Pornonomy Reviews: Babylon Pink

(I realize I said the next review would be Frat House, but, I don't know, that might become my white whale. I've had the text nearly done for ages, but I can't seem time to do the screencaps....)

Babylon Pink (1979 - Command Video)

Directed by:
Henri Pachard

Starring:
Arcadia Lake (as Arcadia Blue)
Debbie Revenge
Georgette Saunders
Georgina Spelvin
Merle Michaels
Samantha Fox
Vanessa del Rio
Bobby Astyr
David Morris
David Ruby
Eric Edwards
R. Bolla (as Richard Bolla)

The first thing I noticed about this flick was that the dvd transfer was amazing. It was hands down the best looking "old" porn I've ever seen. I'm guessing it's because it was a two disc special edition, but I hope whoever oversaw the transfer does a lot more. They even included a 5.1 audio track! While there were some nutso sound effects bumping to and from the flashback scenes (more on that in a bit), I wish I had a surround sound system to see how they ended up tracking the audio....

With the exception of the first sex scene (between Vanessa del Rio and Bobby Astyr, who play a married couple) and a masturbation scene (Georgette Saunders, as their daughter), all of the sex scenes are fantasies of the "six degrees of" cast of characters. As mentioned, Vanessa del Rio and Bobby Astyr play a married couple whose daughter is to help her aunt and uncle (Georgina Spelvin and R. Bolla) host a dinner party for the aunt's tennis instructor and his girlfriend (David Morris and Debbie Revenge, who, not for nothing, would make a terrific '09 hipster, teleported straight from Babylon Pink's 1984 set*). Astyr works as a number cruncher for a powerful business woman (Samantha Fox), who's spinster secretary (Merle Michaels) is supposed to try to find a date since her roommate (Arcadia Lake) is bringing her married lawyer boyfriend (Eric Edwards) to the apartment. The odd man out from the cast list is David Ruby who plays a street vendor that spies Vanessa del Rio cleaning the apartment after her husband leaves for work and becomes the subject of her fantasy. While it's typical, I suppose, for the characters in a film to be interrelated, the fact that none of the characters are "main characters" (though Revenge and Ruby could be accurately called peripheral characters...), it feels like Robert Altman Made a Porno. (Except it's not, like, four hours long....)

Though none of the sex scenes are bad, necessarily, they do vary from "meh" (del Rio/Ruby, although there are a few semi-acrobatic cunnilingus positions - legs up, shoulders down on the bed, and what's basically a standing 69 - that had me impressed with the strenghth of del Rio's arms and shoulders and Ruby's lower back**) to pretty hot (Astyr/Fox and Michaels/Edwards/Lake, the latter mostly because Arcadia Lake was involved...yowza). What's more interesting about the scenes is that the tone of a few of them would have been drastically changed had the fantasizer been the fantasizee; Samantha Fox is ordered to strip and spread 'em by Bobby Astyr (her fantasy), Merle Michaels is "used" by Arcadia Lake and Eric Edwards while sleeping (well, pretending to sleep since it's her fantasy). One, though, was kinda skeezy (R. Bolla/Georgette Saunders) since he's the fantasizer and she's his teenage niece.

All told, the movie was well written, well directed, well acted, and well sexed, so in keeping with the tradition (if you can have a tradition on a blog with three posts) of issuing semi-arbitrary grades to old pornos, I'll give Babylon Pink an A-.




* See what I mean?



** Interestingly, this was the second upside down cunnilingus scene I've seen in the past week and a half or so. The other, if memory serves, was in The Ecstasy Girls, though that one was a lot more ambitious.