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?

Adventures in COUNTIF functions

The very first thing I did when starting this Robert Rimmer Re-Watch Collector’s Choice Challenge, was to set up a spreadsheet listing every film Rimmer rated as CC. Inevitably, on the first pass, I missed some so in an effort to help catch any major oversights, I also made spreadsheets for the films listed in Jim Holliday’s The Top 100 X Rated Films of All Time and Only the Best and the pre-1988* entries from The AVN Guide to the 500 Greatest Adult Films of All Time. It’s distinctly possible these lists already exist somewhere, but after some (relatively light) web searching, I decided it was easier to do it myself.

Sure enough, cross-checking these lists led me to a few Rimmer CCs that I hadn’t logged initially, but what I found more interesting were those films that were deemed all-time greats by Jim Holliday and/or AVN but not sufficient to earn a Rimmer CC stamp. Not counting softcore entries, about 550 films received Collector’s Choice designation. Of the 80 adult films released through 1987 that AVN included in their all-timer list, Rimmer reviewed 56, and of those, rated 40 as CC. Jim Holliday’s Only the Best consisted of 251 films** (assuming I didn’t miss any...I did check my list against the index twice, but you never know). 215 of the 251 were reviewed in Rimmer’s book. 144 of those were CC-rated.

There are nine non-Collector's Choice films that appear both on Holliday’s and AVN’s lists:

All the Way In (1984)

All-American Girls (1982)

Bad Girls (1981)

Ecstasy Girls (1979)

Hot Dreams (1983)

Inside Jennifer Welles (1977)

Never So Deep (1981)

Sexcapades (1983)

Society Affairs (1982)

Those are some pretty fucking good movies. Pretty good fucking movies?

(It’s worth noting that Rimmer did rate sequels All-American Girls II and Great Sexpectations as Collector’s Choice.)

A few of the non-CC films from Holliday’s list that jump out to me are Barbara Broadcast (1977), The Filthy Rich (1981), Little Girls Blue (1977), Pandora’s Mirror (1981), and Young Like It Hot (1983). Admittedly, I have a soft (hard?) spot for The Filthy Rich because it was the first X-rated film I saw.

As for the AVN list, I was surprised that 1001 Erotic Nights (1982) and The Widespread Scandals of Lydia Lace (1982) didn’t earn their CCs. I suppose the former is a little uneven, but I was gobsmacked when I read Rimmer’s review of Lydia:

“This is a quickie that Pachard must have flipped off on a rainy Manhattan weekend, and then gave it a zoomie, cryptic title which means nothing.”

Holy shit! Them’s fighting words, Bob!

Sharon Mitchell ain't havin' it, either!

I don’t anticipate being at a loss for films to watch, but if my randomizer ever brings up a film I’m not particularly feeling, I may pick out some of the critically-acclaimed films that Rimmer didn’t rate CC to further help suss out what his criteria were.

* The “Revised and Updated” edition of The X-Rated Videotape Guide was published in 1986, but spend enough time looking at release dates of old pornos and you’ll know that giving listed dates a plus/minus of 2 years is good practice.

** 93 of the Top 100 X Rated Films of All Time made it to Only the Best. As Holliday explained, the first book was geared towards retailers so the list wasn’t intended to reflect quality considerations. Most of the films that didn’t appear in Only the Best were rationalized in chapter footnotes.

Debbie Does Dallas (1978)

It could be argued that Debbie Does Dallas is the most well-known porno of all-time. It has a fantastic title, an okay premise, and benefited from a bunch of “no such thing as bad press” controversy surrounding it’s release, from legal action pursued by the Dallas Cowboys to the hubbub surrounding the use of the Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College for filming. Looking at total reviews from IAFD and IMDB, Debbie Does Dallas edges out consensus classics (including Deep Throat, The Opening of Misty Beethoven, and Taboo) and all-time bestsellers (Pirates, Fashionistas, Dream Quest, and Flashpoint among them). Sure, total reviews is akin to starting a trial’s opening statements with “Webster’s Dictionary defines…” but whatever. Anecdotally, a few years back when I was having a conversation with some people that I’m pretty sure aren’t super into porn - classic or otherwise - about my interest in the Golden Era, they both said, “Oh, like Debbie Does Dallas.” Truly a cultural touchstone.

Anyway, the film obviously had a lot going for it (including riding the “Porno Chic” wave established by Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door), but unfortunately, I don’t think what actually ended up on celluloid deserved it’s long-lasting renown. It’s specific shortcomings are a lack of conflict, a lack of narrative consistency, poor editing, and uninspired hardcore scenes. Before elucidating those points, a brief plot recap:

Debbie (Bambi Woods, who took the “wide-eyed” character descriptor quite literally) has the opportunity to try out for the Dallas Cowgirls cheerleading squad, but only has two weeks to raise the money that will get her to Dallas. Her cheerleader friends decide to help her, declaring they’ll all put their relationships with their boyfriends on hold and get after school jobs. They quickly realize they can use their sexuality to get their horndog bosses to pay them extra, so they can fund Debbie’s trip in no time flat.

So, on to my knocks on the film.

1. Lack of conflict

Right off the bat, Debbie states that she only has two weeks to get to Dallas, but pretty much right after her friends decide to help her, there’s no sense of time or urgency. There could have been some between sex scene shots of the girls putting money in a pickle jar while crossing days off a calendar or something. And there could have been a wrinkle where two days before the deadline, when they’d just about gotten all the money they needed, the jar went missing.

There even could have been a b-story involving the girls’ football playing boyfriends. Sure, the dudes are dismayed to learn that they’re being put on hold so their ladies can help Debbie. And sure, Tim (Herschel Savage) tells Rick (David Morris) that since Debbie’s his girlfriend, he has to let her know they won’t stand for it. But imagine, if you will, that the team has a big game coming up and that they’ve learned that if they don’t get laid the night before, they play like shit. A chance at the State Playoffs is at stake. The whole thing with the boyfriends leads me to my next point.

2. Lack of narrative consistency

Okay, so Rick is Debbie’s boyfriend and is supposed to have a conversation with her. Never happens. And, we learn later, Tim is Donna's (Merle Michaels) boyfriend. But the two guys are both involved in the film’s first hardcore scene, set in the girls’ locker room shower, and neither of participating ladies - Debbie's squadmates Pat (Kasey Rodgers) and Roberta (Christie Ford) are their girlfriends, which has no consequences later. Further, Tim persuades Donna to give him a blowjob while she’s working at the library since she’d been too busy to take care of him even though he got off twice in the shower. (Although, again, as far as the sense of time is concerned, that could have been ten days prior….)

3. Poor editing

The first time this really stands out is after the culmination of the first hardcore sequence. After Tim ejaculates on Pat’s face, the camera lingers on her nuzzling at his dick and pretty obviously trying to figure out how to scrape his jizz out of the corner of her closed eye (before just using her hand) for a ridiculous 105 seconds. It could have been cut to a third of that and achieved the same effect. Similarly, the scene in which Mr. Biddle (Jake Teague) spanks Donna is too long by (at least) half.

The music was all over the map, too. The repeated Sousa-esque march made sense for the school football angle, and some of the "Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone" pastiche basslines and chicken scratch guitars were okay, but I could have done without the library music acid rock freakouts (see: "Midas Touch" by Sulphur Flowers during Mr. Greenfeld’s - R. Bolla’s - climax).

4. Uninspired hardcore scenes

Most people would probably pick the Debbie/Mr. Greenfeld scene as the film’s most memorable. I can’t that football uniformed Mr. Greenfeld chasing Cowgirls cheerleading uniform-clad Debbie around the sporting goods store with his hardon out is quite an image.

And they do make novel use of the workout equipment. It’s an okay scene, no doubt.

I think the standout, though, is the scene between Mr. Hardwick (Eric Edwards) and Roberta while Mrs. Hardwick (Robyn Byrd) watches (before getting herself in the mix at the tail-end). Whereas most of the other scenes implicitly or explicitly include the threat of wives finding out about the trysts, this one is actually instigated by the wife. After the brief view into the Hardwicks’ relationship, sex life, and Super 70s candle shop, I wish someone had made a spinoff sequel focused on them. 

(Note to self: write this treatment.)

Honorable mention goes to the record store double blowjob with Tammy (Arcadia Lake) and Lisa (Georgette Saunders) working on Tony (Tony Mansfield). The scene itself was fine, but there was about 30 seconds during which the ladies were basically eye-fucking each other and the dick in Tammy’s mouth was a secondary (at most) concern.

Hatchi matchi!

Otherwise, the scenes were pedestrian at best and completely forgettable at worst. That works out to a generous 36% hit rate, which is...not great.

Well, let’s see what Robert Rimmer had to say (listed in "Classics"):

“A laughing sexvid that fulfills at least one male fantasy - joining the girls in the high school shower. Nicely photographed with women who really seem like the teenagers that you will remember making love to in the back seat of your automobile, if you’re male. Or, if you’re female, you may identify with them. This one was a best-seller in 1980 - second only to Deep Throat.”

That’s it. In its entirety. Maybe he felt like most people were already familiar enough with Debbie Does Dallas that he didn’t need to explain it more or justify its Collector’s Choice designation. The Deep Throat entry is just about as terse, but at least there he also adds “Worth owning.”

Obviously Rimmer’s book was geared toward a specific demographic, so I won’t get into the assumptions he’s making about the reader. But he does bring up an interesting point about female viewers possibly identifying with the women in the film.

For this entry, I (re)watched Debbie Does Dallas with my wife (and sometimes collaborator). While discussing the film afterwards, she brought up a conversation she had with some female friends about the complicated sexual power women in their late teens and early twenties have. That it’s a time when she feels all eyes are on her (because they often are), and that she has the ability to bend mens’ wills to her own. And yet it’s also a time of great insecurity. Of comparing herself to her peers or the idea of societal feminine ideals and standards generally.

I suppose that Debbie Does Dallas could allow for women viewers to identify with the cheerleaders in the film. While there are elements of pressure/coercion between Debbie and Mr. Greenfeld and Tim and Donna, it never felt like either woman was unable to put a stop to what was happening. Even Donna tearfully begging Mr. Biddle not to tell her parents about fellating her boyfriend in the stacks, and begging him not to hurt her while being spanked was subverted by her cheerfully bouncing out of the library, telling Tim that they aren’t in trouble and that Mr. Biddle’s “really an all right guy.”

It's plain to see that I definitely think that Debbie Does Dallas is overrated in the pantheon of adult cinema. The safe bet would be to give it a CC25, but this is my project and my subjective criteria, so dammit, it gets a CC50.

RANDOM NOTES

° A Herschel Savage adlib made me actually laugh out loud. While Merle Michaels was blowing him in the library, she cough/choked on his dick a few times, and after the second, he said, “Oh, baby, don’t choke. Stay alive.”

I almost wonder if he was a little taken aback by her gagging. I know I was. While it’s almost impossible to watch a scene made in the last twenty years and not hear a sound like Merle made, it seemed like back then women only attempted a deep throat when they already knew they could do it.

I had to include this because I couldn't not.

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Right-o. Up next is:

Oho! Kevin James at prime doofiness! Honey Wilder at some of her earnest-est! Should be fun to revisit.

Hot Action (1978)

I wish I spoke French. Watching La Vitrine du Plaisir (“The Showcase of Pleasure”) in its native language is, I’m sure, a far superior experience to the Caballero release, Hot Action. 

Accounting for slight differences in opening and closing credits, and NTSC v. PAL frame rates, the Alpha France release is some six-ish minutes shorter. Scrubbing through the different versions, there doesn’t seem to be much appreciable difference in the content included. I’m going to assume the English translation sticks mostly to the French dialog, though there are a few parts that I’m pretty sure took some bizarre artistic liberties. Since the resurrection of this blog was inspired by critiquing Robert Rimmer’s Collector’s Choice picks, and since he reviewed and rated Hot Action, unless specified otherwise, that’s the version I’ll be talking about.

According to the description of the Alpha France DVD release (via Google Translate):

Both a cult film and an exceptional document. Directed in 1977 by Gerard Kikoine, this film shows us Brigitte Lahie, actress and daring, on the set of Fine Parts, one of her best films. A record number of spectators thus discovered for the first time the hitherto unknown undersides of the shooting of a blockbuster X during the release of this film on August 30, 1978 in Alpha France theaters.

The description makes it sound like a straightforward behind-the-scenes documentary, but there’s a fictional framework into which the “making of” scenes are set.

Freelance journalist Patricia Gordon (Dawn Cummings), just finishing up a series of articles on fashion, is contacted to write an “expose” on adult film-making. 

Yes, that is a glittery DICK on her shirt.

After a series of fruitless phone calls, she finally finds a filmmaker (Alban Ceray) that will let her get a behind-the-scenes look at the process. Over the course of multiple days of production, Patricia watches scenes being filmed and conducts interviews with the director, actors (Guy Royer, Brigitte Lahie, Jacques Gatteau), a stunt cock for inserts (Cyril Val), the Chief Lighting Technician (uncredited), and mysterious masked woman (Marion Shultz).

Oooookaaayy....

Based on the French version, the interviews seem unscripted, but I have no idea how faithful the English dubs are. In the English version, for instance, before her interview with Cyril Val, she’s told that he’s only ever used for cock shots because when his face is on camera, the audio gets all fucked up. (“Only his prick is a sweet talker.”) And lo and behold, during the interview, as soon as he opens his mouth, Patricia’s recording sounds like a jet engine. This does not happen in the French version. Similarly, while we first see the masked woman in a closed-set blowbang (that Patricia only gets access to when Alex, the lighting technician, sneaks her in as a photographer), she’s introduced to the viewer as the director of a “special scene” and is heard giving blunt direction during Sylvie’s (Susan Deloir, credited as Sylvie Dessatre) solo scene. Based on the lack of female narration in the audio from the French version, I’m guessing this isn’t the case in the original.

Sylvie is a smokeshow.

Speaking of voices, most of the actors providing the overdubs are fine. The choice for the masked woman wasn’t ideal, but isn’t terrible. The same can’t be said for whoever did the sex noises for Diane Dubois during her anal scene with Dominique Aveline. Jesus Christ. In the French version, she sounds like a human being having sex. In the English dub, she sounds like possessed walrus being exorcised. It is awful. Additionally, during the production scenes, there are frequently no less than five people (the director, camera operators, etc.) talking - often including Patricia’s inner monologue - with everything mixed at basically the same level. I suppose it could imply how chaotic shooting is, but it’s enough to give you an aural seizure. Again, this isn’t the case in the original.

Time and again, Patricia is struck by how normal everyone involved in the film is - except for some slight pearl clutching in regards to Sylvie’s future since Patricia doesn’t think she’s mature enough to be making decisions concerning her porn career - and ultimately is so intrigued by porn that she decides to try her hand (and mouth!) at it, even if it alienates all her journalism friends.

Ready for her debut!

Let’s check in with ol’ Robert Rimmer (filed in "Classics" in the "Update"):

“If you’d like to know what goes on filming a porno in France, this one is a behind-the-scenes look with a real sense of humor.”

No quibbles there, I guess. Does Rimmer get anything wrong in his recap? You bet he does!

“Patricia...discovers...that ‘jackoffs and freight trains’ are guys who are kept around to provide erect pricks but no faces.”

He’s referring to Patricia being told that the stunt cock she asks about interviewing is called “jet or freight train” because of what happens to the audio track when his face appears on screen. It’s not a term for stunt cocks, generally.

Prior to this assignment, I knew basically nothing about classic French pornography. (I’ve recently taken an interest in Dorcelclub’s productions, but that’s neither here nor there.) This was probably a weird one to start with, given it’s semi-documentary nature. I’m definitely curious to see Parties Fines now, though it wouldn’t be a part of the CC Series (Rimmer did review the Caballero release of the film, Education of a Baroness, but did not deem it Collector’s Choice). The only other Gerard Kikoine film I’ve seen is Aphrodesia’s Diary, but it was so long ago I have only the vaguest recollection. (Aphrodesia’s Diary is a CC pick, though, so theoretically I’ll revisit eventually.) Now, I know that hardcore pornography was legalized in France in 1974, and that it took off like gangbusters. So much French hardcore was being produced that some critics bemoaned that it was the end of French cinema. (I know I read that somewhere in a Google Books search, but I wasn’t able to immediately find it, and I don’t need to cite shit for this blog anyway.)

Cursory internetting didn't reveal much of Alpha France's history. Context clues seem to indicate they were a production company and chain of adult theaters, but I'm not so sure. Regardless, whether they were indirectly responsible for the death of French cinema or not, Alpha France certainly seems to care about the legacy of their hardcore films. They may not be as feature rich as some Vinegar Syndrome releases, but every Alpha France film I've come across (no pun intended) in my recent research has been a really beautiful transfer. They must have a vault somewhere of pristine prints.

Were this a subtitled version of the Alpha France release, I could see myself going as high as CC50 for this film. As it is now, I'm going to rate Hot Action as (yet another) CC250.

RANDOM NOTES

° As far as I can tell checking Hot Action against Parties Fines, about half the hardcore scenes in the former were actually shot for the latter. The new scenes include Patricia’s “preconceived notions” about filming a porno - somewhat amusingly featuring Brigitte Lahaie fully blonde, whereas she’s dark haired in the rest of the film - and the masked woman parts.

That is deffo how pornos are made.

° The masked woman’s blowbang was the most visually interesting part of the film and her “airtight” scene the most surprising.

° Parties Fines was Gerard Kikoine's first film. It’s wild to think that someone thought to document the making-of for a director’s maiden voyage. Or maybe that’s commonplace? I have no idea.

° The music in the French version is much better. I didn’t mind the English song at first, but it wears out its welcome.

° Coincidentally, a link to this post about Brigitte Lahaie popped up in my Twitter feed right before I was going to watch Hot Action. Some nice background on the star.

The End!

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Okay, so on to the next:

Staying in 1978 with a film that probably doesn't need any more written about it....

Teenage Cowgirls (1973)

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

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

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

1. Really fast-moving

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

2. Beautifully photographed and well-edited

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

3. An excellent cast

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

4. A good script

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

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

HENDRICKS

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

WOMAN

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

HENDRICKS

Long as I’m here.

[Begins unbuttoning his shirt.]

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

WOMAN

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

That’s a quality double entendre!

5. A delightful soundtrack

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

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

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

7. A great flick!

An okay flick!

There were two things that pleasantly surprised me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RANDOM NOTES

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

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

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

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

Small Town Girls (1979)

Aaron Stuart torpedoed Small Town Girls. Before elaborating on how, allow me to give a brief account of the film at large.

“Play Around” magazine is holding a contest to find their next centerfold. The editor (Harry Freeman) has narrowed the field to four finalists in the Sex Queen Fantasy Contest based on submissions they’ve provided detailing their secret sexual fantasies. They are:

Literally, ABCD

Ann (Sharon Kane): “[L]ove, pleasure, luxury, and uninhibited sex with a very handsome and ideal partner.”

Barbarella (Valerie Darlyn): “Group sex with lesbianism and to be dominated by uniformed people.”

Cindy (Dorothy Lemay): “To have men worship me and I love to tease them and I also like to travel a lot.”

Danielle (Serena): “[T]o be really decadent and be able to dominate people sexually without fear of rebuttal.”

Frankly, if these were the finalists, the other submissions must have been some really lemons.

The women are given $5000 and 48 hours to live out their fantasies, write and submit a story about their experiences, and whoever does it best will win the contest. In order to ensure everything’s on the level, a man is assigned to keep tabs on each woman (Jesse Adams to Ann; Michael Morrison to Barbarella; David Morris to Cindy; John Seeman to Danielle). The men are informed that they “may participate in their fantasies in any way [they] see fit.”

Look at these smooth operators.

With this set up, the film basically plays out as a series of vignettes. Before they can get on with their individual missions, Ann and Barbarella have a brief tryst in a fancy treehouse. Halfway through their explorations, there’s a cut to Cindy booking a flight to “Alcapoco” and a reservation for the best hotel for two days (see: she likes to travel!). After hanging up, she says she’s going to treat herself to an “outrageous wardrobe.” The scene cuts back to Ann and Barbarella so they can finish up there treehouse fun.

Next up is Cindy trying on a bunch of clothes, among a half dozen other women in varying states of undress. Listening to a baseball game on the radio in his car, David Morris keeps tabs from the parking lot. It’s a weird little montage, set to Alan Parker’s “Manhunt” with a looped 8-second sample of crowd noise. The intensity of the song and repetition of the crowd noise - particularly a very distinctive laugh - gives a real sense of unease, foreshadowing what’s to come. After returning to her car, a man (Aaron Stuart) lurches from the back seat, holding a knife to her face, and threatening to cut off her nose if she doesn’t follow his directions. Morris sees them drive off, heads to a payphone and calls the editor. Based on the editor’s side of the conversation “My she did get into her fantasy, didn’t she?” we’re to understand that Morris thinks the abduction was arranged by Cindy, even though that has nothing to do with what she wrote!

Here’s where I’m going on a bit of a rant as to the aforementioned film torpedoing at the hands of Aaron Stuart. Some people can play dark and menacing well (Jamie Gillis, of course, was a master). Aaron Stuart could not. It seemed like his motivation was “deranged clown.” Some people are able to ad lib and improvise well. Aaron Stuart could not. 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.) Counting cuts to Morris the scene takes up a brutal 13 and a half minutes. The last minute of the scene - when Morris finally realizes Cindy’s in jeopardy and rescues her by bludgeoning Stuart with a wrench - is over fifteen minutes after the film previously cut away.

Fucking finally!

Forty minutes of screentime elapse between the time Cindy is abducted and when she’s rescued. Predictably, there’s a sex scene between Lemay and Morris shortly thereafter, mind-bogglingly including her talking about how “it’s fun being adventurous, but the risks are too great,”  “if you had a lover that would tie you up once in awhile, and make love to you, it wouldn’t be so bad,” and that she found some of the “moments...perversely exciting” during her abduction. It almost seems like writer/director Tom Janovich gaslit himself into believing Cindy’s fantasy was seeking sexual thrills and danger and bondage instead of being worshipped by men and traveling. Plus, the Lemay/Morris scene is introduced just three minutes after her rescue. Just a monumental editing debacle.

You can’t consume popular media - porographic or otherwise - and deny that the threat of sexual violence against women is a trope. And that romance borne of rescue from the threat is a sub-trope. If this was a plotline deemed integral to the film, what should have happened is that the first time Morris peeps through the window, after Cindy’s been tied to the weird spinning St. Andrew’s cross but before she’s raped, he should realize she didn’t actually plan what was happening, bust in, and brain the abductor with a wrench, the whole scene amounting to three or four minutes. Then, after some of the other plot lines resolved, they could have their sex scene. Who knows, maybe I’ll recut it to substantially improve the movie.

Okay, with that said, on to what the other ladies were up to.

Barbarella tells Ann that she’s always wanted to have “magic powers” so she’s going to “put an ad in the paper posing as a clairvoyer* [sic] for people with sexual problems.” Ann says she wants to make love on a yacht.

* I suppose it could be a "clairvoyeur" a portmanteau of "clairvoyant" and "voyeur", but given the rest of the script, I think that's a strech.

Barbarella sets up as a phony psychic (taking a shitload of pills for some reason).

A couple, Elaine and Roger (Kandi Barbour and Jon Martin) come to her to fix their relationship, and Barbarella “sees” that they want new sexual experiences, specifically Roger “making it” with another woman and Elaine watching. Conveniently, Barbarella’s there to help! By the time Roger finishes, the drugs Barbarella took have fully set in and she passes out. Her watcher - Michael Morrison - comes in to check on her and while he’s telling her he’s going to take her away, the scene dissolves into a psychedelic orgy playing out in Barbarella’s mind including Bonnie Holiday, Kandi Barbour, Jon Martin, Morrison dressed as a cop and Mick South dressed as a fireman.

So group sex (check) with lesbianism (check) and domination by people in uniform (check!). If it weren’t a drug-fueled hallucination, Barbarella would have nailed her fantasy.

Ann heads down to the pier and finds her captain (Jesse Adams). They have a nice romantic picnic and some nice romantic copulation.

Romance!

Kane and Adams are capable actors and have good sexual chemistry. I could definitely see this arc included in a compilation of “Scenes for Couples” or something. Ann aced her fantasy, but unlike Barbarella, did it in real life, so she’d have to be presumed in the lead.

Danielle gets gussied up, hires a limousine (driven by John Seeman), and cruises around listening to Rachmaninoff.

Prelude to a peeping.

She drinks some champagne, does some blow, and tells the chauffeur to stop the car and fetch her a man in a tuxedo (Blair Harris). In the car, she orders him to anally penetrate her with a vibrator, then sucks him off while Seeman peeps on them and jerks off. After Danielle’s through with her tuxedo pickup, he’s jettisoned onto the sidewalk. Danielle proceeds to command the driver to tend to her sexually since she knew he’d been spying. She was decadent and sexually dominant (though in the pantheon of Serena’s career, the dominance demonstrated here is basically G-rated), so we have another successful fantasy realization.

Back at the editor’s place, the women are informed that (some of) the men they’ve been involved with were actually judges, and that the stories submitted - corroborated by the judges, even though neither Cindy’s nor Barbarella’s fantasies were actually completed - were all so good that they’re all winners, and everyone’s happy.

Without a doubt, the Kane/Adams scene and the fantasy orgy were the standouts. From a creative standpoint - the lighting, editing, and song choice - the orgy gets the nod and it’s a real shame that it’s barely over six minutes (especially since it features six people). If this scene were the length of the Stuart/Leman debacle, and vice versa (or, hell, cut the latter altogether!), the film would have benefited immensely.

Let’s see how Robert Rimmer defends his Collector’s Choice designation:

“The CC rating may be dubious, but you’ll keep watching because you can’t believe your eyes!”

Uh, okay.

It should also be noted that he has Small Town Girls included in the “Classics” section. As makes sense, all Classics are Collector’s Choice, but not all Collector’s Choice are Classics. You’d think something that seems to have barely attained CC, though, might be better filed elsewhere….

In his recap, he also misidentifies Sharon Kane as Blair Harris (a man), though in Rimmer’s defense, it seems like early on in Kane’s career, her credited name changed a lot; seemingly more than anyone that had as many credits as she did. (Maybe at some point I’ll try to pin down when she more or less settled on “Sharon Kane”.) He also says that “Cindy has rape and bondage fantasies” (nope) and that “Barbarella pretends she’s a fortune teller at an amusement park.” Maybe he saw a version with additional B-roll footage, but nothing indicated “amusement park” to me.

Plus, she ran an ad in a newspaper fercrissakes!

(Maybe I should call this feature “Dunking on Robert Rimmer” since that’s what I’ve been doing so far….)

Overall, there was a lot in this film I liked and one thing I obviously hated. Without the “violation of Cindy” subplot, I probably would have rated Small Town Girls a CC100, but as is, couldn’t go higher than CC250. 

RANDOM NOTES

° Like Thoroughly Amorous Amy, Small Town Girls has an original theme song. The song, “Small Town Girls”, was nominated for Best Song at the 1979 AFAA Annual Erotic Film Awards, but lost to “This Time We Might Make It” from The Ecstasy Girls. I think the song kind of sucks.

° The film also received a nomination for Best Art and Set Direction (again losing to The Ecstasy Girls), but in the 1980 awards (assuming The Rialto Report didn’t get some wires crossed).

° Small Town Girls was Tom Janovich’s only credit, which surprised me. There was obviously a decent budget and the film was capably made.

° Harry Freeman is the final cast credit and the only actor with an "as":

...which lead me to believe he was someone of note. He only has a few Nonsex acting and one directing credit (an all-male film called Cousin Buck). There was a producer named Harold (Hal) Freeman who was involved in a pretty high-profile anti-porn trial, but I'm almost positive they're different people.

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Next up, 1973's Teenage Cowgirls!