Rendezvous With Anne (1973)

When Anne Stewart is paged at an airport, three women named "Anne Stewart" meet at the counter. (Well, technically, four: the last Anne to show up, a grandmother, was the one the desk agent was trying to reach.) Struck by the coincidence of their names, they decide to get some coffee and they discuss their reasons for visiting San Francisco and agree to meet again two weeks later at the end of their trips.

It's a fine premise, but is dragged down by poor pacing, C- (charitably) student film-level direction, and acting that smacked of the first meeting of an Improv 101 class. Lisa Troy (who also sang the earworm of a theme song) was the best of the lot. Keri Carpenter started, stopped, and redirected the way a four year old tells a story. And Cazander Zim (what a name!) had the awkward, outsider delivery of a character in the world of Tim & Eric.

Each of the Anne Stewarts has her own arc: Lisa Troy's connects with an old lover, Keri Carpenter's loses her virginal innocence, and Cazander Zim's (seriously, what a name!) comes to terms with her husband's infidelity by tapping into her own sexuality.

The hardcore is relatively well integrated, and mostly noteworthy because the scenes are definitely not simulated and yet there isn't a cumshot to be found in the entire film. I don't think I've ever seen an adult film fitting that criteria. While the action overall is pedestrian at best, two scenes are worth mentioning: Lisa Troy's first scene, with a man she met in an art gallery after his homosexual lover broke up with him. The two do some day drinking, discuss his failed attempt at a heterosexual relationship, take a nap, and screw. The brief discussion of sexuality and masculinity was impressively nuanced and the actors were able to capture the feeling of taking a buzzed mid-afternoon nap and the awkward excitement of a first time together in bed.

The other was Keri Carpenter's post-deflowering girl/girl encounter. The film school experimentation worked out, with the audio of Carpenter explaining the sensations of building to and achieving orgasm she experienced when her first-time lover taught her how her clit worked playing under the women getting it on.

The goofy ernestness and unintentionally funny moments kept reminding me of The Room. So much so, I started to think of co-writer, producer, and director Lowell Pickett as a 1970s porn Tommy Wisseau.

Whether or not that's accurate at all, Pickett's a fascinating character and The Rialto Report's piece on him (and Arlene Elster) is worth a read.

Let's see what Robert Rimmer had to say:

It is a small classic of the genre. All of the one-to-one sex scenes are friendly, conversational and caring.... Women will like it - the female dialogue is believable and the women are prettily average.

Excepting that backhanded compliment at the end, I get where he's coming from. As far as errors, Rimmer refers to the girl/girl scene I mentioned above as being "between two of the Annes" whereas there was only one Anne (Carpenter) involved.

If the acting was better or if I hadn't watched it after three consecutive top-tier films, I may have been more charitable with it. Since that's not the case, though, I'm going to have to rate it a CC250, not coincidentally right in league with Thoroughly Amorous Amy.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° I really dig the word "orgiers":

° The only actors with double digit performer credits appear in that orgy: Valerie Franklin, Ken Scudder, and Valerie Franklin (who, herself, only had 12 flicks in her filmography). As far as the Annes, Rendezvous with was Troy's and Carpenter's only film, and Zim only appeared in two others (one of which was another Lowell Pickett picture).

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Next in line (which I sure hope I enjoy more than this film...):

Virgin and the Lover (1973)

Ah, if only Virgin and the Lover had been made in 1983 and not 1973. In a January 1988 Adam Film World article, director Kemal Horulu was praised for his "deep, complex, interesting" films and European story telling. Horulu says he "concentrate[s] on the story and [tries] to make things pretty." Given the rave reviews of Lustful Feelings (1977), Woman in Love (1978), and Blue Ecstasy (1980) accompanying the article Horulu seems to have figured out how to make compelling hardcore films. It's really too bad he didn't have his ducks in a row earlier.

The log line Vinegar Syndrome gave Virgin and the Lover ("A filmmaker lives in a sensual dreamworld in which he is torn between love for a beautiful woman and strange desires for a female mannequin.") only scratches the surface. On paper, the film is about gender norms, fragile masculinity, and mental health. On film, those themes get lost in a meandering, muddled mess.

Eric Edwards plays Paul, a filmmaker dating his therapist's (Reggi Defoe) secretary, Julie (Leah Marlon). Julie also has a less serious, primarily physical relationship with bohemian actor/photographer Andy (Jonathan John, who looks like a Rankin/Bass character).

Julie would like to ditch Andy (and semi-successfully tries to pawn him off on her coworker Joyce - Olinka Podany) for Paul, but is exasperated by Paul's reluctance towards physical intimacy.

Through his conversations with Dr. Tracy, we're told that until three years earlier, Paul was a virgin. He "had always been intimidated by women. The terrible specter of sexual failure clung to [him] with dead fingers." While attending a masquerade dressed as a woman, Paul was seduced by a woman dressed as a man. After his lover died in a car crash, Paul's crippling fear of sexual intimacy returned and he could only find lust and satisfaction by dressing a mannequin in his partner's masquerade outfit while wearing the dress he donned to the party. Interestingly, the mannequin didn't just function as an avatar for his lost love, but became any woman Paul was drawn to, including Stephanie (Darby Lloyd Rains), an actress from a lesbian porno Paul was working on (how a man with such a complex surrounding sex ended up making porn wasn't explored or explained) and Sandra (Susan Sloan), a former model turned horse carriage driver (totally normal career trajectory). Ultimately, in an effort to understand Paul, Julie throws ethics to the wind, reads Dr. Tracy's notes, and uses her newfound insight to seal the proverbial deal, and then she and Paul lived happily ever after.

Arguably more compelling than Virgin and the Lover itself, the film-within-the-film, Two Women, Parts I & II, deserves some attention. 

 

About it, Paul says:

I had never made a film about lesbians, even though the theme had always fascinated me. It seemed to me that the quality of their love was different. Deeper. More Erotic. The mystery of a woman's love for a woman. It's depth; passion; it's fulfilment were facets of the human condition I could barely imagine. Still the mystery of that private world stimulated me. Rarely had any sexual manifestation proven so exciting.

Two Women features Darby Lloyd Raines and Jennifer Welles as roommates. If I had to hazard a guess, they'd rate 5.5 and 1.6 on the Kinsey Scale, respectively. That is, Stephanie (DLR) being between "Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual and Exclusively homosexual", and Lynn (Welles) between "Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual and Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual." In Part I, Darby assumes a stereotypically female role, preparing dinner (which amounts to dumping a bag of potato chips on a plate and lighting some candles) and getting angry at Jennifer for being late without calling. "I can understand a man playing games like this, but a woman shouldn't be so devious."

Stephanie's attitude softens when she realizes that Lynn is upset and frustrated (read: horny) since her date declined to come up to their apartment. After Lynn takes a shower, Stephanie pours her a glass of wine and offers to "take the edge off" Lynn's frustration. Paul screens Part I after declining to accompany Julie up to her apartment after a date (though Julie doesn't get her edge taken off by another woman, but rather by Andy), and is then finds his mannequin assuming the guise of Stephanie.

Part II has Stephanie assuming a typically male role, sporting a not insubstantial strap-on. Interestingly, after securing the harness, there's a very deliberate shot of her putting on a shirt; the black and red in the pattern suggest the outfit Paul's mannequin wears.

Before they get it on, Lynn asks Stephanie what pleasure she'll get from their tryst and Stephanie answers, "The satisfaction of giving you pleasure." After getting Lynn off, Stephanie dips over to a beside chair for a rather aggressive masturbation scene, pleading for Stephanie to "help [her] come." This time, after watching the scene, instead of returning to his place for a fantasy romp with either Lynn or Stephanie, he wanders the streets, saying in voice over "For some obscure reason, the film now depressed me. I felt terribly lonely." The only difference between the turn on of Part I and the turn off of Part II was the inclusion of the phallic object.

When he does return home, he goes through the process of dressing and making himself up and starts dancing with the mannequin who takes the form of Julie.

It turns out, though, that it actually is Julie, who has presumably has dressed as the mannequin. It's a little disconcerting to think that Paul was unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality. Every scene before, it was obvious that Paul was aware that the mannequin was inanimate and that he'd drift off into fantasy where she'd become "real". Here, though, he's dealing with a flesh and blood woman from the outset and projects her as lifeless.

While there are certainly scenes and themes that lend themselves to deeper thought and conversation, Virgin and the Lover ultimately suffers from:

1. A first-draft script. A lot of the voice over narration and dialog tries too hard to seem "literary" with more misses than hits. The opening credits state that the film's an adaptation of a French Novellette, but the French National Library doesn't support that claim.

2. Substandard simulated sex scenes. Adult films often lean too heavily on penetration close ups, sure. But at least those allow for the camera to cut to something. Here, with nearly half the "action" scenes being simulated, there are only so many angles that can be shot and pretty much all of them end up too long by half. Leah Marlon is credited as having a "non-sex" role, but if the final scene between her and Edwards was simulated, it was at least convincing. The same can't be said for the scenes with Jonathan John who seemed to have a tenuous at best notion for how genitalia fit together.

3. An unnecessary hardcore scene with Marc Stevens, Helen Madigan, and Julia Sorel. Chartiably speaking, the inclusion could function as a juxtaposition of the freewheeling promiscuity of Julie's friends (her past/present) and the conservative, reserved nature of Paul (her future). With rare exception, scenes with Marc Stevens just make me a little sad. I doubt he ever really came to terms with his sexuality and often seemed to struggle to maintain an erection with women, particularly problematic for someone so intent on branding himself as "Mr. 10 1/2".

4. A 90-minute run time. While Center Spread Girls was an outlier Virgin and the Lover reaffirmed my position that 75 minutes is the longest an X-rated film needs to be.

5. Inconsistent narration. Sure, "show don't tell" is generally a good rule, but I don't really have a bias against voice over. The problem here is that 92% of the voice over is Paul's perspective, 6% is Julie's, and 2% is the doctor's. Either the story only should have been from Paul's perspective, or the other characters should have had more to say.

Welp, let's see what Bobby Rimmer-roo has to say:

It has a...psychological story line that keeps you interested throughout th efilm, plus exceptional sexmaking, cinematography and good acting. Horolu [sic] gives a sense of reality to most of his films that keeps you watching.

Agree to disagree on the "exceptional sexmaking". In his review, Rimmer titles the film Virgin & Her Lover and somehow dates the film as 1980, though he does state that he has "a feeling that this film was made a few years earlier." He also claims that "[t]he virgin is a mannequin!" (see also his erroneous title) which, yeah, I don't think so. The likeliest explanation for the title is that it's basically nonsense that sounds like it could've been a French book. My next best guess is that Paul is the virgin since he was one until his ill-fated relationship with the woman from the masquerade and has effectively been one since. Anyway, like so many films I've watched since (re)starting this blog, Virgin and the Lover is a few tweaks away from a very, very good film, but as it is, it'll rate a CC100.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° There was a Turkish Olympian named Kemal Horulu that was born in 1926. Same guy? Sure! Why not?

° Darby Lloyd Raines reminds me of a kind of mean grade school bus driver.

° At one point, Julie tells Paul, "I do like you so much. I could eat a whole apple pie!" What the fuck does that mean?

° The truly rotten make up job on Olinka Podanny makes it look like she has five o'clock shadow.

° Kemal Horulu sure seemed obsessed with getting actresses into bridge pose.

° The opening credits show two characters named Polly, but Darby Lloyd Rains is definitely named Stephanie. Initially, I thought maybe she was playing an actress named Polly playing a character named Stephanie, but Jennifer Welles is credited as playing Lynn which is her name in Two Women, so the credits must've just been an oversight since it would've been nuts to name two characters "Polly", the 374th most popular name for girls born in 1950.

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Next up:

Teenage Cowgirls (1973)

“Teenage Cowgirls is a really fast-moving, beautifully photographed and well-edited film that won immediate praise. It has an excellent cast, a good script, and a delightful soundtrack. A real-shoot ‘em up, porno Western, with a High Noon-style shootout, at the end. A great flick!”

The description, presumably provided by Video-X-Pix, is about 60% accurate (which is way more than you can say for the title and especially the box art*), but provides a decent jumping off point. First, a quick story recap:

Outlaw Rio (John Holmes, credited as Long John Wodd) and his partner English Gentleman Duke Grande (Charles Orlando), are on the run from a bounty hunter named Hendricks. They encounter the proprietress (Lilly Foster) of a General Store in a ghost town - whose husband is in the high country, tending cattle - and then a poor farmer (Adam Ward), his wife and her sister. Duke and the sister take up before she’s captured by Hendricks and held to lure Rio and Duke into town for the final showdown.

1. Really fast-moving

Well, the film’s only 63 minutes long and starts and ends briskly enough, but gets bogged down by a series of pretty boring, poorly shot sex scenes. A bit of a problem for a porno, to say the least.

2. Beautifully photographed and well-edited

By and large, the film looks fine and has the feel of a late ‘60s/early ‘70s Western.

3. An excellent cast

“A serviceable cast” would be charitable. Excepting Holmes, of course, none of the actors had much of a career. Amanda Blake, Brenda Day, and Sally Withers - all with only one credit - may have other unidentified films, but I wouldn't bet the farm. Also, Charles Orlando's pic at IAFD looks like a Bob Odenkirk Mr. Show character:

4. A good script

If there was more than a single page of actual written dialog, I’d be shocked. There was, however, a legitimately good exchange early on:

The film opens with Rio and an unnamed - and unseen, face-wise, anyway - woman in the act. After completion, Rio rides off and Hendricks, in pursuit, rides in:

HENDRICKS

Where’s the twelve-by-twelve bandit, ma’am?

WOMAN

Oh, I don’t know, but I can sho’ tell ya he was here.

HENDRICKS

Long as I’m here.

[Begins unbuttoning his shirt.]

Oh, shit…. Got no time, ma’am. But I’ll be back.

WOMAN

You better be a hell of a man if you intend to ride behind him.

That’s a quality double entendre!

5. A delightful soundtrack

Absolutely! There’s a bunch of Tammy Wynette ("He Knows All the Ways to Love", "If You Think I Love You Now", "The Joy of Being a Woman", "Make Me Your Kind of Woman", "The Only Thing", "We Sure Can Love Each Other"), some Hank Snow ("Come the Morning", "Go With My Heart", "I’m Movin’", "I Wish It Was Mine") and a bit of Sonny & Cher ("A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done", "United We Stand").

6. A real-shoot ‘em up, porno Western, with a High Noon-style shootout, at the end

There was one shot the entire movie - which was during the High Noon-style shootout, at least - so “shoot ‘em up” hardly qualifies. But the standoff was fun. John Holmes always clearly relished (non-sex) action in his films, and his enthusiasm made up for any physical limitations (see: any fight scene in a Johnny Wadd film). 

7. A great flick!

An okay flick!

There were two things that pleasantly surprised me:

First, when Rio and Duke held the female shopkeeper at gunpoint, I fully expected the ensuing sex scene to be framed by (threats of) violence. My expectations worsened when, after the shopkeeper fed them, Duke said to Rio, “Say, Rio, did the lady mention something about being taken advantage of?” (which...no, she didn’t?) and Rio hauled her off to a stable over his shoulder against her protests.

However, after he laid the blanket down on the straw, she became a willing participant. And not by the oft seen “struggling at first and then getting into” route, but by saying, “Well, shucks, I hadn’t had it in awhile,” (since her husband is off ranching) showing her as a woman with actual desire for sex, echoing the contemporaneous work of Nancy Friday. In fact, whether she actually has orgasms (possible, though not probable given the audio/video evidence), she purports to be coming twice during her first encounter with Rio (once each by cunnilingus and by intercourse) and once during their second (intercourse).

Second, I feared some degree of racial ugliness when the black actresses were introduced. It wouldn’t have been wholly unexpected given the film’s setting, but even when Hendricks was capturing Duke’s ladylove, he doesn’t utter even a “mild” slur.

I can’t say there were any halfway decent sex scenes. Holmes’s come closest, but for the most part, were shot horribly. The inability to get sex on film well was either because of or a reason for director Ted Denver’s short career (Teenage Cowgirls was one of only two credits).

Rimmer on Teenage Cowgirls (listed in "Classics" in the "Updated" section of his book):

“It’s surprising how few adult films use an old-time Western plot or background…. Shot almost entirely outdoors, it’s no great shakes as a cowboy picture, but it’s far more interesting than many current adult films.”

The only glaring error is that Rimmer calls Duke Grande “Duke Randy”, which is definitely wrong because after Rio calls him Duke “Grandy”, Duke replies, “How many times have I got to tell you, my name is Duke Grand-ay.”

Despite it’s sex scene shortcomings, I’d agree with Rimmer that the novelty of it being a relatively early John Holmes picture and the commitment to the look and feel of an “old-time Western” earn it a Collector’s Choice. And maybe I’m feeling generous because it subverted some of my expectations, but I’ll give it a CC100.

RANDOM NOTES

° * In a great example of the egregious practice of box art having nothing to do with the film, here's what Video-X-Pix mocked up for Teenage Cowgirls:

That is Laura Lazare. Laura Lazare was not in Teenage Cowgirls. Her first credit was 1980, seven years after this film.

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All right, let's see what's next in store for our viewing pleasure:

1978's La Vitrine du Plaisir (Hot Action in the USA)

Pornonomy Reviews: Tropic of Passion

Tropic of Passion (1973)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Chlorine Stillwater
Patti Snyder
Sandi Carey
Sandy Dempsey
John Holmes
Mike Haven

"I couldn't wait to get my hands on that slippery Oriental."

Uttered by Johnny Wadd (Holmes...duh), those words precede what could be the best scene in Tropic of Passion, the second of two gloriously amateurish fight scenes. Both see private detective Wadd, hired to retrieve the sex tape of heiress-to-be Ruth Miller (Snyder), facing the "Oriental" gangster Fuk Yu (Chinn), the presumed mastermind behind the blackmail. Both are shot from what seems like 200 yards away and both primarily involve Wadd getting his ass kicked. In the second, though, after a series of Karate 101 arm tosses, Wadd gets the upper hand only to find out that Yu doesn't actually have the film. It's actually in the hands of Ruth's attorney Alex Royal (Haven). What a twist!

Anyway, Tropic of Passion is a pretty early Chinn film - Wadd Series or otherwise - and it shows. The plot largely unfolds by way of expository voice overs between sex scenes that are formulaic and boring and much more of the loop ilk than the "feature" scenes that would prevail later in the decade. The cast is small and unremarkable. Haven's lack of charisma and sexual prowess actually makes his three credit bio seem at least two credits too long.

Taken as a whole, the film would be lucky to merit a D. However, the ability to fast forward through the sex scenes to get to the entertaining non-sex parts (in fact, a 12 minute Youtube edit would be the best way to watch this movie), the half impressive half unnecessary Hawaii location shooting, and the liberal use of Ennio Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold" push it up to a C-.