Pornonomy Reviews: Satisfactions

Satisfactions (1982)

Directed by:
Robert McCallum

Starring:
Cara Lott
Carmel
Chrissie Beauchamp
Honey Wilder
Kay Parker
Laura Lazare
Rhonda Jo Petty
Danny Weirdman
Eric Edwards
Hershel Savage
John Leslie
Jon Martin
R. Bolla
Ron Jeremy

I'd imagine that in the world of film analysis and criticism, there exists a word or phrase for following one character into a scene, and then another character into the next, and so on (the way Linklater did in Slacker). Whatever that term is, Satisfactions is built around it.

While the scenes are tied together formally through the Slacker technique, narratively, the individual scenes follow a pattern: one (or more) characters express some sort of dissatisfaction (tepid sex life, boredom with life in general, dating "boys" instead of "men," etc.), which is then countered through sex with one or more other characters, "curing" the dissatisfaction, at least temporarily.

While none of the scenes stand out as atypically excellent, none of the scenes stand out as atypically poor, either. The individual performances are, pretty much across the board, adequate or better. B

Pornonomy Reviews: All-American Girls

All-American Girls (1982)

Directed by:
Bill Eagle

Starring:
Brandy O'Shea
Copper Penny
Gina Gianetti
Jacqueline Lorians
Jade Leneer
Julienne Nichols
Joanna Storm
K.C. Valentine
Laura Lazare
Starr Wood
Lynx Canon
Alan Adrian
Billy Dee
Carl Lincoln
Charlie Hanover
George White
Jeff Conrad
Starbuck
Rock Steadie
Steve Douglas
Ferris Weal

I ask you, what film is better titled for a review on the Fawth of JOO-ly than All-American Girls? (Okay, that was a rhetorical question...moving along.)

The film is - if not the first, at least an early example of - the tried and true porn formula of a reunion of sorority sisters sharing stories of their erotic exploits. In this case, though, rather than allow things to flow more or less organically (you know, catching up...wine...), the intent is put on front street: Caroline (Gianetti) is hyper-wealthy and flies the rest of her "sisters" to England for her birthday. The only gift she asks is for each of the girls to share the "nastiest" thing they've done since graduation.

None of the tales are particularly noteworthy - with the possible exception of Caroline's, which was a tryst with a professor, technically occurring before graduation, thus breaking her own "post-graduation rule" - but they were all well enough considered and presented: Danielle (Nichols) has a literal roll in the hay with two Frenchmen (Lincoln and Hanover) while studying abroad; Maria (O'Shea), as a "kept woman," is the wager in a high stakes roulette game; Rebecca and Shannon (Penny and Valentine) seduce a violinist's apprentice (White) at a high class function. The only woman without a story to tell is Denna (Lorians) who (we're assured is not a virgin) just doesn't have an experience on par with her sorority sisters. That is, until she has sex with Caroline's weirdo musician brother Charles (Douglas), sporting a pencil mustache somehow creepier than John Waters's.

There are two things definitely worth noting about the film. The first, technically, was the rather clever use of establishing shots in and around San Francisco to give the feeling of foreign locales. The second, narrative in nature, is the odd disconnect between the overall tone of the film - sorority sisters gettin' sexxxy - and the final scene, between Denna and Charles. Their initial meeting - him strumming out some bullshitty singer/songwriter tune on an acoustic guitar, her telling him she was a music major (harp and piano!) at Berkley - sort of sets the tone for the end, but the viewer is never really given and indication that they have any other interactions. So when he stumbles upon her crying because she hasn't been railed by two French guys or offered up on a felt table in Vegas, and then they end up screwing - scored by super romantic music - and he's like, "I love you and want you to stay with me forever," it seems less "how romantic!" and more, "THAT DUDE WILL TAXIDERMY YOU TOMORROW!" It ends up feeling like a filmmaker decided to try to incorporate a nice, romantic undertone to an otherwise fairly juvenile idea (while I'll wager that so-called "girl talk" is as or more "blue" than the average man assumes, the idea that a woman would decide that all she wants for her birthday is her friends' dirty stories is pretty absurd), and ended up making a huge miscalculation.

That rant aside, overall the production values were really solid, the performances above average (with a shout out to Billy Dee, who impresses me more with each film I see him in), and the film moved along pretty well. On a side note, Starr Wood had this sort of Carrie Brownstein thing going on - which was awesome - and Joanna Storm looked unnervingly like Loni Sanders (I think it was the darker hair). B

Pornonomy Reviews: 1001 Erotic Nights

1001 Erotic Nights (1982)

Directed by:
Edwin Durrell

Starring:
Annette Haven
Heather Fields
Jade Wong
Laura Lazare
Lisa De Leeuw
Lysa Thatcher
Mai Lin
Nicole Black
Tigr
Phaery I. Burd
Hershel Savage
Joey Silvera
John Leslie
Jon Martin
Paul Thomas

Anyone with a passing familiarity with the Middle Eastern/South Asian folktales-within-folktales "One Thousand and One Nights" will have a pretty good idea how this film is constructed. There are some artistic licenses taken, so here's a brief overview:

After discovering that he's being cuckolded by his wife (DeLeeuw) and his trusted advisors (Savage and Silvera), Sultan Chaka Khan* (Leslie) sours on women and, to avoid being duped again, decides to pick a woman from his harem at random to bed down with, having her strangled in the morning. Eventually, he ends up picking Scheherazade (Haven), who, in an effort to not get a morning strangling, spins a series of sexy stories, keeping the Sultan on the edge of his seat.

The idea of using "One Thousand and One Nights" as the framework for a porn is really smart. The commitment to the theme and the production values are top flight. Oddly, the film eschews using well-known stories (Aladdin, Ali Baba) for vignettes that are either "deep cuts" or tales created for the flick. Unfortunately, that's the (relatively minor) shortcoming of the film; while everything around the sex is really solid, the hardcore scenes are kind of underwhelming.

By and large, 1001 Erotic Nights' strengths outweigh the sorta boring sex scenes, and - as opposed to 69 Park Avenue - is the type of film that makes it seem like a review every two and a half days is an achievable goal after all. B

* One oddity is that there are a few touches ("You are here" on the map at the beginning, the Sultan's name, Paul Thomas's "Oh, shit!"s...) that seem like the film may have been intended as a tongue-in-cheek Mel Brooks-like parody. Instead, though, everything is played pretty straight.

Pornonomy Reviews: Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here

Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here (1976)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Annette Haven
Felecia Sanda
Joan Devlon
Veronica Taylor
John Holmes
Tyler Reynolds

The Wadd film following Tropic of Passion (although apparently released after Liquid Lips, which was shot after TTJWIH), Tell Them is light years better, technically. It opens with a shot of a man (later revealed to be Wadd's buddy, a cop named Sam Kelly - Damon Christian, non-sex) getting an oyster ceviche from a Mexican street vendor. The scene could have been edited down by half, but it was still an interesting open and was the spiritual kin of Harry Callahan getting his hot dog or Frank Bullitt grocery shopping. Kelly puts in a call to Wadd hoping to get his help down ol' Mexico way in finding and rescuing his (Kelly's) junkie ex-wife, Doreen.

Following a typical "baby, please don't go" seen between Wadd and his girl (Annette Haven), Wadd heads down to Mexico to help Kelly. Along the way, with the help of the local police captain (Carlos Tobalina), the track the drug operation up the ladder from a gangster named Ringo to American kingpin Travis Elliot (Reynolds), who has Doreen under his control.

The film has an authentically gritty feel and puts the location shooting to much better use than Tropic's Hawaii locales. The story is more involved that Tropic (though considerably less intricate/muddled than Blonde Fire). The part of the film that really lingers, though, is the unavoidably ironic final scene: a lonesome on-the-beach number with a voiceover bemoaning people's dependence on hard drugs narrated by user and abuser Holmes. Possibly just hindsight and projection, but it's hard to shake the feeling that the script was tailored as an indirect plea from Chinn to Holmes....

The final final shot, post credits, is a "But Johnny Wadd will return in..." that is a nice nod to the Bond series. You know, as a point of interest. B

Pornonomy Reviews: Talk Dirty To Me

Talk Dirty To Me (1979)

Directed by:
Anthony Spinelli

Starring:
Cris Cassidy
Jesie St. James
Juliet Anderson
Sharon Kane
Aaron Stuart
John Leslie
Richard Pacheco

I've seen about two thirds of Nothing To Hide spread out over four parts. The reason I could never quite get through it is while "you got chocolate in my peanut butter!" is a good thing, "you got Of Mice and Men in my porno!" decidedly is not.

I found out later that NTH is a sequel to Talk Dirty To Me, which until today, I hadn't seen. I was surprised, though, because I had seen Talk Dirty To Me 3 (New) - so, not the Traci Lords version, for obvious reasons. Talk Dirty To Me 3 was about a mermaid, so I assumed that the first and second film would have similarly whimsical tones, light years from the "reality" of Nothing To Hide.

Within fifteen seconds of the start of Talk Dirty To Me, it was apparent that my assumption was incorrect. As in Nothing To Hide, Lenny (Pacheco) is ladies man Jack's (Leslie) slow best friend. (So Lenny is Lennie to Jack's George.) Now, I'm going to go on record that I think the developmentally disabled finding emotional and physical love is great. And I don't have a problem with it in pornography. In theory. The thing is, such a performance would require a nuance that, for the most part, is beyond the acting skills of most X actors. Pacheco plays Lenny with a sort of manic simpleton-ness that would be like filling Nick Kroll's "advanced aging disease-having six year old" from Children's Hospital full of Mello Yello: not bad if it's an over the top comedy, I guess, but cringe-inducing when played straight. Nothing To Hide didn't sit well because the film primarily revolved around Lenny. Mercifully, with the exception of the first ten or fifteen (non-hardcore) minutes, Lenny's pretty well relegated to the background.

Instead, the story focuses on Jack's attempt to bed "Marlene" (St. James), a married woman whose husband (Stuart) is away on business. While we were shown that she and her husband have sex, it's also demonstrated that his unwillingness to talk dirty leaves her unsatisfied. Fortuitously, talking dirty is sort of Jack's forte, evidenced early on by his ability to seduce a doctor (Cassidy) by saying how much he'd like to suck her nipples (an approach with a pretty dubious real-life efficacy...).

After crafting a solid game to get close to Marlene using their shared love for classic cinema and "happening" upon her house while looking for work, Jack has trysts with a met-his-match sexually aggressive realtor (Anderson) and a 'round-the-way girl, Rose (Kane). Rose tells her friend Jill (LeMay, in a surprisingly non-sex role considering she and Kane were given a stereotypically hilarious girl-girl set up when Pacheco and Leslie left the "party" to get beer...) that she's into Jack because he's such a freak. Jack really ratchets up the freakiness by taking Rose into a sleeping Marlene's bedroom, taking her from behind on the floor, just feet from the bed. I typically shy away from the sort of "red hot fucking" prose that crops up in most reviews, but I'm compelled to point out that - owing no small part to Kane and Leslie's talents and chemistry - the scene is some red hot fucking.

Finally, Jack accomplishes his mission, bedding Marlene. The scene is cut against Rose instructing Lenny in the art of physical love. The only scene featuring Lenny, it actually sheds an interesting light on the relationship between Jack and Lenny. Answering Rose, Lenny says that Jack will set him up with women (after he's had them), but it doesn't go super well, because he does his best to emulate the way Jack is with women. Of course, Jack has a certain "I don't know quois" that allows him to be successful with his approach. Lenny does not.

Ending after these scenes, it's worth noting that the film doesn't include any repercussions for Marlene's infidelity: her husband doesn't bust in, she doesn't profess her love for Jack, only to be scorned, her house doesn't explode.... Now, it's possible that pornography doesn't tend to punish women's sexuality the way mainstream films often do (I haven't really paid that much attention, to be honest), but it's something that struck me, anyway.

After Talk Dirty To Me, I'm inclined to finally finish Nothing To Hide, but it's gonna be pretty tough to try to watch it through fresh eyes. Additionally, I'll have to check out Talk Dirty To Me 2, in order to see to what extent the film seems like a series reboot. Anyway, the first installment is well constructed, well paced, and well acted (look, I'll concede that Pacheco does the best he probably could have). B

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: Baby Cakes

Baby Cakes (1982)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Jamie Leigh
Misty Regan
Rhonda Jo Petty
Victoria Slick
Billy Dee
Blair Harris
Mike Horner
R.J. Reynolds
Randy West

If there's something I'm (slowly) learning, it's that it's not a very good idea to start mentally writing these reviews while watching the films. I'd worked out a food analogy to describe Baby Cakes: while it may be interesting and satisfying to have a six course, avante garde meal prepared by a molecular gastronomist, sometimes you just want a cheeseburger and fries. I was going to say that Baby Cakes was like the latter - nothing Earth-shattering, not a reinvention of the wheel (to mix metaphors), but a solid example of an American classic. And while the description fits much of the film, in order to complete the analogy, it'd need to be altered to say that while eating the burger, much of it was delicious, but then with the last few bites you realize someone had put tartar sauce on the bun. It's not terrible, just kind of weird.

There's a tried and true convention of porn pairing sexually experienced characters with sweet, simple sexual naifs and having at least one of the plot points being the former trying to get the latter to loosen up. In Baby Cakes, the "party girls" are Rhonda and Denise (well-played by Rhonda Jo Petty and Victoria Slick) and the naif is Suzy (Jamie Leigh), an avid cyclist. The film opens with the three of them returning home, presumably with a night out on the town, with two guys. Rhonda and Denise head upstairs while Rhonda goes to the garage. The scene is cut between the two couples in the bedroom (the same bed, in fact), and Rhonda working on her bicycle; the juxtaposition of what the friends "get off" on, is fairly obvious.

The next morning, Suzy convinces the pair to ride to Los Angeles so Suzy can enter the prestigious Grand Prix (which would be like a runner convincing her friends to run 500 miles to Boston to enter the Marathon...).

Along the way, the three friends meet three surfers at a motel: shy Charlie (Randy West), and fun-loving dudes Steve and Jimmy (Billy Dee and Blair Harris)...whaddayaknow, a mirror-image group!

Suzy and Charlie take a walk on the beach while the other four make use of the guys' room (which also makes you wonder if Rhonda and Denise can only have sex if they're in the same room). The girls set out on their bikes while guys go to surf, all six having made plans to meet up further down the road later that night.

When the ladies stop at a gas station, they're harassed by a couple of goons in an RV (Mike Horner and some other doofus). It's here that the burger gets its tartar sauce.

After the two sets of friends meet up at the beach, in order to get Suzy past her hang ups regarding Charlie, Rhonda gives her two sips of wine and then goes down on her. Romance!

Then the next morning, through some machination that was either cut from the film or just wilfully not explained, Rhonda and Denise are captured by the RVing goobers.

Of course, Charlie et al. act the White Knight(s) and come to the rescue, and the ne'er-do-wells get their comeuppance. Now, a proper resolution would be the group heading on to LA for Suzy to enter (and then win) the Grand Prix. And then there'd be a celebratory orgy (this is porn, after all). Instead, the movie just ends.

If the last half hour had lived up to the first fifty minutes, Baby Cakes would be worth an A- in my opinion. Unfortunately, shortcomings from the last 37.5% of the movie - the lack of feeling when Charlie and Suzy get together, the lack of dramatic tension during the abduction (do in part to Mike Horner's inability to play "menacing"; he seems like he's too nice a guy to play a slimeball convincingly), the lack of plot resolution - detract from the stuff that was working in the first 62.5% - the genuinely likable characters and dialogue (especially the presumably ad-libbed scene between Dee and Harris, before they meet the girls; in fact, the more I see Billy Dee, the more impressed I am with his natural acting ability), and the very simple but formally strong way in which the sex scenes were shot. Still, the pros ultimately out-weigh the cons. B

Pornonomy Reviews: Too Naughty to Say No

Too Naughty to Say No (1984)

Directed by
Suze Randall (as Victor Nye)

Starring
Angel
Bunny Bleu
Cody Nicole
Ginger Lynn
Heather Thomas
Lisa De Leeuw
Lois Ayres
Stevie Taylor
Craig Roberts
Edward Longly
Eric Edwards
Francois
Harry Reems
Jamie Gillis
Klaus Mueller
Michael Morrison
Nick Niter
Paul Baressi
Rick Cassidy
Rufus Jefferson

Betty (Angel) and Catherine (Ginger Lynn) are school girls at a convent, studying the Bible for an exam in the garden. After Catherine is ushered off to confession by Sister Rose (Lisa de Leeuw), Betty nods off while pondering the meaning of "begat" and finds herself in a series of bizarre and compromising scenarios.

The film claims to be based on characters by the Marquis de Sade, but in essence Too Naughty to Say No is Alice in Wonderland, with Lynn's character acting as the White Rabbit. While not handled with the same craft as Neon Nights, TNtSN is just about as surreal (though Neon Nights still gets the "holy shit" nod because this film is obviously a dream). As such, I think the specifics of the scenes are better left undescribed. Well, except for the last scene, and only because it actually lends itself to an interesting discussion of the straight/gay (panic) divide of a lot of hetero pornography.

After Betty is discovered by a Helpful Motorist (Cody Nicole) asleep on a pile of trash bags (yes, you read that correctly), she's reluctantly seduced by the Helpful Motorist in the Helpful Motorists car. To Betty's shock, men appear at each window of the car to watch the women. The Motorist explains that the men are her friends, and that Betty shouldn't mind them. Predictably, the anonymous men all begin masturbating. While the scene primarily focuses on the women, there are frequent shots of the men, culminating in each man ejaculating on a window, and then slowly ducking out of sight - exactly opposite the way they appeared - leaving only their "releases" as evidence of their former presence.

The fixation on male orgasm in pornography is frequently (and conveniently) explained away by saying that it's a way for the male viewer to position himself in the "action," but it's also possible that such focus can be attributed to the "flexibility" of human sexual identity (as posited by the Kinsey curve or by - of all unlikely sources - Blue Collar Comedy comedian Ron White's "We're all gay, buddy. It's just to what degree are you gay," bit).

Anyway, the extent to which you'll enjoy the film is largely dependent upon your tolerance of wailing guitar music, plentiful '80s hair dos, and ridiculous costuming. Overall, I felt the only real knocks was Angel's slight lack of charisma. Still, on the whole, a pretty interesting and enjoyable experience. B

Quickie Reviews: Three Comedies and a Drama

Girl from S.E.X. (1982)
In the vein of Our Man Flynt, The Girl from S.E.X. is a secret agent parody. S.E.X. Agent 38DD (Lisa DeLeeuw) must infiltrate A.S.S. (I forget what the acronyms stand for) to stop a nefarious plan. There were some pretty clever/dumb jokes that actually made me laugh out loud, which will always get bonus points. (The character named "Xavier Hollandaise" was a particularly nice touch, if not a little dated.) If there was one shortcoming, it was the way the sex scenes were edited. There'd be all the expected set up dialog, but when it came to it, scenes would generally cut directly to the actors naked and at it, which was a little jarring and didn't help the flow of the film. Still, one of the better comedic porns I've seen in awhile: B+

Blonde's Have More Fun (1979)
A con man sets up a health food store in San Francisco, selling an elixir concocted by an associate ("Brains", a man fried by drugs and/or feral), pitched as a cure-all that turns out to be the World's Greatest Aphrodisiac. Needless to say, the elixir sets the city's loins aflame and leads to all manners of sexual shenanigans including an orgy in the store and, in my opinion the film's highlight, a backroom tryst between Hershel Savage and Diana Holt. Stylistically at odds with the rest of the film, the scene was really, really well directed and edited. The huckster (Max Devo, perhaps? I'd have to revisit the end credits to be sure....) does a very good job as the snake oil salesman-type, although as many actors in porn or B-movie comedic roles requiring rapid speaking, he has a tendency to get a bit tedious in his monologue (as much a fault of the director and writer as the actor). All told, a pretty fun picture: B+

Nurses of the 407 (1982)
While I should have learned my lesson of raised expectations after Tigresses, I definitely have after Nurses of the 407. The promising trailer, which I'd seen on a few other dvds, the solid cast, and the concept (M*A*S*H) seemed like it'd make a solid picture. Unfortunately, there wasn't a story, the characters were uninteresting, the jokes all fell flat, and the normally comedy-dependable cast (Hershel Savage, Jessie St. James, Paul Thomas, and Joey Silvera, particularly) underperformed. I'm tempted to grade it lower, but the production values were actually pretty good, so while I'm unlikely to recommend, and certainly won't watch it again, I'll give it: C-

Raw Talent (1984)
Following struggling actor Eddie Czeropski (Jerry Butler) from stage auditions, to a to-make-the-rent porn career, to mainstream success, lost after his X past was discovered, Raw Talent is held by many (or at the very least, Jerry Butler, who used the title for his industry exposing autobiography) as one of the great adult films of all time. True, the acting, writing, directing, and look of the film are all quite good, but a huge issue, in my opinion, is the relative lack of drama. Eddie always seems to roll with the punches: you don't really get the sense that he's got an acting fire in his belly, you don't feel an ecstatic high after he gets work on a soap opera, or a crushing low after he's betrayed and his porn career ruins his burgeoning "straight" career. From a technical standpoint, I'm going to go ahead and assume the release was abridged, because three abrupt jumps - all violent in nature (a mugging, a scene between Lisa DeLeeuw and Butler in a bathroom, and a fight near the end) - have to be cuts from the original. I enjoyed Raw Talent for what it was, but can't help thinking how a few changes could have made it a ton better. B