Pornonomy Reviews: Pizza Girls

Pizza Girls (1977)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Candida Royalle
Christine DeShaffer
Desiree Cousteau
Laurien Dominique
Vicky Lindsay
Carl Regal
John Holmes
John Seeman
Richard Pacheco
Paul Thomas
Spender Travis

Chalk up another one for Bob Chinn. Pizza Girls has a ton going for it: it's got a silly, simple premise, and is filled with roles that the actors can knock out of the park.

San Francisco is a chicken town, but pizzeria proprietors John and Bob (Holmes and Chinn) are trying to break Country Girl Pizza on the map, much to the chagrin of the shadowy chicken syndicate and their mysterious enforcer, the San Francisco Night Chicken, as well as being spied on by Inspector Blackie (Seeman).

Part of the allure of Country Girl Pizza is their use of codes in the order that will have the female delivery skateboarders - Gino (Royalle), Shakey (Dominique), Celeste (DeShaffer), and Ann Chovy (Cousteau) - delivering more than just pizzas, if you catch my drift. (And that drift should be pretty obvious considering this is uh-duh a porn flick.)

For much of the film, everything about Pizza Girls is pitch-perfect. The one curiosity - or, considered another way, aspect that elevates it from just a fun little porno - is the fact that the Night Chickens method of intimidation is snatching the girls off the skateboard and raping them. It would be weird for an otherwise light film to treat the subject with abject horror, it feels a little...off...that its mentioned almost nonchalantly. Without getting into spoilers, the resolution of the Night Chicken and closing shot lends the film an oddly - albeit slightly - darker tone than the preceding 68 minutes.

Still, juxtaposed with Skintight, if you're going to have a twist like that, this is the way to do it. A

Pornonomy Reviews: Exhausted

Exhausted: John C. Holmes, the Real Story (1981)

Directed by:
Julia St. Vincent

One thing you can't help but take away from I, Goldstein was Al Goldstein's obsession with John Holmes. While talking about Holmes, and the Wonderland murder trials, he brought up Exhausted, "a strange fuck film, a pastiche of interviews, clips, and testimonials, a 'documentary' on John Holmes the man.... The film was fascinating but...phony."

From the outset, it's obvious that Exhausted was the inspiration for Amber Waves's Dirk Diggler documentary in Boogie Nights. (Although it should be said that at his rock-bottom Diggler never looks as haggard as Holmes.) While P.T. Anderson basing Boogie Nights on the rise and fall of John Holmes is well known, I was amazed to see two things in Exhausted that were recreated almost identically in Boogie Nights: a clip from a Wadd scene that became a scene in a Brock Landers film ("Good? No it's not good. It's probably the best place to eat in Los Angeles,"; San Francisco, for Wadd) and the Holmes/Bob Chinn, Diggler/Jack Horner sex scene blocking interview.

(Two other brief Boogie Nights observations: 1. The character Jessie St. Vincent must be named for Julia St. Vincent. 2. While I've read that Veronica Hart was a major part of the composite porn actress that was Amber Waves, the most Amber Waves-like performance I've seen to date was Honey Wilder in Sweet Alice, a film that I'll definitely have to review for this site.)

Goldstein mentions that Exhausted was cobbled together by St. Vincent, Holmes's 21 year old girlfriend, to take advantage of the notorious press of the Wonderland murder trials, and there's nothing to make you assume otherwise. The documentary approach is an interesting spin on what would otherwise have been a standard compilation film. While the "man on the street" aspect is fairly pointless (and, in fact, one of the "interviews" is obviously staged), the direct question and answer bits with Holmes are quite interesting. He speaks with such earnestness and feeling that it's a kind of chilling reminder that he was, by all accounts, a compulsive liar, completely delusional, or both. It's also interesting that while Holmes performed with scores of women in his career, the only actress interviewed is Seka. On the one hand it makes sense considering he had more scenes with her than any other actress (although Annette Haven and Desiree Costeau were right up there, too, according to IAFD), but on there other it begs the question why there were no other interviews. If the production of the film was as hurried as it seems, time and scheduling may have been a factor, but frankly, burned bridges and an obviously biased portrayal of Holmes seems more likely.

If you've got an opinion of John Holmes, Exhausted isn't going to change it (for the better, anyway), but is quite a fascinating film, and I'd definitely recommend it, if for no other reason than it's a trip to see a full-length version of the fictional documentary from Boogie Nights. A

Pornonomy Reviews: Skintight

Skintight (1981)

Directed by:
Ed DePriest

Starring:
Annette Haven
Connie Peterson
Cris Cassidy
Lee Caroll
Lisa De Leeuw
Mai Lin
Maria Tortuga
Starr Wood
Aaron Stuart
Billy Dee
Blair Harris
Mike Horner
Michael Morrison
Paul Thomas
R.J. Reynolds
Randy West

I thought I had this review pretty well written while I was watching Skintight. That is, until the last twelve minutes. I was going to say that Skintight seemed to be cobbled together with scenes from (at least) two different movies: a light-hearted film that focuses on a sex therapy clinic, staffed by Annette Haven, Lee Carroll, and Maria Tortuga, and a film in which Paul Thomas deals with a fiance saving herself for marriage with leather and chain fantasies springing from a fetish magazine.

The last scene (in which Paul Thomas rapes Maria Tortuga) ties both directions together with a darkness and intensity not even barely hinted at earlier in the film.

The way the film (and it's seemingly contradictory tones) comes together in the end leaves me with two (seemingly contradictory) opinions:

1. The film is a hot mess that was put together on the fly (or there's a director's cut out there with an additional 30 minutes that makes sense from beginning to end), or

2. Skintight is a bit of auteur genius that has more in common with Cronenberg's Spider or Herzog's Bad Lieutenant than with Deep Throat or even Behind the Green Door.

If it's the former, then I can at least say that it's worth checking out for a great opening credit sequence (on par with Triple Xposure), and the film rates a C-.

If it's the latter, though, Skintight is the most mind-bending adult film I've seen since the excellent Neon Nights and rates an A.

At this point I'm pretty much split 50/50, and I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to firmly come down on one side or the other.

Hey, something new finally!

You shouldn't take the stasis of this blog as an indication that I haven't been watching adult films. I have been, but for some reason, I haven't had the drive to write about them when they're over. Well, here are a few I've seen over the past few months, most recent first:

Little Orphan Sammy (1976)
One thing I can say for the movie is everybody in it gives 100%. It's very much a movie of it's time. As a parody, it feels a lot like Blazing Saddles or Murder By Death. (A more direct comparison would be The Girl from S.E.X., I guess.)

Daddy Sawbucks (Neil Flanagan in a non-sex role) has developed a formula for turning garbage into oil, and Hata Mari (Jennifer Welles) wants it. In order to get an "in" with Sawbucks, she adopts Sammy (Rocky Millstone) from an orphanage. Sammy and Daddy Sawbucks have some sort of connection, but why, if they're so close, Sammy is living in an orphanage is never explained. Millstone plays Sammy like a super patriotic Beaver Cleaver (sincere, without a doubt, but he comes across with more than a slight touch of "serial killer") that says "leapin' lizards" a LOT. Each of the five sex scenes Sammy is involved in spring from his All-American desire to "help." I never realized that eating ladies out was a civic duty, but that's a lesson I took from the movie.

The movie is light and fairly well paced, and the aforementioned commitment of the cast make up for some of its short comings. B-

Lust on the Orient Express (1986)
This had been on my radar since X-Ray's review and I finally got around to watching it. It turned out to be a sterling example of why I need to relax my semi-arbitrary 1985 cut-off.

The story - a potboiler mystery writer (John Leslie), in need of inspiration, sets of on a pan-European trip with his wife (Gina Carrera) aboard the Orient Express and stumbles upon a murder and jewel heist plot - was solid, the cast, acting, and production value were terrific. So much so that were it not for the sex scenes (most of which felt pretty organic, and not tacked on, which is a problem with a lot of adult films that have quasi-mainstream qualities), it easily could have been a movie I watched on USA on a Saturday afternoon in the late '80s. A-

Garage Girls (1980)
I really wanted to like this film - if for no other reason than the leading ladies looked effing amazing in their overalls-and-nothing-else get ups - but after reading GGG's review, figured it was best to temper my expectations*.

While not a terrible film, Garage Girls is a prime example of a "If Only" porn, a movie that could and should have been much better than it was. The premise, four women (Brooke West, Cris Cassidy, Dorothy Lemay, and Lisa DeLeeuw) start an auto shop and are antagonized by chauvinist male mechanics, is simple and solid enough to make a good porno. The problem is that frequently that plot line takes a back seat to scenes, characters, and plot developments whose sole presence seems to be to make the film "zany." Look, zany is fine as long as its fun and not frustrating. Unfortunately, more often than not, Garage Girls was the latter. C (I could have graded it a little lower, but it gets bonus points because, seriously, the actresses are all super hot.)

Dixie Ray, Hollywood Star (1983)
Dixie Ray has a lot going for it: a pretty interesting story (blackmail, crossing and double-crossing involving a fading starlet in 1940s Los Angeles), relative attention to detail (the noir feel was captured quite well through costuming, sets, camera work and editing, but bizarrely, towards the end of the film there's a LONG scene in which an actor can be seen stretching and, seemingly doing calisthenics, in the reflection of a mirror; "breaking the fourth wall" is an understatement), and fantastic cast. What it didn't have going for it, was natural-feeling sex scenes. It's not an exaggeration to say most scenes were: John Leslie walks into a room, questions a suspect in the blackmail investigation, fucks them. I can't remember the last time the "action" in an otherwise solid film bored me so much. C+

People (1978)
Like Odyssey (a film I really need to revisit), People is a series of unrelated vignettes. Unlike Odyssey, the scenes in People have a common (although simple) theme: interpersonal relationships. This being the last review in the post makes People the film I watched longest ago (that's a clumsy way to word it, I know, but you get the drift), so the details are a little fuzzy in my brain. Trust me, the film deserves a much better review than this....

In his review of the film, Jimmy mentions it's a shame that if most people know anything about Gerard Damiano, it's that he directed Deep Throat (an assertion I only partially agree with; while not as solid as Odyssey or People or DMJ, I quite enjoy Throat...), watching this film, it's plain to see Damiano has some serious chops. A

* I just revisited GGG's review to see why I remembered it making me temper my expectations (I didn't re-read it immediately before writing my thoughts because I wanted to make sure my review wasn't influenced). Turns out, her review was overwhelmingly positive, save one brief homophobic slur by De Leeuw. For whatever reason, that must have been what stuck with me. All told, I think her review is an interesting counterpoint to mine.

Pornonomy Reviews: Neon Nights

Neon Nights (1981)
Directed by:
Cecil Howard

Starring:
Arcadia Lake
Jody Maxwell
Kandi Barbour
Linda Vale
Lysa Thatcher
Veronica Hart
Ashley Moore
Eric Edwards
Jack Teague (as Jake Teague)
Jamie Gillis
Roy Stuart

Oh, hell yes! You know, lately it seemed like every movie I was putting on seemed to be a big disappointment. I hadn't read anything about Neon Nights before watching it, so when it started up my expectations were nil. The first thing I was struck by was the quality of the transfer. Really, if it weren't for the fact that within the first few minutes Jamie Gillis is fisting Linda Vale, the quality of the picture, camera work, and music could easily convince you that you were watching a mainstream movie from the early '80s. The way the scene was cut between what was going on in the master bedroom and teenage daughter Sandy's (Lysa Thatcher) room got me more interested, and by the time the title card hit the screen, I was sold.

Giving a plot synopsis would actually be a disservice considering the way Neon Nights plays out, so I'm going to keep that part as vague as possible. Sandy is seduced (or seduces, perhaps) her mother's boyfriend Robert (Jamie Gillis). Predictably, her mother catches them in a compromising situation, so Sandy decides to escape her mothers house and run off to New York to try to find her identical twin sister who'd run away earlier. Along the way, she's given a ride by a magician (played with twisted glee by Jack Teague) who takes her to the motel room he shares with Sweet Marie (Jody Maxwell), presumably his magician's assistant. She finally gets to New York, and to the home of her sister's employer (Veronica Hart), but not before being offered a bunch of balloons in a park by Lilah (Arcadia Lake).... I was going to say that it makes more sense when you see it, but, really, it doesn't. Finally, there's a twist at the end throwing much of what happened before into question that was intriguing enough to ensure that, eventually, I'll watch Neon Nights again.

Neon Nights was absolutely bonkers in the best possible way. Like I mentioned before, the camera work was excellent, the shots were typically interesting and well-considered (there was maybe a slight over-reliance on the "reflection in a mirror" angle, but then they are very thematically appropriate), the music was spot on and contributed to the overall ominous and surreal tone of the film, and the performances were all top notch. A

Pornonomy Reviews: 3 AM

3 AM (1975 - Metro)

Directed by:
Robert McCallum
Starring:
Clair Dia
Georgina Spelvin
Judith Hamilton
Rhonda Gallard
Sharon Thorpe
Robert Rose (as Bob Rose)
Charles Hooper
Frank Mauro

Since I seem to reference it constantly, I might as well review it....

3 AM is the story of a lonely woman, Kate (Georgina Spelvin), who lives with her sister Elaine (Rhonda Gallard) and her family. In addition to living in their house, she's, whoops, having an affair with her brother in law, Mark (Frank Mauro), and, whoops again, kills him by braining him with a champagne bottle on a boat and dumping him overboard.

The film opens with Mark and Elaine having sex while narration by Kate introduces the viewer to the characters and the fact that Kate and Mark have been having an affair for 15 years. Further, Kate says that the affair is justified by her loneliness; a loneliness that also justifies having had sex with women, including (whoops a third time) her niece, Stacy (Claire Dia). Whether they do or not, you're led to believe that Stacy and her brother Ronnie (Charles Hooper) can hear their parents having sex (Kate's narration confirms she can hear them), lending an uncomfortable incestuous undertone that resurfaces later, during scenes between Stacy and Kate and then between Stacy and Ronnie. (Though, in those cases, the "undertones" are very much "overtones"....)

Georgina Spelvin's performances often tend to skew to the melodramatic, but she is an exceptional actress (by porn standards, at least) and in 3 AM, her performance is a little more subdued and perfect for the tone. In fact, whether by chance or directorial choice, most of the characters seem to speak with the same "voice" that lends 3 AM a stylistic cohesion not expected in porn.

The film is a solid example of American cinema in the '70s (not just porn, but film generally). It's slowly paced, challengingly themed (in addition to incest and murder, there's fantasy, guilt, voyeurism, innocence and loss thereof...), and masterfully shot - I think you'd be hard pressed to find a porn better directed, technically, than 3 AM. Add a too true to be coincidental allusion to "The Awakening" to everything 3 AM's already got working for it and you've got a "serious" porn as well-realized and stylish as The Devil in Miss Jones (original, of course). A