A curvaceous former model with brunette hair, Marianne Morris was born in 1950 in Belgium and educated at Bromley Grammar School and St Joseph’s Convent in Sidcup, Kent. Morris was first seen on the screen in an uncredited role as a murdered topless girl in Peter Cushing’s most nihilistic and graphic film, Corruption (1968), directed by Robert Hartford-Davies. However, it does depend which cut of the film you see. In the cut of the film seen in the UK and the USA the girl is played by Jan Waters who keeps her clothes on. The international cut, made for European and Far East audiences, it is actually Morris who goes topless for her death scene. The murder sequence is also far more graphic with her throat being slit and a perturbed looking Peter Cushing even briefly fondling her breasts!
Her next big screen role was in the British sexploitation film The Love Box (1972) which attempted an anthology format by framing stories around the classified adverts of a saucy magazine. Morris played Janet in a segment titled “The Wife Swappers”. The film also featured actor Dave Carter, who would later appear in the Beasts episode “The Dummy”, in a different vignette, “The Bored Housewife”.
Her signature role came next with the cult Anglo-Spanish horror film
Vampyres (1974). She played Fran, who along with Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska), lure unsuspecting men and women to their rural estate where they hold them captive until they kill them and feed on their blood. The film was directed by Jose Larraz (credited in the film as Joseph Larraz) who had recently directed the atmospheric Brit horror
Symptoms (1974), which had been Britain’s official entry to the Cannes Film Festival in 1974.
Vampyres has taken on a cult status since it was made due to its heady cocktail of gore, lesbianism and nudity. After having three minutes of footage cut the film was finally released in UK cinemas during spring 1976 as part of a double bill with
The Devil’s Rain.
Her second film of the year was Just One More Time AKA The Over-Amorous Artist (1974), another British sex comedy, starring John Hamill as Alan, an artist, who has to fend off a succession of female neighbours wanting to bed him. Morris appears as Anne, one of the predatory women. More sex comedy shenanigans followed with Percy’s Progress AKA It’s Not The Size That Counts (1974) was a sequel to previous box office hit Percy which had starred Hywell Bennett as the owner of the world’s first penis transplant. In this sequel Bennett is replaced by Leigh Lawson. Morris appears as Miss Buxton in an uncredited decorative role.
Her first credited TV role was in an episode of the BBC sitcom No Strings. Morris appears in episode two, ‘Grow and Let Grow’ (11th October 1974), of the Carla Lane scripted show as a hippy girl. Also during 1974 Morris could be seen on the cover of The Kinks concept album ‘Preservation Act 2’.
The Amorous Milkman (1975), yet another sex comedy, cast Morris is an uncredited role as the character Dora. She also made brief appearance in sketches for such comedy stars as The Two Ronnies, Ken Dodd, Benny Hill, Stanley Baxter and Mike Yarwood. Her appearance as the usherette in the Beasts episode ‘Buddyboy’ was her final television role. Her final film appearance was on a poster seen in the background of the action in the film Queen Kong (1976) advertising ‘Drink Konga Kola’. Later the same year she posed topless for the October edition of the adult magazine Mayfair as a centrefold model[1]
In recent times she has made appearances as herself discussing her career and her Vampyres role in an episode of the documentary series Eurotika! as well as the DVD and Blu-ray extras ‘Return of the Vampyres’ (2003) and ‘On Vampyres and Other Symptoms’ (2011). She has now retired from acting and is the managing director of Marble Direction, a company that renovates natural stone surfaces.
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