That's Outrageous (1983)

You know what's outrageous? That I haven't posted in a freaking month and a half! It feels like it was maybe three weeks since my Sweet Alice review. Time has no meaning anymore.

That’s Outrageous is a film about fantasy. The plot is conveniently summed up by Paul (Jamie Gillis) in the first 30 post-opening credits seconds:

"The girl I picked up when I was dressed like the starving writer turns out, coincidentally, to be the sister of my girlfriend, all right? Now I gotta keep them separate. I want them both, I don't want them mad at each other, I don't want them to be mad at me. At the same time I want us all to get together eventually, have a little menage a trois."

Paul lays that explanation out for his partner Rick (Joey Silvera) - who happens to be in love with the model Nichole (Anna Ventura) they’re in Paris photographing, but is too shy to make a move. Fortunately for Rick, Paul sets it up so that Rick needs to be the male model in a shoot with Nichole. The pop some bubbly in order to break the ice, and then sparks fly.

The girlfriend Paul mentioned is Michelle (French adult film veteran France Lomay). Her sister, who knows Paul as Phillipe, is Martine (one-and-done French actress Natasha*). Paul plans a masquerade party in an effort to get Michelle and Martine in the sack together. The plan backfires, though, when all three of them get too loaded. Martine passes out first, and when Paul and Michelle get up to the bedroom, they end up passing out, too, using Martine’s butt as a pillow.

In the morning, the sisters wake up and realize that they’ve been two-timed and duped by Paul/Phillipe and leave him high and dry.

Though, really, the plan was destined to fail considering, well, they’re sisters and the possibility of siblings down to clown is far-fetched at best. Incest, of course, has been a well-worn taboo in pornography, but is just out of place in a film like this. Fred Lincoln seemed to agree considering he changed the actual sister/sister scene from the script into a fantasy scene. I wonder why he didn’t consider taking things a step farther and just make the sisters best friends, instead.

The scene between the sisters (which, not for nothing, was incredibly well-shot) brings me back to the idea of fantasy in this film. Here, Michelle considers her sister’s beauty and wonders what it would be like to have sex with her. (Presumably, that is: the voice over is in French sans-subtitles, unlike the rest of the French in the film.) Other fantasy scenes include the first scene between Michelle and Phillipe, which is actually playing out in Michelle’s head while she masturbates; the scene between Paul and model Karen (Tiffany Clark), which is her imagination; and the scene between Karen, other model Keiko (Mai Lin), and Paul’s client (David Ambrose), which is the client’s fantasy during the photoshoot. More broadly, Paul’s desire to be with both sisters at the same time and Rick’s pining for Nichole are fantasies themselves (though ones which - spoiler alert - ultimately come to fruition). And lastly, what’s a masquerade party if not a venue for living out fantasies?

I’d be remiss in not mentioning the music in the film, which was omnipresent and all over the map. The opening theme, is disco-rock earworm that’s a bit Donna Summer-y, if you squint your ears. The credits themselves, with lighting flashes and glowing text are a kind of proto-Weird Science sequence.

There are a couple songs by a Dollar Store Johnny Rivers type including one that soundtracks a restaurant scene that could be used to great effect as a music video to a much better song:

...and another song that’s a “romantic” duet with an off-off-brand Barbra Streisand (let’s call her Debra Stryzand) that kind of torpedoes what was purportedly a scorching hot scene between Joey Silvera and Anna Ventura. There’s also some accordion music for one of the street scenes to really hammer home the fact that the production’s in Paris. (The other street scene - where Paul and Rick are photographing a kind of awkwardly modeling Nichole in front of a bunch of real-life on-lookers - uses the main theme song again.)

On to why Robert Rimmer classified That’s Outrageous as Collector’s Choice (in "Classics" in the "Update"):

...Actually, his entry is just a plot recap with no subjective reasoning for a CC mark. The closest he gets is saying,, “[a]ll the conversation between Martine and Michelle is in French with subtitles, and the background cinematography of Paris night and day contributes to the realism.” True enough. In fact, remarkably, there isn’t a single glaring error in Rimmer’s write up. Way to go, Bob!

That’s Outrageous is a solid picture that’s easy to recommend. A few tweaks here and there could have made it CC10 caliber, but as is, I’m going to give it a CC25.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
That’s Outrageous was previewed in the March 1983 Porn Stars and profiled in the August 1983 Erotic Film Guide magazines, both available for reading thanks to the digital library an the amazing The Rialto Report. These few tidbits are pulled from those articles:

° Paul and Rick apparently had a bet as to whether they could score chicks without being known as high end fashion photographers, which explains why Paul was pretending to be a “starving writer” when he courted Martine.

° The masquerade scene was filmed at New York’s Hellfire Club both for inclusion in the film and as a de facto wrap party and the partygoers were mostly club regulars who supplied their own costumes.

° The street scene shooting Nichole got a little tense with the number of people that stopped and watched (Fred Lincoln: “They started to get so excited just because of the way she was throwing her body around, and Anna and Joey got a little frightened. So we packed up and left.”), which definitely came through in the film.

And these are a few of my own thoughts:

° The masquerade party was somewhat reminiscent of the party scene from Midnight Cowboy:

° That party was based on happenings at Andy Warhol's Factory. The original Factory was at 241 East 47th Street which isn't too far at all from the address that Rick tells Michelle and Martine that they'll find Paul (36 West 46th Street) after they've decided that they want to give being a trhouple a chance.

I wonder if Silvera ad libbed the address or if there was a reason it was used since the address (and block, generally) have an interesting back story:

34-36 West 46th Street. No architect was involved here. It was an engineer, Robert B. Bowler, who designed this in 1914 for general loft use. He framed the large, simple windows with skimpy masonry banding of brick and terra cotta, a sort of architectural Automat but without the nickel slots. What particularly enlivens this building is the extensive use of classical ornament in black and red floral relief, egg-and-dart molding and, miraculously still over the doorway, a classical Greek frieze of a charioteer racing toward a woman leading a procession of children. For an engineer it is a particularly unexpected design.

* She is listed with a second credit at IAFD for Dark Angel (1983), but I think it’s a misattribution based on someone else credited as “Natasha”: 

..because I sure didn’t see her anywhere in the film. It's too bad, really, because she seemed like a good actor (admittedly, it's difficult to gauge a performance in a language one doesn't speak, but still) and she's very attractive.

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Okay, so what's on deck?