Pornonomy Reviews: All the Way In

All the Way In (1984)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Annette Linder
Candy Samples
Mai Lin
Martina
Shanna McCullough
Tanya Lawson
David Morris
Eric Edwards
Francois
Mike Horner
Pat Romano
Ron Jeremy

There is a surprising amount going on in this film for how boring it is. Well, I suppose one's interest in the film is directly tied to how intrigued you are by Candy Samples, which for me is "little to none."

The main story is that Ultra Flesh magazine has just been sold to P.J. Corona, a man with a reputation of cleaning house after buying magazines. Justifiably, Ultra Flesh's staff is concerned for their jobs. The card up their sleeves is sex advice columnist Candy Keen (Samples), but unfortunately she'd been down in the dumps since falling in love with a man while on a burlesque club tour and just didn't have it in her to try to charm the new owner.

The sex scenes are pretty well-integrated. One in particular is impressive in its editing. Magazine head Mr. Dicker (Edwards) reads one of the fantasy letter's Candy received to her over the office intercom. While he's reading the fantasy - a story about a dom man with a sub "Oriental mistress" who is, in turn, dominated by Candy Keen herself - the film cuts between the fantasy (in which Edwards and Mai Lin are in the roles), Mr. Dicker and Chrissy, the magazine's adult film reviewer (Lin), in his office, and Candy masturbating in her office while listening to the letter being read. While all of the sex scenes are handled with Chinn's normal craft, none are all that noteworthy for their sexual "heat." Although maybe it's just the fact that I couldn't get into Samples, who is a participant in half the film's sex scenes.

It's too bad that the film focuses so much on love - both Keen's seeming star-crossedness and managing editor Martina's (Martina) longing for art director Jeff (Morris) - because the film could have been a magazine-based successor to Chinn's superior The Young Like it Hot. In fact, the film opens in a manner that seems like it's going to be quite a bit of fun. The opening credits are set over a montage following the magazine from the printer, to a newsstand, to the hands of a man (Horner) on an airplane. A woman (McCullough) sitting near him notices that a woman on the plane bears a striking resemblance to the picture in his magazine. The man explaining who Candy Keen is is a pretty clever way of introducing the viewer to the character. Add a cameo by Russ Meyer (a nod to Samples' earlier career) and a silly gag in which Samples' and Lisa De Leeuw's busts prevent them passing one another in the plane's aisle, and the first eight minutes make it seem like All the Way In will be quite a lark. After the story starts, though, it becomes kind of a drag.

I realize I'm probably being extra critical of this film because it's a Chinn, and I know how much better it could/should have been. All the Way In just didn't do it for me. C-

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: 69 Park Avenue

69 Park Avenue (1985)

Directed by:
Mike Handley

Starring:
Colleen Brennan
Cherri Roberts
Erica Boyer
Little Oral Annie
Patti Petite
Tiffany Duponte
Chris Chase
Dan T. Mann
Mike Horner
Rocky Balboa
Tom Byron


The only thing worse than a film that is a lazy clip compilation is one that isn't but should be.

69 Park Avenue has a flimsy narrative pretext (Tom Byron is a reporter on his first assignment, interviewing Colleen Brennan, a San Francisco madame) framing a series of unrelated sex scenes without any stylistic consistency. While everything about them seems like they were from different movies, they appear to be filmed for this one.

The only parts barely worth noting: the first sex scene (Duponte and Horner) offers proof that "pearl necklace" was in the vernacular since at least 1985; a few of the scenes are virtual "how not to do vocal overdub" clinics; one of the scenes is underscored by a song that has a proto X-Files theme; Brennan and Byron - actors that seem to be two of the biggest nerds in the history of porn - have a pretty fun charisma together.

69 Park Avenue is the sort of film that seriously jeopardizes my ambition to hit the 100 review mark. On the flip side, it's also the sort of film that makes me grateful that I've got a system that can play back faster than actual speed. (I can generally guage the quality of a film by the playback speed I employ: a great one is 1.00x, an awful one 1.50 to 2.00x; this one, was, for the most part, set at 1.40....) D

Pornonomy Reviews: Foxtrot

Foxtrot (1982)

Directed by:
Cecil Howard

Starring:
Linda Vale
Marilyn Gee
Marlene Willoughby
Merle Michaels
Samantha Fox
Sandra Hillman
Sharon Mitchell
Tiffany Clark
Vanessa del Rio
Veronica Hart
Alan Adrian
Bobby Astyr
David Morris
Jack Silver
Jack Teague
R. Bolla
Ron Jeremy

It's New Year's Eve day, and a lot of people are having sex.

Similar to Babylon Pink, Foxtrot has an Altman-esque "six degrees of separation" feel. Unlike Babylon Pink, there wasn't a familiar thread running through the scenes (BP's being - mostly - a series of fantasies). And the film doesn't quite stitch all of the characters together.

About 62 of the 77 minutes are fairly strong, moving between the various characters and slowly showing how they fit together. Jack Teague is throwing a New Year's Eve party that will be staffed by his maid (Tiffany Clark) and catered by Vanessa del Rio, who's musician boyfriend (Morris) will be playing a club that's also headlined by a showgirl/dancer (Fox), who is able to go work after her babysitter (Hillman) arrives, after she makes arrangements to have her boyfriend (Silver) come over later.

On the other side of town, Veronica Hart and R. Bolla seem to be in a loveless marriage. She seems to be having an affair, while he fantasizes about the sex-crazed woman across the street (Willoughby) whom he peeps on with his field glasses. After a fight, Hart seduces a sailor (Jeremy) who has just stumbled upon his girlfriend (Michaels) in bed with another woman (Mitchell). Unless I'm missing something, the two groups don't have a common character, although I suppose in theory Hart could have been having an affair with Jack Teague....

With the exception of the ultimate scene stock footage of the NYE ball drop and the penultimate scene at the party Teague is throwing, other than the characters mentioning it every five minutes, it doesn't seem all that important what day of the year the film took place on.

So about those last 15 minutes. Whereas the lead up was competent - if not great - the end, the party, sort of fell off the rails. In a tonal shift from the rest of the film, things got a lot looser and seemed to hint at getting a lot more mad cap (for example, a woman at the party announces that she feels like taking her clothes off), which would have been fine if it had actually followed through with going crazy. Instead, there was a brief non sequitur scene that was a not-so-thinly-veiled crack at Roman Polanski (Astyr as a film director who spends most of his time in Europe as certain jailbait proclivities have gotten him in hot water). Then...well, that's it.

I have to admit that I'm generally pretty lukewarm on the film. Perhaps I'm judging it overly harshly consider the only other Howard film I've seen is Neon Nights, which is an all-timer, in my opinion. But, I guess the positives outweigh the negatives soooooo...B-

Pornonomy Reviews: The Jade Pussycat and China Cat

The Jade Pussycat (1977)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Bonnie Holiday
Paula Wain
Georgina Spelvin
Jessica Temple-Smith
Linda Wong
Yvonne Green
Jimi Lee
John Holmes
Jon Martin

China Cat (1978)

Directed by:
Bob Chinn

Starring:
Paula Wain
Desiree Cousteau
Eileen Wells
Jennifer Richards
Kyoto Sun
Cris Cassidy
John Holmes
John Seeman

The Jade Pussycat and its sequel, China Cat, find private investigator Johnny Wadd drawn into the world of illicit artifact trade by way of the mysterious and valuable Jade Pussycat. The statue is of great value as it was made of a piece of jade imbued with power...or something. In the first film, the statue is coveted by a German collector, in the second, by a Japanese man who was in possession of the statue until it was stolen from him during World War II. In order to recover the statue, the man enlists the aid of a group of beautiful women (the Devils) instructed by a faceless man named Charlie. (So, "Charlie's Devils" for those not particularly quick on the uptake.)

The interesting thing about watching the Wadd films more or less in order is seeing the artistic development of Bob Chinn. The progress between Tropic of Passion and Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here is nothing compared to the technical leap between TTJWiH and The Jade Pussycat (which, in turn, is surpassed by the skill of China Cat; in full disclosure, I haven't yet seen Liquid Lips, the bridge between Tell Them and Jade, although with LL apparently made immediately after Tell Them, I'd imagine they are pretty similar, formally).

Voiceovers are a staple of the Wadd series, but while in earlier films the exist largely as expository development between scenes, in China Cat, they're placed within the scenes and flesh out the story in a much more organic fashion. Additionally, China Cat featured a sex scene that was cut against the scheming Devils lending the hardcore scenes a degree of integration far beyond those earlier in the series.

The Jade Pussycat successfully created the feel of the seedy "Oriental" underbelly of San Francisco - in my opinion, a better use of location shooting than Tropic of Passion's Hawaii or Tell Them's Mexico - and utilized the crossing and double-crossing you'd expect from a genre picture of its era. China Cat built on the cliffhanger nature of its predecessor's ending, foregoing the sense of place and balancing a simpler narrative (Wadd vs. the Devils) with a higher degree of technical craftsmanship.

The grading of the films brings up an interesting challenge. Viewed together, I'd give the first a B+, the second an A-, however the second's grade is largely based on having had the first as a narrative lead in, so.... Ah, fuck it, B+ and A-.

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