily for lovers of the UKSG material, I was able to secure retail rights for some of these classic videos so that they could be reintroduced into the public domain. Their quality has allowed them to stand the test of time. They are still the best strangle videos in the industry, I.M.H.O.

Blue