Pornonomy Reviews: Titillation

Titillation (1982)

Directed by:

Damon Christian

Starring:

Gina Gianetti

Heaven St. John

Kitten Natividad (Non-sex)

Eric Edwards

Mike Horner

Randy West

Mike Zempter (Non-sex)

Titillation starts promising enough. A send-up of pulpy detective stories, a PI named Spado Zappo (Edwards) is contacted by millionaire Felix Fitzwilly's secretary, Brenda (St. John, an actress I was unfamiliar with, but who was such a solid actress that I - wrongly - assumed hers would be a non-sex role), to find the man's "Cinderella": a mysterious busty lass that fit a into a brozne bra he had in his possession.

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure my mind was wandering like crazy during the film, so while I can recall specific scenes, I can't really suss out how they all fit together. Here's the plot synopsis form Anonymous at IMDB:

"Brenda Weeks works for Felix Fitswilly, an old businessman who owns a large brass bra. Felix has already hired countless detectives to locate the woman he believes is finally buxom enough to fit into that bra. Brenda's husband "Rooster" cheats on her with his new neighbor while Brenda has to try hiring top private detectives Spado Zappo and Pigeon Johnson. Brenda offers her own buxom figure to Spado Zappo to accomplish that goal. Meanwhile, the searched woman turns out to be Jerri, a woman who turns down her chauffeur, prompting him to spike her drink and rape her. But when he plans to continue from behind even when she falls asleep, Pigeon Johnson who watches from outside decides to enter and chase him away. Brenda Weeks heads off home where she and "Rooster" prove they have an open marriage by seducing their other new and buxom neighbor into a threesome. Suspecting a scheme, the detectives break into Felix' office alongside a woman called Amanda. Spado Zappo leaves them waiting, in which time Amanda seduces Pigeon Johnson. In the end, each and every character turns out to be involved in their own scheme to get the money for finding the woman. Spado Zappo has everyone by gunpoint and tells Jerri to take her top off. The brass bra fits and she immediately agrees to become rich Felix' younger lover."

Reading that over kind of rings a bell, but it neglects to mention that "Rooster" and Brenda are also involved in managing a quasi-swingers apartment complex owned by Fitzwilly, and both are concerned about what will become of their roles there if the mystery tits are found. And [SPOILER], while Jerri does agree to go off with Fitzwilly, he not only denies the $50,000 reward to all of the people that are scheming to get the money, he actually offers $100,000 to anyone that can find him and Jerri after they skip the country. Other than leaving the film open to a sequel that (to my knowledge) was never made, there's no rational reason that, having the girl on his arm, he'd encourage this group of back-stabbers to try to hunt him down....

It's really too bad that a relatively interesting premise was allowed to go off the rails. It had elements of more successful detective parody/homage porns I've seen recently: the clever tongue-in-cheek voiceovers of Trashi; the whodunnit false starts of Lust on the Orient Express; the over-the-top double-crossing final scene of The Jade Falcon; but wasn't able to tie those elements into a particularly enjoyable narrative.

For some time now, I've had an idea percolating for a porn script. If I ever happen to write it, my follow up may well be a sequel to Titillation, because hopefully knowing what went wrong, I could write it right....

Since I'm feeling generous, I'll focus on what was good (the performances were all pretty solid, and the hardcore scenes were good to really good) instead of what wasn't, and give it a B-.