Monday, June 14, 2021

Christy (1975)


The fourth longest review drought since reviving Pornonomy and I had to watch this turkey. Sheesh.

Valerie Marron is the titular Christy in Leon Gucci's film. She's at times a jailbait stripper, a sexual naif, and a hopeless romantic.

I think the idea is that she's so magnetic, no one around her can resist her: not her stripper best friend (Cindy West), not her artist suitor (Eric Edwards), not even her parents (Marc Stevens and Andrea True). It's not particularly well-communicated, though, and the tone of the movie is all over the place, from light and slapstick-adjacent (door-to-door lingerie salesman Harry Reems hawking his wares to True) to gritty and dark (Stevens getting knifed in Times Square while he and his wife are trying to find the bar Christy's dancing at).


The Reems/True scene was really the standout hardcore scene which is sort of an indictment of the film as a whole, because it's not like it was a real scorcher or anything. The only moderately remarkable thing about the picture was the soundtrack by '70s pop curio Sleepy Hollow. I wonder if they had any idea they contributed music to the film.


I'm very curious to see how Rimmer justified this as a Collector's Choice. Let's see, shall we?

The CC rating is not only for all the old-timers in one film but also for the unglamorous, but believable, second-floor Greenwich Village apartment environment. ...Most of these early films reflect a more naive and experimental quality than you'll find in current films. A few that I have given CC ratings do deal with aspects of real life.

I'm impressed that he explicitly stated his reasons for rating it a CC and while I can't argue in theory with his assessment, in practice Christy wasn't naive or experimental enough to rate as anything higher than a CC250.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° Cindy West's stripper get up would fit right into a 2021 hipster's wardrobe:


° Tragic ends are a dime a dozen when you're talking about people in and around the porn world over the decades, but for some reason, reading about Levi Richard's death really surprised me.

° When I see Harry Reems, I'm often reminded of the truly horrendous job the ill-fated television show Swingtown did casting an actor to portray him:



° The trend for "reviews after substantial breaks" seems to be that the films are getting worse. Each time I've gone more than a month between reviews, the first review back as dropped from CC25 (47 days, That's Outrageous) to CC100 (45 days, Lady Dynamite) to CC200 (35 days, Carnal Haven) and now (34 days) CC250. I guess I have to keep a tighter schedule lest I end up really in the pits.

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Next (and hopefully better than Christy) is:


Oh, damn! "Better than Christy" is an understatement to say the least.

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