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:

Center Spread Girls (1982)

"There's enough heat in this room to make eunuchs come and nuns dance naked in the rectory!"

When Morality Over Madness ("M.O.M. Wants What's Good For You") threatens Panther magazine publisher Sue Forbes (Georgina Spelvin) with blackmail, a group of professionally successful former centerfolds come to her aid. Led by attorney Jane Mohr (Veronica Hart) the ladies - including actor Beverly Martine (Annette Haven), reporter Ellie Parker (Desiree Cousteau), painter Vee Beachem (Lisa De Leeuw), and photographer Anne (Tara Aire) - are assigned (alone or in pairs) an M.O.M. member whose mind is to be changed regarding the so-called pornographic nature of the magazine. The targets are judge Roy Hammer (R. Bolla), "reformed" porn star Lyndon Loveless (Eric Edwards), Reverend W.W. Williams (Paul Thomas), rich a-hole Thurman Parrish (Frank Hollowell) [or, well, maybe his wife Louella? (Jesie St. James); more on that later], and newly-elected governor businessman Hamilton "Ham" Osmond (Michael Morrison).

Robert McCallum's Center Spread Girls has a killer cast who looked and acted great. Not only do the expected actors turn in quality performances (Spelvin, Bolla, Hart, Haven, etc.), but Tara Aire reminded me what an underrated gem she was and Desiree Cousteau was surprisingly solid in one of the few (only?) roles I can recall where she wasn't an airhead. The first few sex scenes (Lisa De Leeuw/Mike Horner; Tara Aire/Jon Martin) were pedestrian at best, but most of the rest were good to very good. Based on natural chemistry, the best may have been when Beverly cures Lyndon of his years-long impotence and when Jane and Judge Hammer finally confront their conflicting feelings and get down to doin' the hibbidy dibbidy.

Annette Haven and Eric Edwards were so good together, I was shocked to find they'd only appeared in four films together: Love You, Center Spread Girls, Bodies in Heat, and Sheer Haven. I figured they may have at least had some loops together, but that doesn't seem to be the case either. Weird. Veronica Hart and R. Bolla, on the other hand, appeared in ten films together including three more McCallum features: the all-timer Amanda by Night, Indecent Exposure, and Society Affairs.

There were a few narrative missteps:

A. The Carson sisters (Jacqueline Brooks - the film's sole subpar actor - and Lily Rodgers) who were assigned Ham spy him in a "governor/...I don't know, sexy Uncle Sam?" roleplay:

...and also pose as representatives of a senator who wants Ham to know he has "national political potential" as a ruse to get him in a light bondage scenario that's documented (via notes, not photos), by the secretary (then dressed as a biker chick slash necromancer).

One of the two would have sufficed for the blackmail...er..."persuasion" plot, but including both gives any Michael Morrison devotees out there an extra helping. Morrison is truly an inspiration to chubby, averagely endowed men everywhere and was low-key one of the era's most impressive ejaculators.

2. During a progress meeting with the crew, Jane mentions she's hired a messenger service to deliver the M.O.M. members the evidence the ladies have accrued, but when the time comes, it's Beverly in disguise who delivers the messages, and even then as a ruse to swap out videotapes that got mixed up.

Now that I think about it, the only plausible explanation for how Beverly got the uniform is that she intercepted the actual messenger and swapped clothes (though, face it, that's a bellhop uniform). I'm going to assume that the scene was either left on the cutting room floor or was never shot due to time constraints.

D. The Parrishes' role in M.O.M. could have been better explained. At the outset, I assumed conservative, chauvinist Thurman was the member, but after Vee and Anne help Luella discover she's a lesbian, Thurman ties her up and says he'll take her place at the press conference.

Despite those minor quibbles Center Spread Girls is a resounding success. The plot is light, the pacing is brisk (recently, I've gotten leery of adult films longer than 80 minutes, but even at nearly 90 this one is well edited and never bogs down), and the climactic press conference scene hits all the notes of the smug antagonists being undone by the plucky underdogs, akin to, like, Animal House or a Police Academy movie.

I do wish that the final scene, where publisher Sue gets her "pound of flesh" apology from M.O.M. had actually been the scorcher four-way that was hinted at.

The actors (Spelvin, Edwards, PT, and Morrison) were certainly capable. Instead, the scene was cut to in media res with Lyndon already fucked into oblivion and nowhere to be seen. The brief action is fine, just a bit anticlimactic.

Stop! Rimmer time!

Can you put six top female porno stars in a film, an equal number of male actors, and give everyone time to act in an integrated story line as well as copulate? It ain't easy! But Lime [producer Harold] Lime and McCallum have done it.

The denoument is silly, and of course the plot is too - but it all hangs together. Most women will laugh. If it's one of the first tapes you buy or rent, it will introduce you to quite a few of the top stars, whom you will see again and again.

Agreed! Though it's always hilarious to me when Rimmer talks about what "most women" may do or think. It's pretty apparent that I enjoyed the hell out of this film, so I'm going to go buck wild and give Center Spread Girls a CC10!

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° The Lyndon Loveless/Linda Lovelace angle wasn't overdone (the name/former porn star as morality crusader and Loveless refering to his "ordeal" was about the extent of it) and certainly didn't seem vindictive (Loveless was a sympathetic character). Still not a great look winking and nodding at an (alleged, sure, but probable) abuse survivor, especially through today's "believe women" lens.

° The metatextual moments in the Haven/Edwards scene were great. Beverly wants to watch one of Loveless's movies while they screw (the scene is the Edwards/Brooke Wet, Arcadia Lake scene from Amanda by Night). It's a neat touch that's smarter than recycling a loop for a feature. It reminded me of how Scrubs used Neil Flynn's minor role in The Fugitive as part of the backstory of Janitor.

Then, while Beverly's leaving and thinking about Loveless's assertion that she could be a "porno star", she says, "No, I couldn't carry it off," then looks directly to camera and adds, "Who'd ever believe it?"

Good luck finding any mention of Haven from then to now that doesn't mention her "traditional" Hollywood beauty or her classy demeanor.

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800 Fantasy Lane (1979)

"I've got one quick question for Svet.... Where the hell do you get these girls??? Svetlana's films are full to the proverbial brim with tasty morsels." That’s from the August 1984 Cinema Blue review of Surrender in Paradise. By the time Surrender was released Svetlana’s filmography as a director (or co-director) had hit double digits, but Cinema Blue could have asked the same question of Svetlana’s first film, 800 Fantasy Lane. Chris Anderson, Nancy Suiter, Desiree Cousteau, Lisa De Leeuw (in her first feature film), Aubrey Nichols, Hillary Summers, Serena, and hell, even [robot voice] UNKNOWN FEMAILE 20-A upon whom the opening credits are painted, are quite the cast of ladies.

And all things considered, 800 Fantasy Lane is quite a directorial debut. The film looks great, no doubt due to Robert McCallum’s keen eye as cinematographer. You’d be hard pressed to name too many films that made better use of “golden hour” light.

The story, such as it is, is basically abandoned just over a third of the way into the film, which is too bad, because there was plenty of room for it to develop. Gas station attendants Vic and John (Jamie Gillis and Bud Wise) are looking to vacation on the cheap when John sees a newspaper story about the real estate boom in Los Angeles. Aspiring actresses are turning to real estate, wining and dining prospective buyers. So Vic, posing as an oil baron, calls up an agency and is offered access to a cliffside retreat and a bevy of beauties. John travels along as Vic’s secretary. While the movie sticks to the story, it does a pretty good job of scene setting, highlighted by a cockblock (Vic kicking John out of a potential set up with Olivia and Samantha - Suiter and Nichols - to ostensibly ready a lease agreement) and then a reverse cockblock (John interrupting Vic’s threeway with the ladies with a phony emergency telegram from the SEC).

But then there’s a far too long S&M scene (14 minutes that could have been 6, tops, if it had to be in there at all) that saps any sort of narrative momentum. I feel about BDSM scenes the way I do about slam poetry and improv comedy: expertly done, they can be transcendent; anything less is fucking intolerable. The problem with this scene is the dynamics, both between Karen (Chris Anderson; an unnatural dominant) and Hillary Summers (whose character, as far as I can tell, was unnamed; an unnatural submissive) and the literal volume (they’re both just yelling at each other the whole time). I was reminded of Aaron Stuart’s disastrous performance in Small Town Girls. In that review, I said, “People that aren’t adept at improvisation tend to say the same few things over and over. And over. And over. (I was reminded of Veri Knotty’s unsuccessful turn as a domme in Tramp, which I watched recently in memory of Samantha Fox, RIP. Maybe the combination of improv and “menacing” is particularly difficult.)” Welp, you can add this scene to the list.

Part of what made the scene feel so disjointed was that the existence of the dungeon was never explored or explained. Like, if it turned out that the real estate office was also some sort of sex cult, sure. I guess. But before and after the scene, Karen and the ladies just seemed like very sexually eager realtors.

After that, there’s a brief concession to the plot with an actual real estate client (Alan Colberg, who appeared in a couple films and directed a couple more, including the pretty great All Night Long) telling Karen he didn’t think Vic and John were on the level and that he’d check them out. And it’s then on to a series of well-shot but narratively useless scenes including a three on one topless tennis scene (including slow motion titty bouncing that, frankly, looks way more painful than sexy, culminating in - I think - a fake lactation squirt)...

...a five on one bubble bath scene...

...and a PCP fueled-freakout hallucination sequence...

...with John sporting an enormous papier-mâché dick fountain and Vic as a ringleader with bodypainted animal ladies.

I gotta hand it to Svetlana, the film didn’t lack ambition.

Though I don't think that Svetlana ever hurt for ambition. At the very least, her purported no-nonsense approach to business and film rubbed some people the wrong way. Jon Martin said she “was pretty much an evil woman” and Richard Pachecco said working with her was “the worst experience [he] ever had in the business.” Lisa de Leeuw, in conversation with Pachecco, is slightly more charitable, saying, that she wouldn’t refuse to work with Svetlana again even though the working conditions she experienced (working 20 hour days, “fed cold hot dogs and cold coffee”) hadn’t improved between her 800 Fantasy Lane and Ultra Flesh (her second Svetlana-directed feature). Add the brutal set conditions to the Lisa recalling that she had pink eye (exacerbated by Gillis hitting her eye during a facial) and having her nose broken (by an errant whip handle wielded by Gillis) during the body paint circus scene, and it’s a wonder Lisa De Leeuw didn’t quit adult films outright!

There are story and technical kernels in 800 Fantasy Lane that end up being developed in some of Svetlana’s later films. Broadly speaking, the surrealism in the hallucination scene was at the forefront of F and Ultra Flesh. All-over bodypaint showed up in F, as well. The implied secret S&M club/cult was explicit in Bad Girls. And the idea of two regular guys masquerading to get away and get laid was central to (and I’d argue better realized by Turk Lyon and Randy West in) Sexboat.

Robert Rimmer's take:

...Svetlana went fantasy mad and offers some of the funkiest sex scenes you've ever watched.... When she made this one, Svetlana ws catering to the kind of male fantasies that most women won't appreciate. Pretty far out...and wins awards in the things-you've-never-seen-before department.

Presumably his Collector's Choice rating is for the audacity of the scenes Svetlana included (especially if the version he screened included Desiree Cousteau fisting Serena). Excepting the fisting scene, nothing in 800 Fantasy Lane would seem all that "funky" in a non-kink adult film 10 or 20 years ago, but I can see how they'd be pretty eye-opening for 1979 (and even 1986, when Rimmer published his updated guide). As for what he whiffed on in his review, he says that Victor and John "own a filling station," that they're "[r]eading an advertisement of Hollywood Star Realty," and that they have a "pot-induced fantasy" whereas they're definitely only gas station employees, they're definitely reading a newspaper article, and they're definitely "dusted." Much like Lady Dynamite, 800 Fantasy Lane was awfully close to earning a CC50 (or even CC25), but for its shortcomings, it rates a CC100.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° There were some really top shelf Gillis faces.

° Nancy Suiter is in the same "face family" as Taylor Swift and Hayley Mills.

° There have long been rumors that Lisa De Leeuw, reported to have died from complications from AIDS actually retired from the industry to raise a family. I'd always took those rumors as unsubstantiated wishful thinking, but after the recent Kathy Harcourt story at The Rialto Report and hearing her late '80s conversation with Richard Pachecco, I'm going to choose to believe that she is alive and well out there.

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Next up (though probably not to be posted quite as quickly as this one):

Hey, speaking of Robert McCallum....

Lady Dynamite (1984)

On paper, Lady Dynamite has a solid premise: a woman finds out her husband has been stepping out and decides she’s going to set herself free, sexually. In fact, it’s so solid it has to have been used countless times in books, film, and television, though I’m having a hard time coming up with an example. Chloe is the closest I can think of now, but it’s not quite the same. Anyway, solid premise is my point.

The execution is pretty weak sauce, though.

After a morning tryst with her husband, Valerie (Colleen Brennan), goes to her doctor (played by director Carlos Tobalina) for a physical. There, she finds out she has “a mild strain of gonorrhea”. Since she’s been “married and faithful to the same man for ten years”, the only explanation is that Ken (Shone Taylor) has been cheating. So, she decides she’s “going free” and that “every man who wants [her] can have [her]”.

With her newfound sexual freedom, she makes it with some rich guy named Phil (Blair Harris) who jets back to San Francisco from business in New York as soon as she calls, and attends a “wild” party at her friend Vicky’s (Laura Lazare, who always looks like her breath would smell like Camel Lights and Original Trident) which is supposed to be “just for the girls” but turns coed by some guys (Nick Niter, Rocky Balboa, and two dweebs) that Vicky invites.

Sometime (Hours? Days? Weeks? There's no sense of time in this film.) after the party, back at home, Ken tells her he’s a changed man and is done running around. Valerie only wants to know if he’ll “fuck [her] like [he does] the other women” because “some guys fuck the whores and the other women in their lives better than they fuck their wives”. Frankly, regardless of how good husbands give it to other women, having sex with Ken is a bad idea considering after Dr. Tobalina tells Valerie to send Ken in for his own treatment, she’s like, “Nah, he can keep the clap,” so she’s basically setting herself up for gonorrhea, round two. Unless she had a change of heart or the doctor blatantly ignored doctor/patient confidentiality and called Ken himself. Which is possible if not probable considering he seemed pretty Dr. Nick-ish, as evidenced by giving Valerie her penicillin shot before telling her what it was or what it was for.

Anyway, Ken - with or without gonorrhea - has sex with Valerie presumably in his non-marital style and then tells her he’s pleased that they’re back together and everything’s great. But Valerie gives him a literal “Sorry, Charlie.” And roll credits.

When I posted that Lady Dynamite was my next review, Jimmy from Golden Sin Palace commented “Carlos next... poor you. At least this one isn't too bad for him.” He laid out his opinion of Tobalina pretty succinctly in his review of Carnal Olympics: “...[M]ost of his films are boring and look more like something created in an assembly line than a film…”.

Reviewing Tobalina's oeuvre, I realized the majority that I’ve seen had an undeniable technical competence, but a detached, emotionless, antiseptic quality. That’s the way I feel about a lot of Brian De Palma films. De Palma, of course, is greatly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock famously made cameos in most of his films. Tobalina made cameos in nearly half of his films. Squint a little and it’s just like the daisy chain at Vicky’s party!

Let’s see what Robert Rimmer had to say:

The reasons for the CC rating are Colleen Brennan and the caring sexmaking, for the most part, in which she gets involved. Colleen is a very attractive redhead, and Troy/Carlos proves that he can make loving sexvids, too, when he has the right actress.

Colleen Brennan does look great, it’s true. Not so sure about the “caring sexmaking” and “loving sexvids”. Sure, none of the scenes had any rough stuff. And theoretically, the Brennan/Harris scene is “caring” in that Phil has unrequited feelings for Valerie, and though they won’t be together, he’s content to at least get to see her regularly. But categorizing Lady Dynamite as a “loving sexvid” is a stretch.

As for outright errors, Rimmer writes, “Colleen, who in this film has been married 14 years…” when she says no fewer than five times that she’s been married for ten years. Not too egregious, at least.

Carlos Tobalina certainly had the opportunity to put together a compelling story of a wronged woman reclaiming her sexuality, but Lady Dynamite wasn’t that. Had it been better constructed with a few more sex scenes exploring Valerie's expanding world (cutting the few in the film by - at least - a few minutes apiece), it could have been a CC50 or better. Instead, it's a CC100.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
° Nick Niter had some damn fancy footwork.


See this in all it's glory here.

° The soundtrack slapped. The main theme (admittedly, a little overused by the end of the film) had more than a little “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” to it and after Nick Niter et. al. show up to the party there’s this sorta Egyptian Lover/Devo hybrid electro call and response track that goes “Where’s the beef?”/”The beef is here!” (or vice versa, though question first makes more sense). Good work, Shamus!

° Speaking of “Where’s the beef?” IAFD and IMDB have Lady Dynamite listed as a 1983 film, but the credits have a 1984 copyright....

....which makes sense because the Wendy’s campaign was released in ‘84 and it’s highly unlikely that it was a saying before the Wendy’s commercials. Still makes you wonder if Shamus was inspired by Coyote McCloud’s song or the other way around?



° Perhaps the real stars of the film were the interiors of Phil’s boat:

And Vicky’s living room:

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Next in line:

Oh man, this'll be an interesting one to discuss! Hopefully it won't take me six weeks to get around to.

Cry for Cindy (1976)

Jesus, this was a wild ride.

Anthony Spinelli’s Cry for Cindy is like an episode of The Deuce crossed with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and directed by a somewhat-restrained David Lynch. That sounds like an incredible film, actually, but my time with Cry for Cindy was...complicated. 

In a nutshell, the plot is that Anna (Amber Hunt), a hairdresser, is concerned her medical student boyfriend, Dennis (Spender Travis), will drop out of school. Clients Yvonne and Nora (Maryanne Fisher and Mitzi Fraser, one-time wonders), both sex workers*, convince Anna to become “Cindy” and start turning tricks for big money. Cindy’s an instant success but is deeply conflicted when she finds herself drawn into her new life as Cindy - though also trapped by her pimp Ben (Jack Wright) -  and away from her old life as Anna and with Dennis.

The fairly rote story is made more interesting by the way it’s told. At the beginning, Cindy’s already disillusioned with her life and ends Act I by leaping from her apartment window to her death. Then, how she got to that point is revealed through memories of the few people attending her funeral.

I spent the first two thirds of the movie waffling between being ambivalent about it and sort of disliking it, in no small part because the hardcore scenes were almost aggressively un-erotic. I could be generous and suppose that they were filmed and edited as dispassionate and clinical to underscore the fact that they were simply business transactions, with no pleasure or emotion. But that directly contradicts Cindy’s tearful admission to Yvonne that she “loves every minute of what [she’s] doing.”

My opinion of the movie improved dramatically in the final third, highlighted by a non-sex scene with Cindy and a regular client, Sir Godfrey (Peter Whigham). After she’s given a glass of sherry and paid her fee, she proceeds to explain that on the way to meet him, she was attacked by “six motorcycle freaks” with Godfrey asking for details and Cindy “yes and-ing” through the entire tale. (Well, technically, she did say “no” when asked if the “freak” that forced her to blow him came in her mouth, but it still counts as a yes-and since “No, all over my face and my neck,” certainly heightened the game.)

The film finished strongly enough that I went from thinking of it as, like, a CC1000 to lamenting the fact that it was a few tweaks away from being a CC5. The first thing is that all of the hardcore scenes would need to be better. Way, way better. Rare is the adult feature that would be improved by cutting all of the sex, but Cry for Cindy is one of ‘em. Even if half the scenes were at least moderately hot, the film would be exponentially better. The second thing would be having a stronger acting lead. Amber Hunt isn’t terrible as Anna/Cindy (and she actually does pretty well in the aforementioned “tearful admission” scene), but the role requires some heavy lifting and she’s just not up to it.

Outside of the sex scenes, there was some really terrific camera work and photography:

(Inside of the sex scenes, there were so many - so, soooo many extended, extreme close ups**. Greasy, hairy close ups. Ugh.)

How about ol' Robert Rimmer's impressions:

"Many women may identify with this sexvid. Amber Hunt does one of the better acting jobs."

I can't say I particularly agree (or disagree, I guess) with either statement. Women may identify, I guess (particularly with Anna being the voice of reason when Dennis floats the idea of taking a few years off from school), and "better acting" is relative. Maybe sometime I'll sit down and look at actors that were active in '75-76 to see who I wish had been cast. (Probably not, though, let's be real....) I wonder if Amber Hunt's chops improved over time. Looking at her filmography, I've actually seen a decent chunk of it but don't have any specific recollections of her, which doesn't bode particularly well.

Overall, I definitely have a deeper appreciation of the film thinking back on it than I did while watching it. And I can see myself returning to it in time (skipping the sex scenes, for sure). I wouldn't be surprised if Cry for Cindy really improves with multiple viewings (but not the sex scenes, I'm positive of that). So, I'll give a solid CC50.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

° It's a travesty that whoever did the hair and make up to age John Leslie wasn't listed in the opening or closing credits, because they did a Marlon Brando as Don Corleone-caliber job:

From Autobiography of a Flea, also 1976

* I initially wrote “prostitutes” since that - or worse - would be the term used contemporarily, but opted instead for today’s preferred nomenclature since I wouldn’t refer to Linda Wong or Mai Lin as “Orientals”, even though I've heard Mai Lin refer to herself as such in old flicks.

** I believe that Vinegar Syndrome is passionate about restoration and presentation. And I know Joe Rubin can get real bent out of shape when people tell him that the aspect ratios on their VHS copies of old pornos are “better” than what VS released. But there are some shots - primarily hardcore, but some non-hardcore scenes, too - that are so claustrophobic they border on abstract.

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Okey doke, so what's up next?

Well, hello, Colleen Brennan!