The Animal in Me (1985)

While writing up the review for Kirdy Stevens's Taboo IV, I learned that the majority of the films he made were written and produced by his wife, Helen Terrie, so it was no surprise when I saw, during the opening credits, that The Animal in Me was written and produced by her, too. It turns out Taboo IV and The Animal in Me were released in the same year, although in terms of quality, they're worlds apart. Maybe the Taboo series had more clout, because Stevens got to shoot that one on film and was stuck with video for Animal. The former had a much more substantial cast (Karen Summer was in both, for what that's worth).



The Animal in Me stars Colleen Brennan as Maggie, a divorced romance novelist who has soured on the idea of romance, if she ever believed in it in the first place. Her daughter, Pepper (Summer), on the other hand, is still infatuated by the idea of infatuation. She's fully smitten with a new doctor at the hospital she works at - she's a nurse - Dr. Morgan (Jerry Butler).



Pepper has a rough go of it romantically. She has to contend with the unwelcome advances of her mother's boyfriend, Travis (played convincingly skeevily by Craig Roberts), then she's set up with Warren (Peter North), her friend Stacy's (Gina Valentino) boyfriend Bobby's (Tom Byron) visiting buddy, who doesn't bother to engage with her while the foursome are out in the park or hanging by a pool. When Pepper calls a cab to go home from Stacy's rather than get into Bobby's proposed "swingin' and swappin'" Warren complains that it looks like he struck out. A real "F" for effort, bud.



When she finally gets a chance to date Dr. Morgan, after creepily peeping on the young couple Maggie seduces him, ostensibly to prove to Maggie that knights in shining armor don't exist.



Ultimately, the nail in the coffin of Pepper's belief in romance isn't finding out that Dr. Morgan got it on with her mother, but when Travis - initially tender and caring when Pepper discovers her mother's and Dr. Morgan's dirty deed - wears her down and has sex with her.



The only thing that prevents it from being sexual assault is that she does technically consent: after repeated tearful "No"s, she finally says, "Okay, Travis. Give it to me, dammit, give it to me."

Hot Pursuit (1983)

I'm almost certain during one of the dozen or so times Kenan Thompson impersonated Charles Barkley on SNL, he said that Michael Jordan recruited him to the 1992 Dream Team by saying he could take a vacation to Barcelona, drink, gamble, and beat Angola by seventy points. Or something to that effect, anyway.

I get the sense Annette Haven got a similar pitch to star in Hot Pursuit, the difference being the vacation was to Amsterdam and she had to shoot a couple of sex scenes instead of play basketball.

Little Miss Shirley (Haven) is a famous children's entertainer whose career and fame is threatened by the existence of a porno film she shot when she was young and trying to break into show business. She hires a private investigator (Abel Caine) to track down the tape for her.

He starts by going to see the photography studio where the film was shot, interrupting what looks like it could have been a European shampoo ad, but turns into a sapphic sex scene.



The photographer tells him he did shoot the film but doesn't have it because he heard the actress may have been underage so he stashed it in a mattress at the hotel he was staying in at the time.



The PI makes his way to the brothel to check all the mattresses only to be thwarted by the brothel's bouncer. He gains entry multiple times using various ruses (as a window washer, with an inebriated city health inspector, and finally in black face - yeesh), each time getting to check one mattress before getting tossed again. Each of the times he gets in includes a sex scene.

The first (as the window washer) finds him in the room of an experienced sexual adventurer who's being fellated in a hot tub. He's beckoned to join by the fellater and receives the same treatment (according to IAFD, Caine used body doubles for all hardcore scenes) culminating in an underwater pop shot. It's something you don't see very often, but for anyone that's dealt with ejaculate and water, it's hard to separate the visual spectacle from the unpleasant texture....

When he's posing as a health inspector, he comes across a BDSM scene involving two dominant women and man wearing the top half of a suit of armor and Donald Duck-ing (or Winnie the Pooh-ing; take your pick).

Taboo IV: The Younger Generation (1985)

Some Pornonomy reviews have an obvious and natural jumping off point. Others require two or three false starts to find the way in. Sometimes, if I take the time to recap the plot, some aspect of the movie - story or otherwise - will jump out.

And then there's Taboo IV: The Younger Generation. For some reason, none of my normal approaches bore fruit. So instead, I'm going to cop out and use the copy Vinegar Syndrome wrote for their release and take it from there:

In the fourth installment of Kirdy Stevens’ popular TABOO series, the focus shifts to Dr. Jeremy Lodge (Jamie Gillis), a prominent psychologist who deals with clients who have been traumatized by incest. Unknown to him, his wife Alice (Cyndee Summers) has been having an affair with his brother (John Leslie). After their teenage daughters Robin and Naomi (Ginger Lynn and Karen Summer respectively) are expelled from boarding school, things come to a head when Jeremy discovers the affair and he and Alice split up, each taking one girl. Soon erotic tensions build as Naomi begins to lust after her uncle and Robin becomes more and more fascinated by the concept of incest…



The last TABOO film to receive a theatrical release, TABOO 4 features writer/producer Helene Terrie’s most accomplished and daring script along side exceptional performances from Karen Summer, Lynn, Leslie, and Gillis, as well as Honey Wilder reprising her role of Joyce McBride. Easily among the greatest erotic features of the 1980s.

The only statement I'd question is when it says Dr. Lodge's clients are "traumatized by incest." While the therapy sessions look like they're of the support group ilk, in practice they're basically salons for the patients to share their taboo stories to the seeming titillation of everyone else. When Joanne (Robin Cannes) tells how she and her brother peeping on each other masturbating progressed to them having sex, it felt like it was leading to fellow patients Betty (Ami Rogers), Jeffrey (Klaus Multia), and Joyce (Wilder) having a threesome on the office couch. Frankly, I'm shocked that wasn't worked into the story somewhere. Rogers and Multia both had non-sex roles, so maybe it was planned, but at 106 minutes, their pairing may have been a casualty of time. (Worth noting that Rogers and Multia never did perform together.)



(Taboo 4 was the second longest of Kirdy Stevens's Taboos - 1-5 and 7, although apparently, Taboo 7 is a repackaged version of a movie called Woman's Dream from 1980. Taboo 6 was directed by Robert McCallum, for what it's worth.)

Expose Me, Lovely (1976)

The entry for Expose Me, Lovely at the Internet Adult Film Database claims that the "[f]ilm's title and plot capitalizes on the mainstream movie Farewell, My Lovely released a year earlier." I haven't seen Farewell, My Lovely, but reading the plot summary, while it's not a one-to-one, I could see where there would be certain elements and story beats drawn from the Hollywood adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel.

Here, Karen (Catherine Burgess) hires Frosty Knight (Ras Kean, excellent names, both character and actor) to find her brother Keith who'd been in New York for five years and had lost touch. Apparently, their father's health is failing and the old man, Frank, wanted to repair his relationship with his son before moving on to the Pacific Northwest estate in the sky.



Frosty's investigation leads him into a world of artists and hustlers, cryptic phone calls and unseen assailants. There are twists, turns, and revelations that Frank Spencer's interest in finding his son may not be as heartfelt as it seems.

Easy Alice (1976)

You'd be forgiven for assuming, as I did, that Linda Wong's character was named Alice. Despite the poster heavily implying that's the case (Easy Alice starring "Hustler" cover girl Linda Wong) and the opening credits outright saying so (Linda Wong as "Easy Alice"), the only time she's addressed by name - twice by her boyfriend Joey (Joey Silvera) and once by friend Bob (Turk Lyon) - she's called "Carol."

The name "Easy Alice" is used once and may refer to Carol, but it's not explicitly evident. More on that in a bit.

First, a brief overview of the plot (such as it is) of the film.

Joey is an easygoing, happy-go-lucky guy who makes his living as a adult film actor. He refers to himself multiple times as a "model," but when asked to elaborate, says he's a "porno model." He may shoot stills, I guess, but the insight into his profession the viewer is offered is in regard to performing on film. His career doesn't sit well with his girlfriend, Carol, but despite assuring her that he's leaving the industry behind, he isn't making any strides to bring those promises to fruition.

Memphis Cathouse Blues (1982)

Plots surrounding the world's oldest profession and the hypocrisy of the religious right, politicians, and/or men in power are evergreen. Were it not for the film version of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Louie Lewis's Memphis Cathouse Blues may not have been made in 1982, but it probably would've been made eventually.

Mavis (Annette Haven) is the third generation madame of the Feline Farm, the South's premier brothel. She has a long-standing relationship with Sheriff T.J. Thomson (Mike Horner), but unfortunately, Reverand Noble Pritchit (Paul Ross) has had his fill of the community turning a blind eye to the Farm and convinces Judge Franlkin (Dale Meador) to shut Mavis down.

Battle of the Stars 2: East Versus West (1985)

There were sixteen reasons I moved down one spot from Battle of the Stars to Battle of the Stars 2 when the former came up in my random movie picker. Based on the scene breakdowns, the formula looks pretty consistent: two female stars (Kristara Barrington and Heather Wayne) are pitted against one another by pairing them with the same guy (Tom Byron), with each other, and then in two separate small group scenes (Barrigton with Gail Sterling, Don Fernando, and Jonathan Younger; Wayne with Nina Hartley, Fernando, and Jessie Adams).

On paper, that's fine. "Getting to know" movies were nothing new, from the OG Inside Jennifer Welles to Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, Inside Little Oral Annie, and Centerfold Celebrities and its sequels. And the interest in these productions didn't go away as evidenced by Evil Angel's I Am... movies. In practice, Battle of the Stars 2 is fucking exhausting. Both the sax and piano-heavy jazz background music and Kristara Barrington's incessant porn moaning is non-stop and mixed too loud.

Much of the movie - which, like Centerfold Celebrities was shot on video, so looks pretty shitty - was edited like a trailer, cutting between the two women in flagrante and Tom Byron's talking head answering questions and comparing/contrasting the women. Early on, it feels like a novel choice, when, for instance, he was discussing the differences on how the women liked their nipples treated (which was basically a microcosm of the two women's sex styles: Barrington rough and ready, Wayne demure and seductive). After a bit of that, I kept waiting for the bounce-around editing to mellow out and just focus on the sex, and that just never happened.

Skin Flicks (1978)

I like Gerard Damiano, and a film written and directed by Damiano about making an adult film should have been a slam dunk, but Skin Flicks is just under-cooked.

Young director Harry (Tony Hudson) is struggling to complete his film, getting pressure from his best friend and manager Max (Beerbohn Tree) on behalf of - and then directly from - made man financial backer Al (played by Damiano himself). He maintains he needs more time for shooting, more time for editing, more time to get the music right.

It's impossible to tell what sort of movie he's actually making. Of the eight hardcore scenes in Skin Flicks, only two are for Harry's picture and they're shot on wildly different sets. One looks like a bedroom in a low-tier bed and breakfast and is decorated with a bunch of creepy dolls and the other could have been used for Damiano's sci-fi film Satisfiers of Alpha Blue.

During what seems like an audition, Bethanna is paired with Tony Mansfield and they have sex in front of Harry on a set made up to look like the yard of a house, complete with a swing that gets put to creative use.

Every Woman Has a Fantasy (1984)

In Every Woman Has a Fantasy, producer-writer Summer Brown (as Sandra Winters) and husband director-writer Edwin Brown (as Edwin Durrell), let the viewer into the inner sanctum of a group of women who meet weekly to discuss their lives and open up to one another about their sexual fantasies. Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden was published more than a decade before Every Woman Has a Fantasy was made, so I guess it was pretty well-accepted that many women had rich fantasy sex lives. The implication here, at least, was that it was still rare for them to open up about them, with friends, and especially partners.

When Ben (John Leslie) asks his wife, Teri (Rachel Ashley), if he knows any of the women in the group, she explains that the women not knowing each others' spouses is a benefit to opening up since there's no threat of the fantasies getting back to their husbands. Ben's fascination with the group turns to an obsession as he progresses from hearing the fantasies relayed by Teri to convincing her to smuggle in a tape recorder to hiding in the closet when she hosts the group to, finally, dressing in drag and posing as his visiting cousin, Jennifer, to sit in on a meeting.

Centerfold Celebrities (1982)

"The tape you're about to see is called Celebrity Centerfolds.

What is a 'celebrity centerfold'?

The girls you're about to see, in x-rated action, hardcore sex, are girls that you see and fantasize about in men's magazines."

So says director Bobby Hollander in the introduction to the video Centerfold Celebrities or Celebrity Centerfolds or maybe Triple X Confessions 1 depending on which version you come across.

He goes on to say, "You'll see them in adult films and hear how they feel about posing in the nude for you, out there, to see."

Bobby's first interview is with Laurien Wilde (credited and introduced as "Lauren Wild"), who was just a few months into her adult career. She has a natural charm and while Bobby Hollander was no Johnny Carson, his conversation with Wilde was pleasant enough, and he was quick enough on his feet to drop a laugh-out-loud moment when Wilde said her preferred dick was, "Long and not toooo...round in circumference," and he asked, "Not square?!?" to which she clarified she meant not too thick.

Pleasure Palace (1979)

In Carter Stevens's Pleasure Palace, recently terminated Big City vice cop Jimmy (Eric Edwards) and his two-bit, ambulance chasing lawyer pal Mike (R. Bolla) are the proud new owners of a brothel, thinly veiled as a massage parlor.

Among their first new hires is Carol (Serena) a streetwise and world-weary call girl who Mike takes an immediate physical and romantic interest in.

Things at the parlor get off to a rocky start with the Fire Marshal threatening to close them indefinitely for a litany of fire hazards. Fortunately, Mike's time on the vice squad taught him how the sausage is made, so he sets to appeasing the Marshal with some companionship (Robyn Byrd and Veri Knotty) and making sure the "village elders" - including the sheriff (Joey Silvera) and judge (Jake Teague) - are kept happy with some champagne, a hot tub, and the attention of another girl on their staff (Lisa Heyman).

Unfortunately for Jimmy and Mike, things get complicated when a couple of heavies, Al (Roger Caine) and Pete (Bobby Astyr), show up on behalf of their crime lord boss, Joe Goodson (Jamie Gillis). After Jimmy and Mike send the goons packing letting them know in no uncertain terms that their boss won't be getting an interest in their business, Goodson strikes back by orchestrating the sexual assault of one of the parlor's employees.

Boiling Point (1978)

About 15 minutes into Boiling Point (aka Intimate Illusions), I said I bet director Paul Levis had fewer than five adult film credits. Sure enough: Boiling Point was his one and only. I wonder if he had a sense that he was only going to make one film, because it was (at least) four separate half-baked ideas crammed into one movie.

First, in an opening reminiscent of Thoroughly Amorous Amy, Angel (Phaedra Grant) is walking through the streets of San Francisco to a song (presumably) called "City Girl," and it seems like it's going to focus on the life and times of a young lady in the city. When she gets back to her apartment, she calls Alex (John Seeman) for some phone sex, presented with some pretty clever set design.

The scene had a very play-like quality. After they both get off, Angel tells her phone partner they can smoke a cigarette and then she needs to go, adding "Here's looking at you kid," the first of multiple times the line pops up throughout the movie.

Sweet Young Foxes (1983)

With Sweet Young Foxes, Bob Chinn presented a surprisingly insightful look at the breadth of female sexuality. In truth, had I watched the film by myself, I almost certainly would have missed a lot of the thematic subtleties, but fortunately my wife attended the screening (in our living room) and picked up on them and clued me in. Our conversation after the end credits gave me a much deeper appreciation for Foxes than I would've had on my own.

Ostensibly about three young women - Laura (Hyapatia Lee), Maggie (Cara Lott), and Kim (Cindy Carver) - celebrating the end of their first year of college, the actual story is the complexity of transitioning from girlhood to womanhood.

While the college girls are getting a taste of independence, all three still live at home and have varying degrees of tension with their parents. Laura's parents are divorced and while she lives with her mother, Julie (Kay Parker) their relationship is volatile to say the least.

Introductions (1976)

The original French title that translates to The Weekends of a Perverse Couple is plenty blunt. I wonder if "perverse" (or, pervers, I guess) has a bit more nuance in French than English. Regardless, I prefer the classier ambiguity of title Introductions.

There's no time wasted letting the viewer know what's up: it's sexy summertime in France, and while Mitch (Jacques Insermini) spends the week working in Paris, it's up to his wife Ann (Emmanuelle Pareze) to locate and seduce a sweet young thing that they can share when he's back for the weekend. For our voyeuristic pleasure, the target is Beatrice (Chantal Nora).

House of Strange Desires (1985)

If there's something strange in Jason (Mike Horner) and Terry's (Tamara Longley) new house, who are they gonna call? Gina (Cindy Carver), Krensky (John Seeman), and Abigail (Jill Ferari)! Unfortunately for the haunted homeowners in House of Strange Desires, the ghosts decidedly do not get busted.

While there are some "first draft" shortcomings of the script (mostly that there's no clear origin, reason, or motivation for the malevolent spirits, almost certainly misidentified as paranormal/occult expert Krensky as a succubus), to the movie's benefit, (co)writer, director, producer Lawrence T Cole resisted the urge to lean on camp or comedy and kept the tone earnest, which made for some charming laugh-out-loud moments that can only come from movies like The Room or Miami Connection that don't come at the viewer with any winks or nods. There were also a few great details, like the spirit(s) only manifesting in physical form after being drawn by Jason's semi-possessed hand and the use of sheer fabric to denote the barrier between the tangible and spectral realms.

About halfway through the movie, something about the setting and interaction between Jason and Terry reminded me of Dangerous Desires which, turns out, was also a Cole picture. [Writing this now also brought to attention Cole's apparent passion for putting "desire" in titles: Challenge of Desire (1982), Forbidden Desire (1983), House of Strange Desires (1985), and Dangerous Desires (1982).] Both films have an undercurrent of melodrama (though in Dangerous Desires, that shit's turned up to 11). I wonder if Cole started making more serious porn explicitly or implicitly to atone for his early, much sleazier career. Either way, movies like this sort of explain how he segued into the writer's room on the final season of Dynasty.

Insatiable (1980)

It feels so good to have great sex.

Such is the life philosophy of incredibly successful model/actress Sandra Chase (Marilyn Chambers), but Godfrey Daniels's Insatiable ultimately asks, "And then what?" On the surface, Sandra seems to have the world in the palm of her hand. Much of the film takes place during the pre-production phase of Chase's forthcoming star-turn feature, masterminded by Flo (Jessie St. James), her...agent? Manager, maybe? Regardless, Flo is convinced that attaching actors Renee Reynolds (Serena) and Roger Adams (John Leslie) will make the movie a slam dunk success. Judging by the conversations between Sandra and her Aunt Victoria on Sandra's post-filming vacation, Flo was right.

It's demonstrated and reiterated that sex is very important to Sandra. Right off the bat, she has a super horny dream and the first thing she wants to do is tell Flo about it and is disappointed when she can't due to Renee's imminent arrival. She doesn't have much time to fret, though, since within minutes after meeting Renee, the two women are in the hot tub getting it on.

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).

Carnal Haven (1976)

Carnal Haven isn't completely inept film making, but it isn't particularly "ept", either.

The film opens with a bizarre mission statement from writer, producer, director, "fotographer", and editor Carlos Tobalina (as Troy Benny):

From there, Carnal Haven is more or less broken into three parts:

28% An introduction to four couples with relationship issues that all find their way to a sex clinic, interspersed with some of their action at the clinic.

Lesllie Bovee & John Leslie

Turk Lyon & Candida Royalle

Desiree West & Dashile Miguele

Joey Silvera & Bonnie Holiday

32% Time at the clinic where the four couples (plus a few other people and minus Joey Silvera, for some reason) get some basic instruction on human physiology and learn a few techniques to please their partners (the "Inca Nut" thrusting technique for men and the "Gypsy Grip" squeezing technique for women) courtesy of the doctors (Ken Scudder and Sharon Thorpe).

The new techniques (and some things that just come naturally) are tested out during a prolonged (and moderately uninteresting) orgy.

40% Cutting between the couples, post-clinic, relishing their rekindled passions, with an 8-minute aside in which Lesllie Bovee explores her sapphic desires, back at the clinic with Sharon Thorpe and Annette Haven.

The only parts of this final act that stood out were Turk Lyon and Candida Royalle getting into a position that put the structural integrity of Lyon's dick in serious jeopardy:

...and Silvera's character's resolution (giving up his life of crime) getting it's own extra silent film-style thought bubble card:

"Shity" all right.

There's some inconsistent narration that lends a bit of an educational film feel (a bit on that later).

The film editing wasn't great, but the music editing was a train wreck, particularly during the orgy and post-clinic "reclaiming" sex. It was like somebody only had access to a few songs (including a 1970s cop show jazz funk cast-off and echo heavy proto-jam band song) that they were trying to mix live, cutting between them seemingly at random and in no way influenced by what was going on on-screen, and sometimes letting them overlap. Just truly bizarre stuff.

Then, at the very end, Tobalina gives us two more text cards:

I get that pornographers were under serious threat of prosecution for indecency, but even by 1976 it seemed like dressing up blue movies as documentaries or marital instruction was kind of a bygone thing. If he'd leaned into it more, I could have believed it was satire of the convention, but it doesn't play that way at all.

Let's see if Rimmer has an explanation for recommending it:

A sex education porno film? Sure enough - and unlike the Love Tapes, which are more clinical, this one has many top stars.....

Uh, sure.

At the outset, the narrator says, "If you think this is one more orgy, you're in for a big surprise," but I'd argue you really aren't. I kind of got the feeling Tobalina did just want to shoot an orgy picture and when he finally got around to it (in 1983's Marathon) it was a lot more fun. CC200

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° I feel badly for Dashile Miguele and Desiree West. Whereas all the other couples were just examples of "couples", Miguele and West were representative of Black America. And then their problem was that he coveted a new Cadillac and she wanted him to get a job. And then the resolution was that he did get a job that let him get the car, but his new illustrious career was as a pimp. Yikes.

° You can't help but notice that for all the talk of clits in the clinic, there was no real focus on female pleasure (let alone orgasm) during the film's climax (so to speak).

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