This video sets the stage for the 3 parts; six schoolgirls in perfect attire sit attentively at classic desks in a fully-appointed classroom, facing Red Stripe's Ivor Gold and the triumvirate of female disciplinarians--Miss Brown, Miss Chambers, and Miss Robinson. The skin on six bottoms must be crawling.
Ivor the headmaster lectures the helpless girls and announces that Miss Robinson will deal with the first two--Nicole (Mel Penny) and Emily (Catherine Corbett) here and now, because they have been caught cheating.
Nicole is asked to step forward first--brown upswept hair, she wears her Sunday blouse in lieu of regulation white, which will just cost more strokes. Miss Robinson is a tall, stately, dark redhead,plausibly supervisory in her demeanor,and powerful-looking. Nicole goes OTK in front of the class, white panties. Some camera shots from below accent the swell of her buttocks. When Robinson pulls her pants down, she kicks and squawks. Ivor admonishes her from off-stage. He is no fool at his girls' school, he has hung around to watch (and of course he directs the production).
The spanking is brief. She is sent, hands-on-head, pants down to the blackboard, in the delightful cornering pose so essential to this fantasy. Emily (Corbett) is next. Same OTK, blue knickers, she is a tougher actress, well-spanked, and not so easy to break down. To the blackboard.
Nicole returns, assumes the formal bend-over-the-chair pose for the tawse; Robinson snaps them in and Nicole suffers. Emily is tawsed and is again more compliant and more difficult to impress. Camera angles from below are wonderful.
The girls know they are going to be caned. Nicole bends over the teacher's desk in a formal process. Emily has been sent to "fetch" the cane for Robinson. Nicole takes a full 18 strokes; good screen insert of a bottom closeup. She has earned 6 more and bends over, hands on knees. Done. To the blalckboard.
Emily's turn for the cane. Ms. Corbett's trim compact little bottom has always been a joy. "Eighteen strokes, right over, and a further 6 for telling tales." She gets a sweet 18, very brave, over the desk, then 6 bent over grabbing her ankles. She is very athletic.
Miss Chambers comes on-stage now to set the stage for her two girls in Part II. She gives Emily a hard whacking with her hand, just because she is standing there, bottom available. Ivor steps up and compares the two bottoms--must be a nice part of his day. Emily and Nicole then must sit down, bare bottom, always a nice conclusion.
At those six wooden desks sit six grown-up schoolgirls in detention for visiting a nightclub (plus other familiar misdemeanours). The headmaster lectures them on the error of their ways before calling in the three female teachers who are to carry out the necessary punishments. Miss Robinson, Miss Chambers, and Miss Brown are all attractive women themselves, with skirts not much longer than those of their charges. I imagine that viewers who may be inclined to 'switch' would happily take a spanking from any of them. Miss Robinson is the principal punisher in this first part of the "Just Another Day At St Stripes" trilogy. She is a slender young woman with light-brown hair and a slightly severe expression, dressed in a close-fitting dark-brown dress, dark-brown stockings, and a pale cardigan. Her manner is very calm and soft-spoken. Some may perhaps find her performance too low-key, but I like the fact that she comes across as a very believable teacher of English. Her modest appearance and her educated speech both seem appropriate.
The girls about to be chastised are named Nicole and Emily. Predictably, they have been cheating in a test. First, they each receive an over-the-knee spanking. To my mind, their regulation knickers come down rather too soon, as I enjoy spanking on the seat of knickers prior to addressing the bare bottom, but this is minor criticism. Nicole, with a sturdy bum and a bad-girl expression, writhes about, kicks her legs, and complains repeatedly in a Cockney whine. Emily (played by the actress often credited as Catherine Corbett) is contrastingly demure and penitent, an essentially good girl who has made mistakes. After the spanking inevitably comes the strapping. Protesting all the while, Nicole takes 28 strokes. There are some good camera angles; I particularly liked a shot looking upwards from the side at Emily's bum as Miss Robinson lays the strap into it. The director makes a few very half-hearted attempts at split-screen cinema, but these do not come off, as the two camera-angles are far too similar. It is a weakness of the film that we don't see more close-ups of the girls' faces while they are being whacked. For their other crime of nightclubbing, Nicole and Emily each get 24 strokes of the cane, 18 lying over a desk and 6 touching their knees or toes. Both wear white knee-socks, incidentally. Finally, after a few more words from the headmaster, Miss Chambers appears and gives Emily a couple of dozen spanks for misbehaviour in a biology class. This is obviously an introduction to Part 2 of the trilogy, where Miss Chambers takes charge of the next stage of the punishment session.
What gives "Just Another Day At St Stripes" a certain distinctive quality is the large cast: ten people in all. That said, only two schoolgirls are punished in Part 1, but six schoolgirls are present throughout, i.e., the other four are at their desks, watching what will come to them later. Some look fearful, others defiant; one even smirks at the discomfort of her classmates. The presence of an interested audience adds much to the atmosphere of what is otherwise a very proficient but rather conventional exhibition of CP.
My only complaint about the film is its length: really only 26 minutes. To make it up to the half hour, Red Stripe adds a four-minute sepia preview of the next two girls being chastised by Miss Chambers. I can understand the economics of this, but it would have been more generous to present the full story across two films. Dividing it up into three parts seems just a little too exploitative. But does Part 1 leave me wanting to see Parts 2 and 3? Certainly. I doubt there will be any surprises, yet this is very solid CP film-making.