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).

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.

Tomboy (1983)

Tomboy is a tidy little package. In an effort to get her frenemy Jeff (Tom Byron) to stop busting her chops about being a virgin, titular tomboy Jan (Melanie Scott) claims to be having an ongoing sexual relationship with mutual friend - and Mr. Popular - Alex (Steve Douglas). Jeff doesn't buy it, but Jan's able to convince Alex to go along with the ruse, including pretending to have sex (while reading from an erotic novel) as Jeff eavesdrops from outside Jan's bedroom window.

Wouldn't you know it, though, Jan actually does lose her virginity to Alex and finally finds out why so many people are fixated on sex.

The theme of sexual awakening is furthered by having Jan's brother Ted (Marc Wallice), also a virgin, shown the ways of love by a friend of their mother's (aptly named "Mrs. Robinson" and played by the inimitable Kay Parker)...

...as well as Jan's masturbatory self-discovery and a lesbian dream sequence (featuring Scott, Rosemarie, and Karen Summer) in which Jan's searching for her "lost" virginity.

Since the dream came right after she masturbated - presumably for the first time - while being peeped on by Jeff (knowing she was being watched, but pretending not to) as he jerked himself off, I wonder if she equated being able to turn a man on with a degree of sexual maturity, and thereby not technically being a virgin. Jan mused to herself and others multiple times throughout whether men did (or could) get hard thinking about her, so it was obviously pretty important. Additionally, the only sex we're sure Jeff has had is with his cousin (Laurien Wilde). They don't dwell on it, but the idea of sexual experimentation among cousins (especially initial experimentation) sure isn't foreign to our culture, broadly, or porn, specifically.

There were a few elements, narrative and technical, that could have been cleaned up. The Ted/Mrs. Robinson scene had a tonal whiplash. Accidentally walking in on Ted getting out of the shower, Mrs. Robinson's so flustered, she has to down a half-pint of gin and then attacks embarrassed Ted as a sex-crazed maniac. After he begs her to stop, she apologizes and explains that it's been ages since she's been with a man. Then, while Ted's consoling her, he sheepishly admits he's never been with a woman before, and then she assumes the role of sexual mentor. Rather than the ping pong-ing roles, it would have benefited from a more straightforward approach. (Although, I guess to play my own devil's advocate, maybe this was a truer representation of the conflicting feelings two people might have in a situation like this.)

Similarly, Alex's thoughts and feelings for Jan are a little muddled. When she first asks him to help her convince Jeff they're fucking, he says that if it was up to him, she'd have lost her virginity already. But then later, he claims that he'd never thought of her sexually. (Devil's advocating again, I suppose even though he directly contradicted himself, saying he'd only ever thought of her platonically could have been a misdirect considering he admitted after they had sex that he'd made up having a date later on that evening, planning to stay with Jan.)

The main issue with the film, though, was that Melanie Scott could not act. At all. Despite her wooden performance, there were some lines and scenes that were amusing to outright funny and I can only imagine how much they'd have improved with an actor that was even moderately capable. Off the top of my head, I "dream cast" Tara Aire (who's a good to great actor) or Renee Summers (who appeared in director Howard Christian's next - and final - film, Loose Times at Ridley High). Initially, I thought Rikki Blake since she has a square jawline similar to Melanie Scott - which sort of added to the tomboy-ish nature of character - but her career didn't begin until the year after Tomboy was released.

Let's check Roh-baire Ree-mair's opinion:

Melanie and Doug are a very attractive couple, and as a matter of fact, so is everyone else who appears in this happy-go-lucky story....

Rimmer's "review" is a brief recap of the plot without any glaring errors (I won't ding him for calling Steve Douglas "Doug" since the credits were all over the place, accuracy-wise). He doesn't clarify what makes the film a "Collector's Choice" or offer a reason that women may like it (as he's so often wont to do), so I can't address his entry, really, one way or another. I signed off my Rendezvous with Anne post hoping that I enjoyed the next film more than I did that one. And I did. While Scott's performance in Tomboy was worse than any in Rendezvous, literally everyone else in Tomboy was lightyears better. As is so often the case, a few tweaks here or there could have actually put Tomboy in CC25 territory, but as it is, I'll give it a CC100.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° Jeff calling his cousin's breasts "living footballs" is an all-timer.

° There was a subtle, but noteworthy, emphasis on female pleasure. In her second hardcore scene after opening with a blowjob, Laurien Wilde mounts Klaus Multia's face saying, "You're not going to cheat me. I want you to make a few 'runs around the field' before I let you make a 'touchdown'." Then, Ted's lesson with Mrs. Robinson begins with her instructing him on all of her "sensitive parts." And, of course, there was ample time focused on Jan exploring her own sensitive parts.

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Next up:

In the Pink (1983)

I’m not generally one to get all ** wiggles fingers, makes Theremin sounds ** but there was something going on with the supposedly random picks for the blog. First, the movie that actually came up after That’s Outrageous was WPINK TV, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch a film with Ron Jeremy right now, so I re-rolled. When In the Pink came up, my wife pointed out that I was destined to watch something with “pink” in the title (although from the films that were in the running, turns out that was a 1 in 89 chance, so it’s not as bizarre as it initially seemed). Far stranger was the fact that it turned out to be another film from 1983 that heavily featured international locales and lightly featured Dave Ambrose (one scene in each). Ambrose only appeared in 10 films total (including a non-sex appearance in Wanda Whips Wall Street). Six of those ten ended up as Rimmer’s Collector’s Choice picks and two of the other four weren’t reviewed, so who knows if they may have warranted a CC. Even still that’s a tremendous hit rate. So this doesn’t turn into a Dave Ambrose biography, I’ll move on to the review after adding one last interesting (to me) tidbit: thanks to (yet again) The Rialto Report library, I found out (in the May ‘83 issue of Porn Stars) that he and Tish Ambrose were married.

The elevator pitch for In the Pink is that millionaire art collector Blake Covington (Scott Baker) is determined to complete own a complete collection of oil portraits of the House of Habsburg and fakes his death to conspire with his assistant Heather (Joanna Storm) to convince the Baroness (Laurie Smith) to sell the paintings to his widow Mariange (Jaqueline Lorians). BUT not all is as it seems when there’s a late-film reveal regarding Blakes supposedly-cuckolded would-be assassin “Umberto” (Zebedy Colt). The twist is entertaining at first, but completely falls apart when you think about it for, like, 10 seconds.

I make it a general rule not to read any other reviews of films before I’ve written mine. When I’m doing initial information gathering and background, if I happen to come across a preview, though, I’ll read it. Unfortunately, Erotic Film Guide labeled what ended up being a review of In the Pink as a preview so I unintentionally broke my rule. That said, the (p)review was written by Candida Royalle who provides some insightful editorializing and had many opinions I shared, too, so I’m going to excerpt some of her review and add my two cents.

IN THE PINK is another of the many "new wave" films attempting to uplift the quality of the adult film genre. As with most others, though, some of it works, and some of it just gets in the way. Fortunately for IN THE PINK, its muddled, confusing story need not interfere with the sex, thanks to an abundance of pretty girls, lush photography, and plenty of eroticism.

...We get to see lots of Paris and Venice scenery as the producers use a trick growing in popularity in the porn industry: exotic foreign locales. The technique is to cart off your stars and most essential crew members, shoot lots of exterior footage of them gallivanting around easily recognizable hot spots like the Venice canals or the Eiffel Tower, then intercut and match it with hard core footage done at home (where it's safe from customs inspectors!), and Voila! You have an expensive looking movie with strong production value. Chuck Vincent did it with BON APPETIT when he had his lovers romancing all over Paris, Rome, etc. And now, Bill Eagle follows suit, having his leads fall in love in Paris, London, Cairo. Rome, Vienna- you name it.

Generally, the interiors they used for the hardcore inserts were ornate enough to sell the “Olde Europe” feel, but there were some truly bizarre blue/green screen effects that gave some settings an aura of a performance art piece or play.

Similarly, the Italian tenement laundry set would have been right at home on stage at the 1984 Academy Awards or in Robert Altman's Popeye.

…[T]he somewhat formula sex scenes are saved by some highly creative cinematography, namely the numerous erotic closeups of anything from a woman's tongue licking her lips to some of their full screen genitalia shots done more tastefully than usual. Also worth mentioning is the music score, which enhanced the sex scenes with its building, driving rhythms and seductive, crooning melodies.

I’m not so sure about the “crooning melodies”, but there was more timpani than I ever recall hearing in a porn flick. Who’d’ve thought you could set so many sex scenes to drum solos?

The women are definitely a plus in IN THE PINK. Jacqueline Lorians is just adorable with her creamy, freckled skin and very full breasts; Gina Carnale [Marie Sharp] promises to be a real hit with her olive skinned, leggy beauty; Lori Smith, who I haven't seen since we worked together in OLYMPIC FEVER seems to be getting lovelier with maturity; and Joanna Storm is always a pleasure to behold. In fact, she looks and acts better than ever in this film.

I’ll cosign Royalle’s praise of Joanna Storm. All the actors perform well, but she really sells her character.

The plot is nothing to write home about, but the film has some memorable moments nevertheless. I would like to point out a couple of my favorite scenes, such as the montage of the two couples getting it on: Heather and a museum worker with a HUGE cock…

It’s pretty incredible how industry standards have changed since the early ‘80s. Jamie St. James is packing, no doubt (there may be a bit of forced perspective since Joanna Storm seems pretty petite and St. James is a twiggy alien man), but his endowment would be par for the course now and the majority of other dongers in the film wouldn’t be seen outside of cuckold/SPH scenes.

...and Mariange and a very handsome Mediterranean type [Starbuck]. ...The two scenes build up to an electrifying pace, never letting you down for a minute. They end up in big wallowing cum shots with a nice touch of tenderness in the end. Music and intercuts are utilized most effectively in both scenes.

Candida Royalle’s right on the money. There were cuts from close up to close up that made it nearly impossible at times to tell which couple you were seeing in action, which was a really cool, evocative, and engaging technique.

The other scene I particularly liked took place inside a tiny English Royal Guardsmen's station between Jacqueline Lorians and Joey Silvera. Joey is trying his best to be the proper Guardsman , ignoring her advances, but Mariange pushes him inside saying, " I bet I know something that knows I'm here." Then she has her way with him ... a fantasy I am not unfamiliar with.

It was a cute scene, but completely superfluous and one (along with the Ambrose/Sharp/guy laundry scene) that I happily would have traded for an alluded-to tryst between Mariange and the Baroness.

IN THE PINK is headed in the right direction. It's an ambitious project attempting to uplift the standards of adult films. The women are pretty and convincing in their eroticism: the men are hot, and the sex, though routine, does deliver. In other words, it's definitely worth a peek.

Agreed!

Let’s check Rimmer’s take:

Put this one near the top of your “Collector’s Choice” sexvids. Unlike some American-made sexvids that try to capture a foreign background with stock shots, much of this one must have been shot in Paris, London, Venice, Vienna, and Luxor.

Well, yep.

It’s too bad The Davinci Code hadn’t come out 25 years earlier. Bill Eagle could have cribbed some story beats and put some of the exotic locales to better use and made In the Pink a CC10, but as it is, I’ll rate it a CC25.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° I really wonder about the title of this one. Idiomatically, “in the pink” means “in very good health”, so I guess it could be an allusion to Blake faking his own death. The ellipsis in the title card is weird.

Was there a contemporary movie that it’s emulating? Or is it an Occam's razor deal and pink is what you think it is?

° There’s a shot late in the film where Jacqueline Lorians is scaling an outdoor staircase wearing an outfit not fit for such a task where it seemed like she was going to fall to her death. It was legitimately nerve-wracking.

° Bill Eagle had Starbuck doing some very GQ poses.

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On deck:

Oh, damn. This one's been on my radar for awhile, but I haven't watched it because the description sounds bleak as hell. I guess we'll see!

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?

Sweet Alice (1983)

Sweet Alice takes me back. The first time I saw it - well after my initial discovery of the stack of duped VHS tapes in my dad’s closet but before I started this blog - I didn’t know anything about loops. After I watched it, I had a sneaking suspicion that the Seka scenes weren’t filmed for Sweet Alice, but the idea of a film recycling a bunch of sex scenes (six of nine, here) was completely foreign to me. What a wide-eyed naif! In the time since, I’ve seen countless examples, but few (if any) were done as well as Sweet Alice.

The story built to frame the loops is that doofy yokel Billy Joe (Kevin James) has come from New Mexico to Hollywood to find his wife, Sweet Alice (Seka). He hires private investigator Jamie Savage (Honey Wilder) since there’s no way a hayseed like Billy Joe could navigate the mean streets of LA. Turns out, Sweet Alice has become a successful porno star, and the gut-wrenching revelation disavows Billy Joe of any hope of saving his marriage. (But not immediately. First, Jamie had to break it to him by showing him a tape of Sweet Alice and Turk Lyon getting busy. Then, after wandering around for awhile, Billy Joe goes to an adult theater and sees another one of her movies. And then, he needs to see - but not confront - Sweet Alice on a porn set to get closure.) Wouldn’t you know it, though, Jamie falls hard for Billy Joe, and after he accepts that his idea of Sweet Alice was wildly different from who she actually is, he falls for Jamie, too, and they leave LA for New Mexico and a new life together.

In case the plot was too tricky to follow, there’s a main theme that’s reprised (a lot) that lays the whole thing out. It’s called “The Ballad of Billy Joe”, written and sung by “Sandy Bush”, a way off-brand Joan Baez. It primarily accompanies Billy Joe wandering and looking wistful, but once soundtracks Jamie wandering around looking wistful, while the viewer is told that:

Billy Joe's on her mind

Jamie thought about him all the time

Does he want her as much as she wants him?

The integration of the loops is pretty seamless, helped by the fact that there isn’t a substantial difference in film quality (the loops are from just a few years prior to Sweet Alice rather than, like, flashing back to 1971) and cleverly having Becky Savage (who appears in the Friendly Hot Tub loop that’s included for hardcore scenes) talk to “director” Marty (Bill Margold, who described his character as “rather ‘affected’” and sported a signature Swedish Erotica neck scarf).

The two loops that stood out were the scene with Seka, Desiree Cousteau, and John Holmes (from Ski Bunnies 2) and the scene with Seka, Lysa Thatcher, and Jamie Gillis (from Hot Flash). The first because it showed how little the acting mattered when Desiree Cousteau tripped over her line (“Do you want me to rub your bactor...back doctor?”) and they just kept rolling, and because John Holmes is Bob Ross-ing it, big time. The second because in her autobiography, Serena wrote that Jamie brought Lysa into their relationship, presumably as a plaything for the two of them, but became so infatuated that he began neglecting Serena who, in turn, got incredibly jealous. From what I can tell, this loop may have been Jamie and Lysa’s first filmed sex.

Happy little trees, indeed

The hardcore scenes shot for Sweet Alice include one between Cindy (Cindy Shephard), Sweet Alice’s friend and Ron (Jack Mason), Cindy and Sweet Alice’s sex slave, apparently, after a failed attempt at getting Jamie into a menage a trois and two between Jamie and Billy Joe. The first is after a romantic dinner and before Jamie takes Billy Joe to see Sweet Alice filming a scene, the second on a picnic after visiting the porn set, and cementing their new relationship. They’re all fine.

While I was making mental notes for this entry while watching Sweet Alice, the main thing I wanted to discuss (other than some of the buck wild wardrobe choices costumer Nancy Leonarda made for Honey Wilder) was the music. (Although first, those outfits. Yikes.)

Not "The Ballad of Billy Joe", though, the other music. There was a repeated synth and saxophone song that scored the loops, some romantic synth and strings music during the Billy Joe/Jamie scenes, and a song under the conversation between Jamie, Cindy, and Ron (and subsequently Cindy and Ron fucking) that sounds a whole lot like "Seeking" by Steve Roach and would have been right at home in an episode of Stranger Things. (Incidentally, "Seeking" was released in 1986 - three years after Sweet Alice - which begs a bunch of questions. Was there a different song in the original film with Seeking inserted on a later home video release? Was “Richard Long” credited for the musical score actually Steve Roach who didn’t release the song under his own name until years later? Does this conspiracy go all the way to the top???) The music is solid, for sure. But actually, when I was transcribing (why? Who knows?) "The Ballad of Billy Joe", I was actually struck by the judgment not just of Sweet Alice, but of “porno stars” (women, at least). To whit:

Well Billy Joe found his wife

Leading a different kind of life

Sweet Alice had become a porno star

She made love to men in twos and threes

And women down on bended knees

And she came for all the world to see

Memories of how it used to be

Seem like they all happened in a dream

And fantasies of how it used to be

Destroyed by seeing Alice on the screen

Sweet Alice paid the price

Trading love for the spice of life

Yes she became a porno star

And she found a way

Through the jungle of LA

By keeping all kinds of men hard

Sure, this is stating how Billy Joe’s memories and fantasies were “destroyed”, but there’s something cold and dismissive about Alice “pa[ying] the price” “by keeping all kinds of men hard”, especially considering it’s seems that Sweet Alice is a pretty big “porno star”: when Billy Joe first tells Jamie his wife’s name, she asks if she’s blonde, and real pretty, implying she already knew who she was. And then, when she tells him it’s possible that his wife has changed and may not want to see him, he’s like, “Naw, she’ll be real happy to get back to her friends,” conveniently overlooking the fact that she left her wedding ring on the dresser when she left and she left 53 weeks before he showed up in LA to look for her (both of which the viewer finds out later). The lyrics should have been, “Sweet Alice is a big star and Billy Joe realized he’s a goony idiot.”

I couldn’t hazard a guess at the number of times I’ve heard or read in interviews that actors have seen few to none of the films they were in, but if I were, say, Honey Wilder and watched Sweet Alice, I’d be pretty pissed at how being a “porno star” got dragged in that song. Or, who knows, maybe I’m being overly defensive and she would’ve been like, “So what, I do come for all the world to see?”

Okay, so that was a bit of a tangent. Let’s see why Robert Rimmer deemed Sweet Alice a Collector’s Choice (in "Classics" in the "Update"):

“Trying to dissuade [Billy Joe] from reforming Sweet Alice, Jamie goes to bed with him. The contrasting romantic sex (some of the most caring and believable that you’ve ever watched in an adult film), with Seka/Sweet Alice being her typical dispassionate self and Jamie/Honey being the totally loving woman (she even thales Billy Joe on a picnic), makes this a love story that most women will enjoy. Hurray for Adele Robbins, Honey Wilder, and Kevin James, who prove in this one that even with a simple little love story an adult film can be interesting.”

Women be both shoppin’ and lovin’ a love story, right?

He adds:

“As for the rest of the actors and actresses...they are stereotyped to fit the plot.”

Okay, I can’t bag on him too hard for not pointing out 66.6% of the hardcore scenes were recycled loops since I started this post by saying that the first time I saw Sweet Alice I didn’t realize it, but as I also mentioned, I had an inkling that something was amiss. And, I hadn’t watched thousands of pornos at that point. Presumably, Rimmer was familiar with the Swedish Erotica library. He also misidentifies Turk Lyon as Jamie Gillis.

Overall, I really enjoyed Sweet Alice. Kevin James is a reliable cornball and, as my wife mentioned, is really good at looking sad. 

And the awful Southern drawl slapped onto his native, nasal ‘Sconnie accent is endlessly amusing. Honey Wilder is as earnest and committed to her role as always. I’m going to go nuts and give Sweet Alice my highest rating since the blog’s reboot and issue a CC25!

RANDOM NOTES

° I appreciated the meta touch of “Adele Robbins” as a client of Jamie’s and her connection to Sweet Alice, and...

° That “Jamie Savage” was, presumably, a Jamie Gillis/Becky Savage mash-up. Interestingly enough, according to IAFD, Gillis and Savage never performed together.

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Next up, oh random number generator?

Pornonomy Reviews: Bubble Gum

Bubble Gum (1983)
aka The Siblings

Directed by:
Damon Christian

Starring:
Candy Cummings
Honey Wilder
Kelly Grant
Laurien Wilde
Blair Harris
Eric Edwards
Marc Wallice
Ray Wells

Bubble Gum clocks in at just over 60 minutes. I'm guessing the total production time - writing, filming, editing, and scoring - was about 75 minutes.

The story: Carla (Wilder) has been having a long term affair with Sid (Wells). Her husband, John (Edwards), hires a private investigator (Harris) who alerts him to the long-term affair. When their daughter Paula (Wilde) comes home with to tell her parents she's marrying Sid's son Sammy (Wallice), John decides to seduce Paula's friend Bubble Gum (Cummings) to get back at Carla.

Now, as you might have guessed from the "aka" up there, Sid is Paula's real father, meaning she's engaged to her half-brother. You'd think that this would be a shocking revelation at the climax of the film, but Carla actually tries to tell Sid that he's Paula's father in the film's second scene, but, unfortunately, since he already came, he's fallen asleep. ("Men!") Hilariously, not only does she not bother to wake him up, but she doesn't see fit to break the news to Paula after she announces that she and Sammy are engaged.

Oh, and also the maid, Darcy (Grant) - who is apparently dating the PI - knows but doesn't bother telling anyone. And then, the PI, after rushing to the house when he discovers that John isn't Paula's real father, decides that it's more important to have sex with the maid in the kitchen. Bear in mind everyone is home, so either the household is pretty fast and loose with the rules, or the maid isn't particularly concerned about keeping her job.

So finally John breaks the news to Paula at the dining room table, devastating her so she naturally runs upstairs to take a bubble bath.

Then DEUS EX MACHINA! Apparently Sid ISN'T Sammy's father (it may actually be John!) so...the wedding is back on. Or at least Sammy and Paula have (simulated) bubble bath sex set to a jaunty tune that would've been great for The Apple Dumpling Gang before abruptly cutting to a mournful piano tune playing under the rolling credits.

It's been awhile since I've hypothesized that a porn was fueled largely by cocaine, but I've got to wonder about this one. Interestingly here, though, it's the editor I suspect of being totally lit.

Editing aside, Bubble Gum didn't really do anything wrong, but it's one of those movies that, in retrospect, if I'd never seen it, I wouldn't have missed out on anything. C

Pornonomy Reviews: Beauty

Beauty (1983)

Directed by:
Warren Evans

Starring:
Nicole Black
Kathy Harcourt
Laurien Dominique
Loni Sanders
Mai Lin
Patty Boyd
Vanessa del Rio
Veronica Hart
Bill McKean
Blair Harris
George Payne
Hershel Savage
Jamie Gillis
Michael Morrison
Paul Thomas
Ron Hudd

Beauty is a fairy tale-by-way-of-soap opera type porn. Beauty (Sanders) is the kindest of three sisters - the other two, Hope and Faith (Black and Dominique) seem to live only to indulge in carnal pleasures, including, but not limited to, having their man-toy (Savage) at their beck and call. After the girls' gambling addict father's debts make him face the prospect of losing his business to Martin Gross (Gillis in a prototypically awesome Gillis-esque role) - the sort of charming dirtbag that would be the result of putting Bob Guccione in a Grand Theft Auto game - Beauty volunteers to live with Gross for a year (a solution offered by Gross after seeing a picture of the girl in her father's briefcase). Gross attempts to shock Beauty with his exploits but, as the narrator mentions numerous times, Gross's lifestyle just causes Beauty to pity him.

The sex scenes present an interesting dilemma to reviewing the film. On the one hand, while the characters are in character, the scenes don't seem particularly tied to the narrative. On the other hand, they're spectacularly well shot - the cinematography of the entire film is excellent - and the soundtrack rules. Seriously, the music may be the star of the show. While the film is set to a score that you'd expect from a mid-'50s Disney film, the sex scenes are all highlighted by a new wave/psych rock/drone soundtrack that could easily be sampled by a chillwave band now. In fact, pretend you didn't read that, so I can sample that shit! Another plus is that Evans eschewed the idea of sex sound effects or (shudder) overdubs by having the only audio during the hardcore scenes the music. (An approach I mostly associate with much, much later films; The Story of J or Teagan: All-American Girl, for instance.)

While the sex scenes could have been better integrated, the fact that the craft with which they're treated is so high (more than any other film I've seen recently, the scenes here could be pulled from the narrative and offered as just straight up hot fucking) more than makes up for it. I was really, pleasantly surprised by Beauty. A-

Pornonomy Reviews: Sex Star

Sex Star (1983)

Directed by:
Paul G. Vatelli

Starring:
Amy Copeland
Danica Rhea
Lisa Lake
Kimberly Carson
Lynnz
Craig Roberts
Hershel Savage
David Sanders

Danica (Rhea) is a porn star who's lost her groove. Initially, she cites her inability to get into girl/girl, but it seems like she's struggling with sex generally.

At the insistence of her assistant (Lynnz), she takes a break and spends time with friends, Jannette and Richard (Carson and Savage) in order to clear her head. They attempt to set her up with their friend, Michael (Sanders), but she plays the cold fish. However, after spying on Jannette and Richard in bed, a spark seems to be ignited in her. Spurning Michael's advances yet again, she ends up being seduced by Richard. Luckily for Michael, Janette and Richard have an open relationship, so he and Janette have a roll while Danica and Rich are at it.

That time away seems to have righted anything that was wrong, because the closing scene, on the set of the film that went off the rails in the film's cold open, comes off without a hitch.

The film was capably directed and had a story with a lot of promise, but it just never really came together. It may have been that, at only 76 minutes, there wasn't enough time to adequately portray the troubles Danica was having with her career, or maybe it was that Danica Ray's range didn't lend itself to expressing the actual dilemma her character was having, but I found myself pretty bored with the film overall. In fact, the most entertaining part was the bit of the film-within-the-film showed at the beginning and end. And then, it was mostly due to the fantastically bombastic overdub that Craig Roberts's character was supposedly saying to the ladies under his command (Rhea, Lake, Copeland). It was like hearing Mumra, or the narrator at the beginning of The Dark Crystal, telling three chicks to blow him....

I've been on a bit of a Vatelli run lately, and while none have been particularly bad, this is the first I've seen that I don't feel like I'd have missed anything by skipping. C+

Pornonomy Revies: Sex Games

Sex Games (1983)

Directed by:
Paul G. Vatelli

Starring:
Becky Savage
Betty Jane
Cody Nicole
Julia Parton
Melanie Scott
Nicole Black
Shauna Grant
Kevin James
Ron Jeremy

You might expect a film that deals with hacking into computers in the early '80s with the a name like Sex Games to deal with the sexy consequences of the threat of nuclear war. In fact, though, it seems like the film was originally titled Electric Love (considering the end credits), so the re-title was probably just an attempt to cash in on the popularity of War Games.

After seeing a special on the exciting new world of home computers, Peter (James) becomes fascinated by the idea of computer dating. After his roommate, Howie (Jeremy), tells him about a special he saw about "computer bandits" that break into other computers through the telephone, Peter hatches a plan to access the records of women at the local computer dating service in order to have the inside scoop on their fantasies. (What isn't explained is why he chooses this route over staying in his current - and by all indications from the opening scene - sexually satisfying relationship. I guess sex with many women trumps sex with one woman.)

After registering with the computer dating service and tricking employee Linda (Nicole) into giving him her access code, Peter accesses the profiles of Colleen (Grant), Chris (Savage), and "Artist" (Scott), finding out that they're looking for a classy man, a rugged biker, and an artist, respectively. Of course, armed with this information and the can't-miss alias "John Smith," Peter takes the women to, I don't know, new sexual heights.

Even though the women call the dating service with rave reviews of "John Smith," the fact that someone's been hacking (or, bandit-ing?) the system causes consternation in the office. Linda decides to set a trap for the elusive Smith. Upon getting caught up, Peter is given the option of prison or "doing whatever" Linda says. So, obviously, he chooses prison. No, wait, that's not right. [SPOILER ALERT] He chooses to have sex with Linda.

For an 84 minute film, it's sort of surprising that there are only six sex scenes. And with the exception of a semi-unnecessary scene between Howie and his girlfriend Tangerine (Jane), they're all James plus woman (or women, in one scene). There is also a surprising amount of time between some sex scenes, but that time is well spent documenting some great vintage computer use...as well as a (presumed unintentionally) hilarious candle light dinner seduction scene and an awful Marlon Brando impression.

For that great footage, James' typical goofy charm, and the fact that, although I've probably seen her before, Sex Games brought Becky Savage to my attention, I'll give it a B.

Pornonomy Reviews: Bodies In Heat

Bodies In Heat (1983)

Directed by:
Paul G. Vatelli

Starring:
Annette Haven
Christie Kaye
Crystal Fire
Janey Robbins
Kimberly Carson
Laura Sands
Raysheena Mercado
Anthony Spinoza
Billy Dee
Eric Edwards
Gilberto Ciro
Hershel Savage
Jerry Davis
Jerry Gullo

Basically since rediscovering Stiff Competition, I've been on the lookout for a film that will give it a run for it's money. As a starting point, I've checked out a few Vatelli films from the same period, and while Lips was a disappointment, and The Girl From S.E.X. showed promise, Bodies in Heat has come closest.

Initially, I was going to comment that Bodies In Heat, like Lips, was a name that had little to do with the movie until I remembered, duh, Body Heat. While In Heat doesn't push the noir feel as far as Heat, the tone is undeniable.

Harry Green (Savage) is a playboy detective who is called in to investigate a robbery at the home of a high-powered lawyer Lawrence DeSalvo. He's met at the house by Laura DeSalvo (Haven), the lawyer's cool, beautiful wife. Green is seduced by Laura, and is further intrigued by her and her situation after a little digging shows her husband's clients are exclusively big time criminals.

Later, when Laura tells Green that she's afraid her husband is going kill her, Green concocts a scheme which ends up with an outcome that is only surprising if (1) you're delightfully naive or (2) are completely unfamiliar with the idea of a femme fatale. While the action/consequence is predictable, the veeery final moment was a twist that actual did surprise me. (Who knows, maybe I'm a little "delightfully naive"....)

With the exception of a pool party/orgy, the sex scenes don't feel too tacked on, which is always nice. Savage and Haven both do great jobs in their roles. The male lead, here, could have been more-than-capably handled by John Leslie, but it's actually nice to see Savage - who often seems relegated to second banana (no pun intended) roles. And Haven's reputed icy and professional demeanor fits the character to a tee. There's a pretty substantial cast list, but with the exception of Lisa DeLeeuw (unfortunately in a non-sex role) as Green's partner, and Kimberly Carson as the station dispatcher who's emotionally and sexually toyed with by Green, there aren't any identifiable characters. At least everybody else is competent, so there aren't any super distracting performances. (Unless you count Janey Robbins's wig in the first scene....)

Do I think there's a film that can unseat Stiff Competition from it's top spot? I hope so. Well, Bodies In Heat isn't it.... But it's not too shabby. B

Pornonomy Reviews: The Young Like It Hot

The Young Like It Hot (1983)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Shauna Grant
Hyapatia Lee
Kay Parker
Lili Marlene
Linda Shaw
Laurie Smith
Pat Manning
Rosa Lee Kimball
Sarah Mills
Ray Wells
Bud Lee
Eric Edwards
Hershel Savage
Joey Silvera
Mike Horner
Paul Thomas
Bill Margold

By coincidence, this is the second film I've seen in as many days directed by Bob Chinn. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, chalk up another one for Bob Chinn. (Although, in this case you can't overlook the contribution of Gail Palmer's story and screenplay.)

In what should be square one for filmmakers, porn or otherwise, The Young Like It Hot has a simple, straightforward premise with dramatic tension: here a phone company is considering a switch to a computerized system which would put the operators out of work. In an effort to save their jobs, they decide to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get customers to contact their boss, proving computers can't replace people. At the same time, the operators conspire with the "pole men" to sabotage the computer system.

Much like in Pizza Girls, the main characters are varied and interesting, and right in the wheelhouse of the actors portraying them , and the "action" flows more or less organically within the construct of the plot.

Throughout the film there are moments of levity intentional (particularly involving Edwards as the boss, Mr. Fishbait: "And why is my chair moist?"; and the "help" "dizzy" operator Cindy - Shauna Grant - gives Jeff - Silvera - over the phone while he's attempting to finish an addition to his house) and unintentional (David - Bud Lee - talking Carla - Sharon Mills - through her first orgasm; if Mike Horner and Kevin James are neck and neck for porn's All-American Doofus, Lee may well be porn's Biggest Dweeb).

The main cast is rounded out by Loni (Hyapatia Lee), the operators' supervisor, Cheryl (Kay Parker, who seems more like a weirdo the more I see her in films), virgin-with-man-issues Marie (Lili Marlene, with the look and awkwardness of a fourth wife at Juniper Creek, who is still somehow supposed to be believable as the object of Mr. Fishbait's affection), Nancy (Rosa Lee Kimball) the operator that "talks off" "Big Dick" (Bill Margold, who must be a righty given his spastic left-handed technique while he's on the phone), and service men Jim (Ray Wells), Mr. Fishbait's brother, Cheryl's suitor, near genius and computer wizard, and character with perhaps the line of the film (to Cheryl: "I'm not gonna to fuck you. And I'm not gonna make love to you. I'm gonna do both at the same time."; man, that's a lot of descriptors for a dude that's in the movie for, like, four minutes), and Tom (Horner).

The only things that keep The Young Like It Hot (overlooking the fact that the name of the film seems to have been picked out of a hat...although it does have a pretty sweet theme song), are the trio of simultaneously occurring sex scenes that happen after the resolution of the plot (hence the aforementioned "more or less organically") and the obviously over-dubbed sounds in the first Grant/Silvera scene (I'd hazard a guess that they were deemed necessary given Shauna Grant's relative inability to emote...).

Still, overall a pretty top-notch picture. A-

Pornonomy Reviews: Summer Camp Girls

Summer Camp Girls (1983)

Directed by:
Robert McCallum

Starring:
Brooke Fields
Danielle
Janey Robbins
Joanna Storm
Kimberly Carson
Shauna Grant
Tara Aire
Eric Edwards
Hershel Savage
Marc Wallice
Michael Holman
Paul Thomas

Camp Quim is a summer camp for priveleged trouble makers. Run by a woman named Olga (Honey Wilder, in a non-sex role), the camp seems to only have two counselors Marcy (Robbins) and Greg (Thomas). There are a couple of peripheral trouble makers; J.D. (Savage) is dating Carla (Aire) and his biker buddy Animal (Antonio Crabbe, also in a non-sex role).

A group of rich girls sent off by their families as punishment reminded me immediately of Charm School. Summer Camp Girls has only slightly more plot points holding the sex scenes together. Most of the action occurs after the girls give Olga the slip on a picnic. Veronica (Carson), Angela Cortese (Grant), and Brooke Fields's character set out together, the first two ending up in a bar, Fields content to hide out in a fisherman's (Edwards) camper. Veronica orchestrates a brawl between bikers and cowboys in the bar in order for Angela to escape - she's not as interested in getting laid as Veronica - and to determine the two manliest men in the bar.

Suzie and Tammy (Danielle and Storm) duck into a barn in order to escape some phantom rain. Predictably, shedding their wet clothes and trying to warm up in a horse blanket causes one thing to lead to another.

Meanwhile, back at a camp, Angela's father calls to let Olga know he's on his way to visit. In a panic, Greg sets out to find all the AWOL campers. He happens upon Suzie and Tammy, who delight in teasing Greg (so much so that, earlier in the film, he contemplates quitting until Marcy convinces him to stay by sleeping with him, allowing him to fantasize about the girls), finally prove to be too much for him to resist. I have to admit that they staged some of the more creative fmf positions I can recall seeing.

J.D. - who seems to be trying to rehabilitate his image in order to win Angela over - and Animal pass Angela walking home from the bar. After she turns down a ride back to camp, Animal convinces J.D. to go back so he can teach her a lesson for "teasing" him in the bar. (Call me old fashioned, but facilitating a rape seems like a weird way to win a girl's heart.) Ultimately, J.D.'s conscience wins out and he turns back to rescue Angela...by "trading" Carla for her. Instead of letting J.D. untie her, Angela asks him to have sex with her which will somehow "free" her from her sheltered upbringing. Or something.

At this point, Olga, Greg, Angela's father, and his henchman happen upon the scene, which seems like bad news for J.D. until Mr. Cortese finds out that J.D. is Catholic. The End!

The weird thing about Summer Camp Girls is that, for a film that is ultimately a pretty light piece of work, there's a somewhat unsettling undercurrent of violence throughout the film. The first scene in the film, between J.D. and Carla, is pretty rough - although shown as consensual, since that's how Carla "likes it"; the threat of sexual violence by the biker gang that happen upon Veronica and Angela in the bar; the threat of rape after Animal snatches Angela off the road, made darker by the glee with which Carla reacts when J.D. tells her that Animal is likely raping Angela; and even the fact that Tammy calls Suzie a bitch while pretending to be Greg.

Summer Camp Girls provides an interesting contrast with Hot Rackets, another McCallum film that, the more I think about, the more I think I underrated it before. Summer Camp Girls could have had the satisfying silliness of Hot Rackets, but instead turned out to be a series of loosely connected (though quite well-done) sex scenes. C+

Hey, something new finally!

You shouldn't take the stasis of this blog as an indication that I haven't been watching adult films. I have been, but for some reason, I haven't had the drive to write about them when they're over. Well, here are a few I've seen over the past few months, most recent first:

Little Orphan Sammy (1976)
One thing I can say for the movie is everybody in it gives 100%. It's very much a movie of it's time. As a parody, it feels a lot like Blazing Saddles or Murder By Death. (A more direct comparison would be The Girl from S.E.X., I guess.)

Daddy Sawbucks (Neil Flanagan in a non-sex role) has developed a formula for turning garbage into oil, and Hata Mari (Jennifer Welles) wants it. In order to get an "in" with Sawbucks, she adopts Sammy (Rocky Millstone) from an orphanage. Sammy and Daddy Sawbucks have some sort of connection, but why, if they're so close, Sammy is living in an orphanage is never explained. Millstone plays Sammy like a super patriotic Beaver Cleaver (sincere, without a doubt, but he comes across with more than a slight touch of "serial killer") that says "leapin' lizards" a LOT. Each of the five sex scenes Sammy is involved in spring from his All-American desire to "help." I never realized that eating ladies out was a civic duty, but that's a lesson I took from the movie.

The movie is light and fairly well paced, and the aforementioned commitment of the cast make up for some of its short comings. B-

Lust on the Orient Express (1986)
This had been on my radar since X-Ray's review and I finally got around to watching it. It turned out to be a sterling example of why I need to relax my semi-arbitrary 1985 cut-off.

The story - a potboiler mystery writer (John Leslie), in need of inspiration, sets of on a pan-European trip with his wife (Gina Carrera) aboard the Orient Express and stumbles upon a murder and jewel heist plot - was solid, the cast, acting, and production value were terrific. So much so that were it not for the sex scenes (most of which felt pretty organic, and not tacked on, which is a problem with a lot of adult films that have quasi-mainstream qualities), it easily could have been a movie I watched on USA on a Saturday afternoon in the late '80s. A-

Garage Girls (1980)
I really wanted to like this film - if for no other reason than the leading ladies looked effing amazing in their overalls-and-nothing-else get ups - but after reading GGG's review, figured it was best to temper my expectations*.

While not a terrible film, Garage Girls is a prime example of a "If Only" porn, a movie that could and should have been much better than it was. The premise, four women (Brooke West, Cris Cassidy, Dorothy Lemay, and Lisa DeLeeuw) start an auto shop and are antagonized by chauvinist male mechanics, is simple and solid enough to make a good porno. The problem is that frequently that plot line takes a back seat to scenes, characters, and plot developments whose sole presence seems to be to make the film "zany." Look, zany is fine as long as its fun and not frustrating. Unfortunately, more often than not, Garage Girls was the latter. C (I could have graded it a little lower, but it gets bonus points because, seriously, the actresses are all super hot.)

Dixie Ray, Hollywood Star (1983)
Dixie Ray has a lot going for it: a pretty interesting story (blackmail, crossing and double-crossing involving a fading starlet in 1940s Los Angeles), relative attention to detail (the noir feel was captured quite well through costuming, sets, camera work and editing, but bizarrely, towards the end of the film there's a LONG scene in which an actor can be seen stretching and, seemingly doing calisthenics, in the reflection of a mirror; "breaking the fourth wall" is an understatement), and fantastic cast. What it didn't have going for it, was natural-feeling sex scenes. It's not an exaggeration to say most scenes were: John Leslie walks into a room, questions a suspect in the blackmail investigation, fucks them. I can't remember the last time the "action" in an otherwise solid film bored me so much. C+

People (1978)
Like Odyssey (a film I really need to revisit), People is a series of unrelated vignettes. Unlike Odyssey, the scenes in People have a common (although simple) theme: interpersonal relationships. This being the last review in the post makes People the film I watched longest ago (that's a clumsy way to word it, I know, but you get the drift), so the details are a little fuzzy in my brain. Trust me, the film deserves a much better review than this....

In his review of the film, Jimmy mentions it's a shame that if most people know anything about Gerard Damiano, it's that he directed Deep Throat (an assertion I only partially agree with; while not as solid as Odyssey or People or DMJ, I quite enjoy Throat...), watching this film, it's plain to see Damiano has some serious chops. A

* I just revisited GGG's review to see why I remembered it making me temper my expectations (I didn't re-read it immediately before writing my thoughts because I wanted to make sure my review wasn't influenced). Turns out, her review was overwhelmingly positive, save one brief homophobic slur by De Leeuw. For whatever reason, that must have been what stuck with me. All told, I think her review is an interesting counterpoint to mine.