R.I.P.: Harry Reems, Part III (1973-74)

Harry Reems
August 27, 1947 — March 19, 2013

On 19 March 2013, Herbert Streicher — better known under his later name Harry Reems — went on to start selling real estate to those taking part in the great porn shoot in the sky. The following is the second instalment of a review of some of the films he was involved in, this time from 1973 to 1974.

Part II of the career review of Harry Reems can be found here.

 

The Female Response

(1973, dir. Tim Kincaid)

Aka Everybody's at It. The directorial début of "Tim Kincaid", born Tim Gambiani (the bearded dude here to the left), who first entered the film biz as an actor in the forgotten regional film Quadroon (1971) and went on after this R-rated exploiter here to become "Joe Gage", the well-known director of some early classics of hardcore gay pornography, most notably Kansas City Trucking Co. (1976 / full NSFW film), El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1978 / full NSFW film) and L.A. Tool & Die (1982 / full NSFW film). As Tim Kincaid, he eventually returned to R-rated exploitation and made such fun, culty stuff as Bad Girls Dormitory (1986 / full film), Robot Holocaust (1986 / Russian trailer), Breeders (1986 / trailer), Riot on 42nd St. (1987 / trailer), Mutant Hunt (1987 / trailer) and the fiasco that is She's Back (1989 / scene) before retiring to get married to Cynthia De Paula and have a couple of kids. He's since divorced and back in the gay porn biz (though we personally hope he one day returns to the exploitation film biz). In regard to his first film, over at Fangoria Kincaid explained the inspiration to the film as follows: "I was sitting in a hotel lobby waiting for my ride to Boston, where I was booked for a couple of weeks of extra/stunt-driving work in The Boston Strangler (1968 / trailer), when I read a New York Times article about the burgeoning soft-porn industry. I instantly decided that was how I'd get my foot in the door as a director." Oddly enough, however, The Female Response is not an X-rated fuckfest, but an R-rated American International Pictures (AIP) exploitation film. Over at Film Score Monthly, member Bob DiMucci says: "The Female Response is a 1973 comedy-drama-exploitation film that has been seen by very few people since its initial release. According to publicity for the film, it's 'a penetrating insight into the sensual needs of women. Shown in documentary style, the film traces the emotional and sexual problems of a group of women, including a legal secretary, a high-priced call girl (Gena Wheeler), a suburban housewife (Raina Barrett), an attractive hippie (Michaela Hope), and a dental hygienist. An important feature of the film is a series of on-the-street interviews surveying public opinions on a number of today’s important questions such as individual attitudes toward today’s morality and sex'." Reems, billed by his birth name Herb Streicher, has a small part as Max.

Fleshpot on 42nd Street
(1973, writ. & dir. Andy Milligan)

 

Roughly 7 Minutes of Fleshpot on 42nd Street:

Aka The Girls on 42nd Street — Harry Reems, credited as "Bob Walters", plays Bob in this mid-career film from Andy Milligan (February 12, 1929 – June 3, 1991) who, as Wikipedia so demurely says, "was an American playwright, screenwriter, cinematographer, actor, film editor, producer, and director, whose work includes 27 films made between 1965 and 1988." He was also a Z-budget auteur exploitation filmmaker whose technically inferior films seldom cause an indifferent reaction. Over at Cinefear they explain: "This film was available in both a nudy [sic] and hardcore version. This is Milligans [sic] take on the Flesh (1968 / trailer), Trash (1970 / scene) and Heat (1972 / trailer) films of Paul Morissy [sic], only better. A very sympathetic portrayal of marginal[s] and prostitutes in the big apple. A young Harry Reems appears under a different name as the sympathetic boyfriend of a girl gone wrong. [...] Anyhow, Neil Flannagen (of Guru, The Mad Monk [1970 / trailer]) steals the show as a drag queen who takes a beating after soliciting a male john unaware of his tricks (sic) true gender. A funny line in the film mentions how 'Irish women are frigid' I guess thrown into the film as a compliment to Andy's mom. I dated Irish before, when they are passionate, you can't beat them, but when they are angry, they beat you!" Over at Sleazoid Express, Michelle Clifford and the dearly depart Bill Landis go into more detail about Reems' part in the film: "[The hooker and main character] Dusty (Laura Cannon) meets a nice guy from Staten Island, Bob (Reems). He's got a 9-to-5 job, and, incredibly, doesn't hold her job as a prostitute against her. He's comfortable with her, and that's what really matters. [...] It's startling to see the human being before Harry became the grotesque, mustachioed, drug-fueled porno poster boy of the 1970s. Harry demonstrates that he could play a low-key, sensitive character as well he could the crazed Nam vet rapist in Forced Entry (1973)." Sleazoid Express continues to explain: "Fleshpot on 42nd Street displays Andy's self-hatred rooted in what he was, where he lived, and the kind of people he spent his life associating with. More than any of his other movies, it's like flypaper for his mental illnesses, as if it were capturing and killing bugs that came out of his skull. As fucked up and uneven as it is, the film remains an affecting portrait of a real-life situation that's soap opera based by nature. Fleshpot on 42nd Street is a half-brilliant, genuinely alienated relic of its time and its maker." In real life, at the age of 62 Andy Milligan died of AIDS on June 3, 1991, at the Queen of Angeles Medical Center in Los Angeles. Broke and without financially solvent friends, he was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Los Angeles.

For the hell of it — Milligan's The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! (full film):

 

It Happened in Hollywood
(1973, dir. Peter Locke)

 

Nowadays Peter Locke is a Hollywood producer to be reckoned with, but once upon a time he actually directed three films, all of which have more or less been forgotten: You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat (1971, starring a young Zalman King), this triple-X porno film here, and the R-rated sex comedy Kitty Can't Help It (1975) aka The Carhops. All Movie says that this hardcore comedy here "has the dubious distinction of depicting more sex acts per minute than any such feature to [that] date" and that — like, no duh! — "the movie should not to be confused with the 1937 feature comedy with the same name". Back in 2007, Steven Puchalski had the following to say about It Happened in Hollywood in his great magazine Shock Cinema: "[...] Produced by Screw Magazine founders Jim Buckley and Al Goldstein, this 35mm feature was slightly more ambitious than most mutton-flogging fare [...]. Felicity Split (Melissa Hall) has an overwhelming dream to become a sex-film super-starlet, and she certainly has the enthusiasm for the job (though not the body; she's vaguely cute, but scrawny with flapjack tits). Her boyfriend Elliot (mustache-free Harry Reems) buys her a bidet (that licks her pussy clean) [...]. After convincing talent agent Peter Pull (Marc Stevens) of her skills, the road to adult stardom awaits, and everyone digs Felicity — during a photo shoot, even the make-up girl has sex with her. Her big break comes when she lands the lead role of Delilah in a $4 million Bible-porn epic (which the filmmakers promise will end up in Cannes). [...] Despite its 'Hollywood' title, all of the film was shot in NYC, with much of it at a long-renovated East Village theatre space on East 12th Street and 2nd Avenue. Although slightly kitschier than the usual raincoat-crowd dreck, this is still far, far from any semblance of art. Befitting a Screw offshoot, it boasts a little crude-'n'-weird humor (e.g. a guy cums while on the phone with Felicity, and fake-jism spurts out of her receiver), but even as the ever-smiling Ms. Hall works hard to keep us hard, most of the cast isn't much to look at. [...]."

Radio report on It Happened in Hollywood:

High Rise
(1973, writ & dir. Danny Steinmann)

 

In High Rise, Harry Reems (credited as "Richard Hurt") plays a guy named Herbie. In the days of Porno Chic, hardcore films were actually seen as a springboard to serious above-ground careers — and they sometimes were for those other than the actors, as can be seen by the examples of among others Peter Locke, Alfred Sole and this man here, Danny Steinmann (January 7, 1942 – December 18, 2012), who used to pseudonym "Danny Stone" for High Rise, his directorial début. (Steinmann had also used the name for his "feature-film" début as an actor in 1966 when he played the lead in Hallucination Generation [trailer].) Steinmann's directorial career, however, was marred by difficult productions, re-cut films and projects that never panned out, so his fourth and final film, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985 / trailer) marked his retirement despite its financial success. Steinmann's other two films are also of note: Savage Streets (1984 / trailer) and, as "Peter Foleg", The Unseen (1980 / trailer). High Rise seems to be some sort of overlooked and surreal porno; even Amazon.com praises the movie: "Hilarious and underrated classic telling the story of a girl looking for an apartment in the Big Apple. Top production values [...], with highlights including Harry Reems and a model train set, an extremely erotic lesbian threesome, and a 20-minute climactic orgy featuring the best adult film theme song ever." (The music, by the way, is from Jacques "Jack" Urbont who, among other things, did the theme song to the 1966 Saturday morning Iron Man cartoons.) Over at imdb, andrew-egee from the United States says the movie is "more performance art than porn": "It's light-hearted, sometimes bizarre, and it fails to be pornographic only because its gonzo pop-art style is so distracting. Gonzo pop-art to the point that you could probably play it in the background at a party and keep people more amused and entertained than offended. [...] The underlying message is that life is beautiful, sex is fun, and people are weird-looking but joyous." Also at imdb, sarabay1978 raves: "Surreal hardcore films were not an extreme rarity during the mid 70s. Overnight Sensation (1976), Bacchanale (1970), Visions of Clair (1977 / scene), to name a few, were attempts at making meaningful pieces of art cinema with explicit sex, but there was never anything quite like High Rise. The shoestring plot of a woman (Tamie Trevor, seen above) going apartment hunting and falling into a series of sexual escapades is not the cleverest of plots but it's not the plot which makes this the extreme oddity it is. Danny Steinman [...] crafts a marvelously subversive, impeccably photographed treat. Harry Reems and Jamie Gillis star in the film's first and third vignettes with Reems as a strange child-like toy collector whose room is covered in both American and Confederate flags, and Gillis as yet another misogynistic nut! The minimal script allows for these two underrated thespians to ham it up to their best abilities. Both are hilarious. [...] The music perfectly complements the wonderful photography and adds another dimension to the effectiveness of this film. [...] The movie climaxes in perhaps the strangest orgy ever put on film [...]. Complete with a 7 minute version of the title song (pay attention to the lyrics, they're amazingly cryptic!), boxers, Abbot & Costello posters, Groucho Marx, gurus, psychedelic lights, and weird opticals and eventually being revealed as a massive film within a film (a running gag throughout the entire movie). [...] Suffice it to say, this is a film that should not be missed should an opportunity to see it arise!"

Theme to Iron Man (1966):

Forced Entry
(1973, writ. & dir. Shaun Costello)

Commonly cited as the first film to show a disturbed war vet coming home from Vietnam and flipping out. Harry Reems, credited as "Tim Long", plays the lead psychopath of this uncomfortable movie, the feature-length directorial debut of porn director Shaun Costello, billed here as "Helmuth Richler". Costello went on to a lengthy career (1971-89) in his field, both behind and in front of the camera, and is perhaps best remembered — aside from Forced Entry — for Water Power (1977 / excerpt), an equally infamous porno based on the on the real-life Illinois "Enema bandit", Michael H. Kenyon, who gave female college students forced enemas in the 1960s and 70s; in regard to Water Power, Costello says: "[To] this day I think it's the funniest movie I ever made." (Up until the release of The Avon Dynasty: The Shaun Costello Collection, Shaun Costello had never made a film under his real name. As he put it in an interview at AV Maniacs: "I had never been embarrassed by my connection to the porno industry, but I never advertised it either, and certainly not under my real name. This was the first time I had ever seen my real name attached to any of these films, and although I probably overreacted, I was horrified. Unlike most of the people I knew in the porno industry, I had another life, in another world, and was quite successful at not mixing the two." Not any more.) Forced Entry is a film that gains strong reactions; even Harry Reems seems to have despised it, stating in his autobiography Here Comes Harry Reems that it is the one film he regretted doing. (Oddly enough, Costello says "I hired Herb to play the crazed rapist because I knew him pretty well, and thought he would do a good job, which he did. He was very into this part and worked hard to pull it off.") In the review of the DVD release at DVD Talk, reviewer David Walker says: "If it were possible to give this film a rating of less than zero, I would do it. Do not watch Forced Entry, period. Any questions?" Grindhouse Database, which points out that the film is more of a triple-X roughie than a normal porn flick, has a different opinion, stating: "Overall Forced Entry is one of the more important and relevant films to ever come out of that age of pornography. It's a film that really transcends the time that it was made and might even be more important now than the age it was made. Sure there's a ton of nasty sexual activity in the film but the subject matter and what the movie is actually saying goes way beyond that. But be warned fellow perverts this one is the least boneriffic porn you will ever see, but it is absolutely brilliant and is finally getting the rightful attention it deserves." Cinesploition explains the plot: "Released at the peak of the Vietnam War, it was the first motion picture to use that war as central to its theme. Porn-legend Harry Reems stars as the deranged Vietnam veteran who hunts down young women, brutally torturing, raping and eventually killing them. Forced Entry is a bizarre combination of horror and sado-masochistic hardcore pornography combined in the best Grindhouse tradition. Shocking, disturbing and brutal!" The movie has been loosely remade twice, both times with the same name: the first, a non-porno exploiter from 1975 (trailer), stars Tanya Roberts (of Tourist Trap [1975]); the second, from 2002, is a repulsive straight-to-video violent fuckfest from Lizzie Bordon that landed its filmmakers in jail. The full original version is easy enough to find on the web if you search a bit...

Trailer:

 

The Devil in Miss Jones
(1973, writ & dir. Gerard Damiano)

 First NSFW 7 minutes:

Nowadays, the reigning form of pornographic film is extremely insipid and ruled primarily by HD unnatural, hairless bodies of plastic perfection pumping away tirelessly after the minimum possible setting of a plot situation. (Example: A naked man and woman meet in the bushes of a nudist camp and look in the direction of beyond the camera. She: "Hey! That's my husband with that woman over there!" He: "And that's my wife he's screwing!" She: "Should we get even with them?" He: "Yes. Let's fuck, too." She: "OK." They pump away for 30 minutes.) But once upon a time, in the days of Porno Chic and before the dawn of video, pornography was a bit different. Yes, there were the plotless loops and hand-helpers for the raincoat crowd, but there were also those who saw the sex film as a viable genre with a future and actually tried to make sex an aspect of the film and not the only thing of the film. (Those are the filmmakers that made sex films like this one, in which the plot was integral to the story and the events shown, including the carnal activities that were actually the film's true drawing card.) It was a view shared, if but for a short time, by the press and critics, as can be seen by the serious reviews of films like this one that were found in publications such as Variety ("With The Devil in Miss Jones, the hard-core porno feature approaches an art form, one that critics may have a tough time ignoring in the future") or written by critics such as Roger Ebert ("The Devil in Miss Jones is maybe a three-star dirty movie. It's the best hard-core porno film I've seen, and although I'm not a member of the raincoat brigade, I have seen the highly touted productions like Deep Throat and It Happened in Hollywood.") That the public of the time likewise viewed the porn film as a viable genre can be seen by it reception: as the tenth most successful film of 1973, just behind Paper Moon (trailer) and Live and Let Die (trailer), it earned $15 million at the U.S. box office. Not surprising, actually, that much like films such as Die Hard (1988 / trailer) or Batman (1989 / trailer) have spawned untold sequels and reboots, The Devil in Miss Jones has suffered five screen and/or direct-to-video sequels — The Devil in Miss Jones Part II (1982), The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning (1986 / scene), The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage (1986), The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno (1995) and The Devil in Miss Jones 6 (1999) — not to mention unofficial remakes such as Erwin C. Dietrich's Was geschah wirklich mit Miss Jonas? (1976) or real remakes like The Devil in Miss Jones (2005).

 Soundtrack:

But let's return to the 1973 version, Gerard Damiano's follow-up to Meatball (1972), in which the filmmaker went a different route and dumped excessive goofy comedy for a serious if not slightly downbeat dramatic plot and ended up creating another acknowledged classic of the Golden Age. (Roger Ebert: "The hard-core stuff aside, they maintain a very nice, moody, even poignant atmosphere that's a relief after all the frantic fun-seeking of Miss Lovelace and colleagues. [...] This is the first porno movie I've seen that actually seems to be about its leading character — instead of merely using her as the object of sexual variations.") The plot, as explained on numerous websites: "Justine Jones (Georgina Spelvin), a spinster in her early thirties takes her life-not because of anything that happened to her but rather because nothing ever happened to her. Each day a void, a nothingness, piled up on the nothingness of the day before. Confronted by the devil (John Clemens) and faced with spending an eternity in hell, she imposes the hypothetical premise: If I had my life to live over, I would live a life filled... engulfed... consumed by lust!!! This sets in motion a series of erotic encounters that reach far beyond the range of human experiences-an in-depth study of sexual behavior that transcends the norm and blooms into a true from of erotic art." They fail to mention the rather depressing and ironic ending of the movie... Harry Reems appears as "The Teacher", the man who helps school Miss Jones upon her return to earth.

Trailer to the remake (2005):

 

Fast Ball
(1973, dir. "Tim Davies")

 

One for the raincoat crowd, with Harry Reems (credited as "Jim Greos") as the main penis; penis number two was played by "Frank Wixon". Director "Tim Davies", aka "Tim Hayes", made a total of six sex films in 1973 — including this one — before falling off the face of the earth (the other films being Round Robin, Redliners, Head Nurse, Head Set and Quick Turnover). In truth, however, both Tims are actually two more pseudonyms of Leonard "Lenny" Kirtman, who usually used the pseudonym "Leon Gucci". Among the numerous projects that he produced or directed are the horror schlupp-schlupp-spurt-spurt flicks Erotic Dr. Jekyll (1976), Sex Wish (1976), The Devil Inside Her (1977 / scene / full NSFW film) and Unwilling Lovers (1977 / scene / full NSFW film), as well as the grindhouse horrors Carnival of Blood (1970), Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972) and Death by Invitation (1971 / trailer). The poster of Fast Ball infers a sports sex film ("She had a nice curve and a fast ball", "No one ever struck out" and "She could handle more than one ball"), but One Sheet Index offers a different plot: "This is the true to life story of a young and beautiful girl (Andrea True) who runs away from her home and her middle class parents, in search of excitement and adventure in a motorcycle gang. Worried, her parents hire a private investigator to track her down. He follows her through the city for several days and secures a film and tape record of her sexual adventures with the leader of the motorcycle gang ("Jim Greos", aka Harry Reems). Love is rough for the young girl. She discovers that her boyfriend is intimately involved both with her and her roommate (Darby Lloyd Rains). In a fit of jealousy, she decides to seek revenge by sleeping with the gang leader's brother (Frank Wixon). That night the leader and her roommate discover the two of them making love and what ensues was a scene that you will not soon forget."

From Leonard "Lenny" Kirtman, without Harry Reems — Trailer to the Carnival of Blood and Curse of the Headless Horseman double feature:

Carnival of Blood plus Curse of the Headless... von bmoviebabe



Head Nurse
(1973, dir. "Tim Davies")

 

A one-day wonder for the raincoat crowd, with Harry Reems and Andrea True. Director "Tim Davies", aka "Tim Hayes", made a total of six one-day wonders in 1973 — including this one — before falling off the face of the earth (the other films being Round Robin, Redliners, Fast Ball, Head Set and Quick Turnover). In truth, however, both Tims are actually two more pseudonyms of Leonard "Lenny" Kirtman, who usually used the pseudonym "Leon Gucci". Once again, One Sheet Index knows the score: "Doctor Millstein decides to hire a new Head Nurse. He selects Carol, a young naive trainee who has just arrived from the country. Carol does not understand his techniques when he asks her to undress. He gives her a thorough physical — oral, anal and genital. She finds it strange and pleasurable at the same time. Carol feels that this must be part of the job. She is witness to many strange scenes. She sees Dr. Rogers making love to a corpse. [!!!] She sees Dr. Millstein making love to test tubes. She is sent for further training with the nurses and gets involved in lesbian scenes. Now she is ready to meet her patients. As she goes from patient to patient, she realizes more to nursing than meets the eye."

Andrea True Connection's 2nd "hit" — NY NY You Got Me Dancing:

Filthiest Show in Town
(1973, dir. Richard & Robert A. Endelson)

Aka The Naughtiest Show in Town, The Sexiest Show in Town, and The Wickedest Show in Town. The début film of the bros Richard Endelson and Robert A. Endelson, to quote Rob Craig in his book Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan, "[...] is one of the earliest examples of the 'omnibus' or 'pastiche' film, wherein short comedic sketches with a loosely-based theme are surrounded by a framing device which (theoretically) ties them all together. [...] The basic premise in Filthiest Show in Town is that a risqué television network, 'National Genital Television,' is raided and brought to trial on obscenity charges [...]." Perhaps this film once existed in an X-rated, in-out-in-out-in-out version, but the version available now on DVD or online is strictly soft-core: lots of frontal nudity of both sexes, no action. At Rovie, Clarke Fountain seems only to have noticed the main show of the omnibus: "This low-budget soft-core pornographic satire actually has more story than porn. The story concerns the obscenity trial for a pornographic game show ['The Maiden Game']. The contestants, who appear in skimpy underwear, choose to date one another based on the answers they give to various erotic questions. Harry Reems and Dolly Sharp are among the more-or-less clothed porn luminaries who appear here. The film is to a certain extent a satire of the dating game shows of the time." Video Vacuum complains "[The] Filthiest Show in Town is essentially a porno movie without the porn. Even the worst pornos with the worst plots and the worst acting have SOME decent XXX action. But with this film, you have to sit through all the plot stuff and horrid acting without the benefit of being rewarded with hardcore footage. [...] Most sex comedies are filled with double entendres, but this movie can't even muster a single entendre. Heck, it's more like a half entendre. There are also some commercial parodies sprinkled throughout, but again, none of them are funny. There are some stretches where the film feels like a Kentucky Fried Movie (1977 / trailer) rip-off. Minus the laughs, of course." Richard and Robert A. Endelson went on to do one more film together, a forgotten "grindhouse classic of racism, rape and revenge" entitled Fight for Your Life (1977) which, to quote Blue Underground, is "one of the few movies to ever drive even the most jaded 42nd Street audiences into uncontrollable frenzy. This is the story of three escaped convicts (led by William Sanderson of Blade Runner (1982 / trailer) as the sickest psycho redneck in cinema history) who take a middle-class Black family hostage for a relentless nightmare of racist humiliation, sexual violence and extreme vengeance. No sleazehound who's seen it can ever forget Fight for Your Life!"

Trailer to Fight for Your Life:

 


Over Sexposure
(1973, dir. "Vance Farlowe")

AKA Spikey's Magic Wand and Different Strokes. OK, we admit the following is mostly conjecture and we here at A Wasted Life have no proof, but the loose strings do seem to tie a possible bow in our eyes — please feel free to send us info confirming or disproving our conjectures. 

Anyone out there know the writer John Warren Wells? During the 1970s he wrote a number of "non-fiction" books on sexuality in the United States with such swell titles as Beyond Group Sex, The Wife-Swap Report, Three Is Not A Crowd and Different Strokes or How I (Gulp!) Wrote, Directed, and Starred in an X-rated Movie. Interesting books one and all, if dated, and all well-written — which they should be, considering that "John Warren Wells" was/is actually Lawrence Block. Of the last book mentioned, Different Strokes, the eBook afterword says: "Let me begin by telling you, Gentle Reader, that the book you just read, the script and production diary of the 1970s film Different Strokes, is nothing but a pack of lies. No such film was ever produced, and all the engaging characters, the acts they perform and the sparkling conversations they conduct, are wholly fictitious, the products of the fertile if warped imagination of one person." Oddly enough, however, he also says that he actually held production meetings with a director and producer and wrote a script and held a casting call with the projected starlet — no one less than Andrea True — during which they watched some of her fuck films, but that later, "somewhere along the line, everything seemed to stall out." And while the film Block wrote, as far as he knew, never got made, he still wrote the book about it as if it had been made: "And so I finished the book. Did I make any changes in the screenplay? I have no idea, but my guess is that I used it exactly as I'd written it. Then, of course, I had to write the production diary, but that was easy enough. It was fiction, and I’d been writing fiction for years."
So what's all that got to do with Over Sexposure? Well, Over Sexposure, the director of which is theoretically unknown, is also known by the name Different Strokes, while in Harry Reems's biography he mentions that he made a film named Spikey's Magic Wand, directed by "Vance Farlowe", that upon its release was renamed Different Strokes. And some on-line sources claim that Spikey's Magic Wand is the original name of the German-language porno film entitled Dr Snake und die Geilen Baby Dolls ("Dr Snake and the Horny Baby Dolls"), which is easy enough to find on the web. What we notice is that all films were released in 1973 and feature many of the same names (Jamie Gillis, Marc Stevens, Harry Reems, Cindy West, Georgina Spelvin and Andrea True) and, furthermore, the picture of the blonde babe on the poster of Different Strokes is taken directly from Dr Snake und die Geilen Baby Dolls. Could they all be one and the same film — and possibly be based on John Warren Wells's original script, entitled Different Strokes? Who knows — regrettably, while we have many of John Warren Wells's books, we don't have Different Strokes or How I (Gulp!) Wrote, Directed, and Starred in an X-rated Movie, and though we've seen snatches of (and in) Dr Snake und die Geilen Baby Dolls online, we have no access to the others for comparison. In any event, one flaw to our conjecture is that the films also seem to all have different plots — but who knows, maybe one or the other or all were once upon a time based on Lawrence Block's original porno script, Different Strokes.

The German dub of Spikey's Magic Wand ("Dr Snake und die Geilen Baby Dolls"), which one German site claims is one of the weirdest of all times, tells the following tale: "Dr Snake no longer can get it up! At least that is what his wife thinks, so she goes for the chauffeur. In the meantime, the Doc prefers to get it on with his naturally horny secretary and invents a sex machine that enables multi-ultra-turbo orgasms." In turn, according to Something Weird, the English version of Different Strokes aka Over Sexposure aka Spikey's Magic Wand tells the following story: "In one corner, you've got Bernie, an Afro'd twerp who looks like the lost fourth Hudson Brother. In the other corner is Charles (Rick Lutze), a chuckling muttonhead with a bad Prince Valiant hairdo(n't) and his slutty almost-Asian wife. After a bout of rise-fuck-and-shine, Bernie splits for Charles' house where he works as Charles' wife's agent (she's a screenwriter — oh, sure) and, of course, he's screwing her right under Charlie's nose. But Charles is too busy to notice 'cause he's laying pipe to Jennifer West, the only member of his acting class (!) which is apparently held in his living room. The whole elaborately stupid scheme is, er, blown wide open when Charles and his wife stumble upon Bernie conducting a cavity search on the acting student. Charlie's wife confesses to boning Bernie, and he makes her eat out the wanna-be starlet. This is some kind of solution, I guess." For those of you who speak German, the NSFW Dr Snake und die Geilen Baby Dolls can be seen for free here.

The Collegiates
(1973, dirs. Robert Josephs and Carter Stevens)

Written by "Merry Seaman"; director Carter Stevens, born Malcom Stephen Worob ("a chubby Jew boy from New Jersey", to use his own words), worked on both side of the camera (in a variety of positions and under a variety of names) but retired in the early 1990s. His early films like this one were generally light-hearted affairs, but by the 80s he was pretty much a specialist of S&M and B&D. He also directed the horror porn House of Sin (1982), appeared in the Italo-sleaze film Blue Nude (1977 / soundtrack), and was the publisher of one of the most popular S&M publications in the US, The S&M News, by the time he was forced into retirement by bi-pass surgery. According to the interview with him at Cinefear, he never planned to become "an adult film maker": while trying to break into the industry with a "legit" exploitation film, he met Terry Levene from Aquarias releasing — the man that brought Dr. Butcher MD (1980 / trailer) to the US — who told Carter that he would release any X-rated film Carter would make no matter how bad, so Carter gave himself a crash course in porno films ("I went out and saw about a dozen pornos in about 3 days") and went and made The Collegiates on a budget of $17,000. The rest is history, as they say... Over at SexGoreMutants they saw the film (which is currently available on a variety of DVD collections) and say: "Opening with twee music, we watch pretty and demure student Georgia (the superbly named Tanya Tickler) return to her student residence after the summer holidays. Upon her arrival, she walks in on housemates Kathy (Kim Pope) and Leslie (Bertha Jones) enjoying cunnilingus from a very willing Lexington (Harry Reems). Georgia disapproves and refuses Lexington's invitation to join in, instead retiring to masturbate in bed while the other three continue to fuck. Georgia, her housemates inform Lexington, is a very uptight virgin. Not for long, if this three have anything to do with it! That's it story-wise, but the film doesn't need much more to fill its tight 58-minute running time. The sex scenes are well lit and surprisingly tender, taking their time to unfold before reaching their reasonably well-captured money shots. In-between, we get an unexpected amount of decent acting, witty dialogue and even some artful camerawork." The soundtrack was written and performed by the Manchester group Sweet Chariot and Friends. The full film, by the way, can be watched online right here.

Carter Stevens talking about making porn:

 


The New Comers
(1973, writ. & dir. Lloyd Kaufman as "Louis Su")

 

Aka Seven Delicious Wishes. Even Lloyd Kaufman had to start somewhere. Actually, he had some other non-porno credits before this, but just before he founded Troma, he ran into some financial difficulties due to his mega-flop third directorial effort Big Gus, What's the Fuss? (1973) and, alongside various other projects under his real name, popped out three X-rated features to kill his debts. (Aside from The New Comers, he also made The Divine Obsession [1976, also as "Luois Su"] and Sweet and Sour [1974, as "H.V. Spyder"].) As is often the case with sex films of that time, despite serious attention — Variety even gave The New Comers a review — the movies have been forgotten, if not buried, and little information can be found about any of the films online. But over at One Sheet Index, they have the original press packet, which states: "From the great show biz legacy that gave us Sound of Music (1965 / trailer), Hello Dolly (1969 / trailer), arid [sic] Irene (1940), comes The Newcomers, the first musical comedy of its kind. A compelling story of young, innocent love is intertwined with a socially significant discussion which explores the question of legalized prostitution. This X-rated musical comedy features an original score and was photographed in 35mm Eastman-color. X-rated Super-Stars Georgina Spelvin, Harry Reams, Tina Russell and Marc Stevens head the unusually large cast of talented young performers, who sing, dance and frolic their way into the hearts of mature men and women everywhere." Assuming it is truly a musical, then it beat the film commonly given as the first porno musical, Bud Townsend's much better known Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy (1976 / trailer) by a good three years. As is perhaps appropriate for a porno musical, the film also features the forgotten penis of "Davey Jones", seen above to the left, whose similarity to a specific member of The Monkees named Davy Jones has caused some to insist that the latter made a sex film or two.

 
The full version of the film that made Kaufman go porno, Big Gus, What's the Fuss? (1973):

 


Case of the Full Moon Murders
(1973, dir. Sean S. Cunningham and Brud Talbot)

Aka The Case of the Smiling Stiffs and Sex on the Groove Tube. Cunningham's third directorial effort and follow-up to The Last House on the Left (1972 / trailer), which he only produced. He co-directed this flop with Brud Talbot. Cunningham we all know about, but Talbot is a dead and forgotten man; born Joseph Bruce Talbot (19 Sept 1938 - 20 Nov 1986), he had previously acted in forgotten low budget dramas like Force of Impulse (1961) and Without Each Other (1962), and went on to act as a producer of the great 3-D western Comin' at Ya! (1981 / trailer). According to Robert Firsching at Rovi, "Looking for a project after producing the successful Last House on the Left, genre filmmaker Sean S. Cunningham took on Brad Talbot's idea of filming a softcore sex comedy in Florida. When the money disappeared, Cunningham was left to finish the project on his own, and its troubled production is evident in every painfully unfunny frame." The Case of the Smiling Stiffs was pretty much a flop everywhere except in Australia, where it was supposedly a hit. It got re-released with hardcore inserts but didn't do any better; currently only the soft-core version is known to have survived. Harry Reems plays the reporter Silverman, who actually solves the case, and for a change we never see his weenie. The porn site 3X Update explains the plot: "A man's body is found, the victim of a female vampire who doesn't go for the neck... [...] An arresting tale that bares investigation! For the past four months, the city of Miami has been plagued by a mysterious string of murders, occurring after each full moon. Each corpse is male, and has been found in bed with a huge grin on his face. Unlike the case of Dracula, who drained his victims from the neck, these victims are drained from a more discreet part of the body. The police department and the two zany detectives, Joe (Fred Lincoln) and Frank (Ron Milkie of Torture Chamber [2012 / trailer], Satan's Playground [2006 / trailer], and Friday the 13th [1980 / trailer]) that are called in to investigate, are baffled. Joe and Frank, along with Silverman (Harry Reems), a reporter, begin a thorough investigation. No stone remains unturned in their search for the killer. Their dedication to finding the culprit gets them involved in orgies, parties and strip poker games, in which they become participants — but only 'in the line of duty'!" Sheila Stuart stars as Emma, the female vampire who makes the men very happy as she sucks out their blood.

 
Scene from Case of the Full Moon Murders:

 


College Girls
(1974, director unknown)

Little is known about this film; even its distributor, DistribPix, is unable to supply the name of the director or stars in its list of productions — unlike the less-than-reliable iafd, which supplies no director but claims that the movie stars Harry Reems, Dolly Sharp and Darby Lloyd Rains. Oddly enough, however, DistribPix did list the same three stars on their blog on 15 February 2010 when they claimed the film was going to the lab to be transferred for future DVD release, but since then they have been silent and no new news has appeared. The poster above goes to the original film... which shares the title with another grindhouse piece of flotsam from 1968, College Girls (poster left), a B&W sexploitation comedy by the sadly overlooked and minimally talented director Stephen C. Apostolof.

 NSFW trailer to Stephen C. Apostolof's College Girls:

COLLEGE GIRLS sex comedy sexploitation 1968... von chikungfu

Apostolof, the well-informed might know, made his directorial début as "A.C. Stephen" with the Ed-Wood-Jr-scripted Orgy of the Dead (1965 / intro) and then went on to work with Wood on at least seven more known projects: The Class Reunion (1972), Drop Out Wife (1972), The Snow Bunnies (1972), The Cocktail Hostesses (1973), Five Loose Women (1974 / trailer / full film), The Beach Bunnies (1976) and Hot Ice (1978). According to TCM, the plot to Apostolof's College Girls, which was distributed by Sack Amusement Enterprises (a now-defunct, once white-owned Texas firm which has its place in film history as once being the major distributor of "race films"), is as follows: "Behind the ivy-covered walls of an American University, students pursue a variety of erotic activities. Professor Bryce (Sean O'Hara) prefers sex 'research' to teaching biology; no female student ever fails his course. Rosie and Fluff (Gee Gentell) take charge of initiating the virgin Wistful (Randy Lee) into Lamba Sigma Delta (LSD) fraternity. At the celebration that follows, inhibitions are released with a variety of stimulants. Harry (Moose Howard), a roughneck football player, rapes Janie (Dianna Rosano), who is comforted by Prof. Bryce's lesbian wife (Michelle Rodan). 'He-Man' Charlie (Forman Shane), head of the fraternity, Class president, football hero and playboy, downs too many LSD tablets and attempts to fly off the balcony. He awakens in a doctor's office and swears off drug-induced excitement." The plot of DistribPix's College Girls is as unknown as the film's director.

Logo for ''Sack Amusement Enterprises'' (1939):

 


Pleasure Cruise
(1971, 1973 or 1974, dir. Don Lang and/or David Sear and/or Phillip Bojalad)

Another film of mystery featuring Harry Reems. There is an 18-minute version of it over at Hot Movies, but originally it seems to have been about an hour in length. As can be seen by the pictures at Hot Movies, the basic plot seems to be that people on a boat and screwing. As normal, its original distributor, DistribPix, is unable to supply the name of the director or stars in its list of productions (much less a plot description) — unlike the less-than-reliable iafd, which offers no plot but does list the film's fuckers as Harry Reems, Steve Blackwell, Andrea True and Sandy King. They also list "Don Lang" as the director, whereas the Copyright Encyclopedia lists him as producer and David Sear as the director; Sear also directed in Reems in Ape Over Love (1974). In turn, One Sheet Index lists the totally unknown Phillip Bojalad as the director, and the poster they have lists (as does the imdb) a "Donna Martine" as being in the movie, a name that we couldn't find anywhere else. Something Weird has a film under the same title, but it is doubtful it is the same film as it does not seem to feature Harry Reems or Andrea True or even a single Afro-American actor, which is what Steve Blackwell is, and the massively mammaried brunette shown at Something Weird is nowhere to be seen in the photos at Hot Movies. (Also, over at imdb, in lor of New York City saw the Something Weird release and categorically says that the film is "a regional porno film made in Tennessee [with ...] no relation to the Harry Reems / Andrea True movie of the same name.") But to offer up the only plot description we could find (at One Sheet Index) of the Reems/True movie: "The Captain and his wife had a good thing going. They rented out their 50-foot Pleasure Cruiser on a daily basis for a good fee. However, when they rented their boat to two young and beautiful girls, they got more than they bargained for. No sooner did they leave the dock then the girls turned the cruise into a sexual orgy that burns up the ocean. The captain is liberal enough to close his eyes to what is happening between the girls and his crew. However, when they all decide to have a picnic on a deserted island, and the Captain's wife goes with them, he gets a little nervous. Then he decides that they have been gone to long. So he swims ashore to check things out. What he finds is that his wife is the leader in the sexual daisy chain that makes the party on the boat look tame. He goes berserk and destroys them all to teach them that pleasure can be carried to far."

A Touch of Genie
(1974, writ. & dir. Joseph W. Sarno)

Harry Reems plays "Himself" in this X-rated fantasy comedy from the legendary (s)exploitation filmmaker and producer Joseph W. Sarno, the auteur who brought the world such trash classics as Sin in the Suburbs (1964 / 5.5 minutes / full film), Flesh and Lace (1966 / scene), Moonlighting Wives (1966 / trailer / full film), The Bed and How to Make It! (1966 / opening titles) and the early X-rated classic Inga (1968 / opening credits). Jason Russell, the then-husband of porno legend Tina Russell (who's in the film) and former working penis, "conceived" the plot: a riff parodying the classic TV show I Dream of Jeanie (1965-70). A Touch of Genie was long thought lost, but it recently resurfaced and is now easy to find on DVD. Movie House says "Not only is this film from the classic era of hardcore and stars all the biggest names from 70s porn, but it is hilarious and professionally assembled. This is one of Sarno's favorite films, and for good reason. He combines Yiddish theater humor from his childhood, a spoof of a popular TV show, and hardcore performers to create something that has to be seen to be believed. I couldn't decide if the comedy shtick or the sex was the best part of the film. This is a romantic comedy, and has an appropriately happy ending, but the getting there was all of the fun." Mondo Digital seems to share the general opinion, and says. "[This] is an obscure, presumed-lost oddity from Joe Sarno from his brief goofball comedy period in the mid-'70s, and the end result mixing porno chic culture with rib-nudging Jewish humor resembles what might happen if some nutcase grabbed a colorized print of Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors (1960 / trailer / full film) and reshot random scenes with actual sex. The performances and direction are all over the top, to say the least, and it's a grin-inducing reminder of a time when people treated this genre like any other." The plot? Let's go to 3x Update for that: "Poor Melvin! His meddling mother is making him nutz. His only relief is the covert afternoons he spends at New York's notorious Times Square porn theaters. One day, Melvin discovers a genie in a bottle (Chris Jordan). What does he wish? To become his favorite adult superstars and indulge in wild sexual adventures with the sexiest women of the silver screen. Starring Doug Stone as Melvin Finkelfarb and Ultramax — the First Lady of New York Porn! — as his Yiddishe mama." While it lasts, the x-rated cut of A Touch of Genie can be found here.

Trailer:

 


The Love Witch
(1974, dir. Mort Shore)

Here's a forgotten burlesque that seems to have gotten a DVD re-release at some point with some exceptionally deceptive packaging (see left). And though a hardcore film, Harry Reeves is one of the two non-sex performers of the film, playing multiple parts: The Judge, the District Attorney and the Sheriff. Seeing that the framing story of the film concerns a man on trial for obscenity, Reems' casting is obviously a direct reference to his court troubles after Deep Throat (1972). The other non-sex performer who plays the defendant on trial, in an odd case of serendipity, is no one less than Gus Thomas aka Ralph Carl aka Robert Bell, who was an active cocksman from 1972-75 and appeared in such films as It Happened in Hollywood (1973) and High Rise (1974): Thomas, whose real name is Marc Suben, is now the District Attorney of Cortland County, NY, and — needless to say — regrets his porno past. According to imdb, the real name of director "Mort Shore" is "Morton Schwartz", but under either name he seems to have only made this film before falling off the face of the earth. According to one German-language website, which says that one should not expect a forgotten classic when screening this film, Harry Reems does all the talking in the film as a voiceover and all money shots are emphasized with TV Batman (1966-68) pop art interjections like "ZAP!", "POW" and whatever. The courtroom material seems to have been added later to the hardcore material, some of which is shot neither on a boat nor in an ocean, so The Love Witch could well be an example of the old trick of making a "feature film" from remnants; if so, the raincoat crowd was probably a bit put out by Reems's speeches about freedom of speech and artistic liberty. Over at imdb, pbutterfly of the United States seems to have liked the movie: "This movie is about people getting it on and having a good time on a boat called The Love Witch. It all feels very natural, and there is no privileging of male pleasure, nor is there an objectifying camera. The sex is shot from a neutral angle, and is mostly full-body. The text emphasizes sexual expression without making any judgments about women, and the sex scenes are interspersed with courtroom scenes in which Harry Reems [...] pleads the case of sexual freedom, playing several characters against creative avant-garde painted backdrops. The plot is structured almost like Dante's Inferno, in which Harry Reems takes the judge to the boat to witness these sins of mortals, and they debate as to the moral or immoral character of the sex they are witnessing. In all cases, sex is seen as positive and fulfilling, and so the message to the audience is to release themselves from the shackles of morality and repression, and enjoy their bodies. A very 1970s take on sex, both refreshing and political."

Deep Throat Part II
(1974, writ. and dir. Joseph W. Sarno)

 Deeper and Deeper, from the soundtrack of Deep Throat II
(written by Tony Bruno and M. Kupersmith):

Every successful film begets its sequel, and this one is soft-core; four more hardcore "name-only" sequels followed eventually, none of which — unlike this one here — featured either Linda Lovelace ("I'm just a simple girl who likes to go to swinging parties and nudist colonies.") or Harry Reems. As far as we can tell, Deep Throat Part II is the first film that Harry Reems made with Sarno (DPII came out in February 1974, A Touch of Genie in May). To ensure an R-rating, the film was made soft-core, but the English-language version in general circulation seems to be missing even the non-graphic sex scenes (you have to get the Italian version to see them). The primitive editing of the film has led to the rumor that the film was originally shot as a triple-X film and then re-edited and the sex scenes lost, a rumor director Sarno negated in interviews. Whatever the case may be, the final film that was released was described by a critic at Variety as "the shoddiest of exploitation film traditions, a depressing fast buck attempt to milk a naive public". A.V. Club doesn't have a higher opinion of the film, either, saying: "[...] The acting is terrible and the 'wacky' comedy excruciating, but the biggest problem with Deep Throat II is that it's such a blatant, ill-conceived cash grab. Even though the title Deep Throat had become a household name, there were still communities that wanted nothing to do with it. The R-rated sequel was pitched to a wider market, but Sarno's producers still met resistance from the heartland — and annoyance from pornhounds, who had no interest in watching Lovelace and Reems not have sex. [...] Deep Throat II definitely seems to be missing something — besides entertainment value, of course." 

AV Maniacs, on the other hand, sees the film succeed on a bad-film level: "The film is quite interesting as a curiosity item. It's not a good movie, and the comedy in it is pretty mundane (save for Reems and Gillis, who are always reliable and always entertaining), but the sheer weirdness of it all helps the film, much like it did in Linda Lovelace for President (1975 / scene / another scene)." The plot? Over at Rovi, Mark Deming seems to have seen the "antic ribald comedy": "A well-meaning nurse finds herself targeted by a handful of would-be espionage agents in this oddball adult comedy, an in-name-only sequel to the most infamous porn film of the 1970s. Nurse Lovelace (Linda Lovelace) works for Dr. Young (Harry Reems), a high-strung sex therapist with an outsized erotic appetite. The equally libidinous Lovelace often helps the doctor as a surrogate, and she finds herself quite taken with one of their clients, Dilbert Lamb (Levi Richards of Radley Metzger's Naked Came the Stranger [1975 / DVD trailer] and Doris Wishman's Come with Me My Love [1976 / trailer] and A Night to Dismember [1983 / trailer / full film]). Lamb is a nerdy computer expert who is frightened of women but attracted to his straight-laced Aunt Juliet (Tina Russell), and Lovelace is working with him to resolve his anxieties about the opposite sex. But Lovelace is hardly the only one interested in Lamb; he's been working with the government on the development of a new supercomputer, and he's being followed by a handful of inept Soviet agents led by Sonya Toroscova (Chris Jordan), a CIA operative (Jamie Gillis) and his dim-witted underlings, and Ken Wacker (David Davidson), consumer advocate and political gadfly. As Lamb becomes the focus of an underground manhunt, Lovelace becomes a pawn in the game, and might be in grave danger if anyone involved knew what they were doing. [...]."

 La La Linda from the soundtrack of Deep Throat II
(written by Michael Colicchio):




Teenage Cheerleader
(1974, dir. Richard D'Antoni)

This film was one for the raincoat crowd: virtually no story, tons of sex. As far as we can tell, director Richard D'Antoni only made one other film, the similarly themed porno from 1973 entitled Campus Girls. Harry Reems is just one of many working stiffs in this film, the "Guy in Library". DistribPix, the original distributors (who now offer the film on DVD) say: "Predating the Debbie Does Dallas (1978 / edited trailer) cheerleading phenomenon by several years, this film is a sexy light-hearted farce featuring classic New York pornsters Jamie Gillis, delicious Darby Lloyd Raines and cute Cindy West. The real reason to watch however is the performance by gorgeous one-hit wonder Susie Mitchell." Over at imdb, Anonymous offers a blow-by-blow description: "The film starts as Suzie (Mitchell) walks in on three other female students who seduce the athlete student Leonard (Marc Stevens) in the bathroom before his game. The girls peer pressure Suzie to not only join in but be the only one going all the way. On the way to the game, the school-bus driver takes a break, causing the athletes and cheerleaders to pass the time in a sex orgy. Back in class, a teacher (Jamie Gillis) discusses Darwin and religion while secretly getting a fellatio by a student under his desk. A few rows forward, Leonard secretly gets Suzie to give him a hand job. While in a library, an older guy takes it for granted when a knelt down red-haired cheerleader and her friend suddenly take interest in his crotch. Once again, Suzie comes in and is peer pressured to be the one going all the way. The young school nurse inspects Suzie's boyfriend's strained crotch from the game, and suddenly gives him fellatio. Suzie comes in but the nurse pressers her to join them. Later on, Suzie gets it on with various school athletes in various locations." The censured poster is from Sweden.

Deadly Weapons
(1974, dir. Doris Wishman)

One of Doris Wishman's most famous films, Deadly Weapons features Harry Reems in a non-porno role. We saw this movie years ago in a double feature with Double Agent 73 (1974 / trailer) which, according to Wishman's cinematographer C. Davis Smith, were both filmed at the same time. We have to admit that despite being big fans of bad films — and both films are very, very bad — we found the two movies far more unsettling and disturbing than funny or entertaining. Chesty Morgan is anything but an appealing or attractive or talented performer, and she actually often not only looks as if her gargantuan breasts are causing her severe pain, but she seems almost drugged. We felt dirty watching these films, as if we were trying to laugh at the expense of a freak of nature that was suffering due to the deformity. Over at 366 Weird Movies, which describes Wishman (as do many) as "the female Ed Wood and the creator of history's least sexy sexploitation movies", they are able to make jokes about that which repulsed us, saying: "John Waters had the incomparable Divine. Wishman had the incomparable Chesty Morgan. The big difference is that Divine could actually act. Morgan, an exploitation freak of nature, was the energizer bunny rabbit to Wishman's directorial enthusiasm. Morgan's voice is dubbed in both films. Apparently, her Polish accent was so thick as to be indecipherable. Unfortunately, her acting range is nowhere near as mammoth as her breasts. Morgan begins with leathery boredom and ends with celluloid sleepwalking. Now, dress this big-breasted zombie up in bad wigs and garish clothing to enact a zany plot!" (Some credit for this "movie" should probably also go to Wishman's scriptwriter and niece Judy J. Kushner [22 Dec. 1941 - 27 May 2006], who also worked on the scripts to Wishman's A Night to Dismember [1983 / trailer / full film], The Immoral Three [1975 / trailer], Double Agent 73 [1974] and Love Toy [1973 / trailer].) TV Guide explains the plot as follows: "Sent by his gangster boss Mr. Batty to retrieve an incriminating address book, thug Larry (Richard Towers of Nubile Nuisance [2006 / trailer]) instead steals it and launches his own blackmail scheme. He leaves the book for safekeeping with his girlfriend Crystal (Chesty Morgan), who doesn't know about his shady line of work. Crystal visits her father, who wonders why she is unwilling to tell him anything about the man she is hoping to marry. When Batty finds out that Larry is the one blackmailing him, he orders his henchmen Tony (Harry Reems) and 'Capt. Hook' (Mitchell Fredericks) to kill him. They shoot Larry while he is on the phone with Crystal; not knowing she is listening, they discuss their plans to skip town for awhile, Hook to Las Vegas, Tony to Miami. Having also heard that Hook enjoys burlesque houses, Crystal goes to Las Vegas and gets a job as a stripper in the hotel where Hook said he would be staying. After a show, he invites her for a drink and takes her back to his room. She drugs his drink and then smothers him to death between her breasts. Heading to Miami, she kills Tony in the same way. Crystal returns home and mentions to her father (Phillip Stahl of Wishman's Keyholes Are for Peeping [1972 / scene]) that she must contact the police regarding the book that got Larry killed. That night she finds her father searching her apartment: he is Mr. Batty. She refuses to give him the book and he shoots her. Mortally wounded, she pulls a gun from a cabinet and kills him, too." Chesty Morgan took part in one other movie of note after this, Fellini's Casanova (1976 / trailer), but her scenes were deleted.

 

Trailer:

Deadly Weapons (1974) von bmoviebabe
 

Memories Within Miss Aggie
(1974, dir. Gerard Damiano) 

 

Written by Ron Wertheim (see Sexual Freedom in Brooklyn and Selling It in Part II of this career review). Gerard Damiano followed his horror film Legacy of Satan (1974) — which may or may not have originally been an X-rated porn horror but is only available in a savagely edited sexless version — with this film. Over at imdb, according to genet-1 of France, "Gerard Damiano's third fiction feature after Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones is a dark and chilly fable, intended, he says, to carry on the story of the latter's heroine, Justine Jones, had she not committed suicide." Carnal Cinema points out that "The fractured reminiscences of an elderly woman might not sound especially erotic, but then Memories Within Miss Aggie is not really an erotic film; it's an explicit film — an adult film — but not a film that can really be characterised to as erotic. Our principle cast is comprised of an aged couple, the eponymous Aggie (Norah Ashera) and her companion Richard (Patrick Farrelly), who appear to be suffering from a variety of ailments. He is ashen-faced and confined to a wheelchair; she is physically able — as evidenced by her scrubbing the floor at the film's outset — but may not be mentally sound. Stepping outside, she 'sees' a young couple running hand-in-hand — an image which is subsequently presented as a memory. Furthermore, when she discards the water with which she's been cleaning, she momentarily perceives the previously-white snow to be stained with blood." BFI, in turn, reduces their commentary to the bare bones: "The elderly Miss Aggie inhabits an isolated farmhouse with Richard, a man of few words. While making him a cup of tea one day, she remembers or fantasizes sexual episodes from her youth." In the memories she narrates, in each case a different actress plays her character. Harry Reems shows up as delivery man in one of her "memories" who she seduces after using a small doll to get herself all hot and bothered. As was often the case in the day of Porno Chic, the film was even reviewed in The New York Times on 23 June 1974, where Vincent Canby said: "[...] I was anxious to see Memories Within Miss Aggie, a movie that one critic has described as being 'rich with intimations of Psycho (1960 / trailer), and Images (1972 / scene) and Faulkner,' and whose director, Gerard Damiano, a former hairdresser and X-ray, technician, has been called the Ingmar Bergman of porn. [...] Corn is more like it. [..] Memories Within Miss Aggie is an overcooked, guilt-stuffed cabbage of a movie, which, like The Devil in Miss Jones, pretends to seriousness through its synthetically solemn framing device. [...] When Aggie has gotten through her three fantasies, which are probably all that the budget would allow, Damiano lets us in on a secret that we could have been let in on at any earlier point in the film. That is — are you ready — that none of these things really happened, and that Miss Aggie, as crazy as a bedbug, put a carving knife through the skull of the man whose body she still keeps by the kitchen stove. [...]"

Doctor Feelgood
(1974, dir. Robert M. Mansfield)

Aka Dr Feelgood's Sex Clinic. Harry Reems and "Inger Kissin" (otherwise known as Andrea True) are the big names on the posters of this movie, a movie about which virtually nothing can be found online. Check your attic, as we would assume this movie to be lost. We did find one mention on page 113 of Vol. 27 of John Willis' Screen World (1976); it offers no plot description, but reveals that the film was "presented" by forgotten exploitation producer Allan Shackleton. In regard to the double feature advertised here left, in a copy of the Ottowa Citizen from Feb 1, 1978, Charles Gordon rather surrealistically says in his article Time again for a review of available smut that "It is difficult to know how to compare these two. Each employs a unique mis-en-scene but she gets shot fatally in the tummy in the first one. In the second, she survives and painfully relearns how to water-ski, only to die of pneumonia after catching a chill during the burning of Atlanta and forgetting that she never had to say she was sorry." Another website has Uschi Digard listed as participating in the film, something neither John Willis nor any poster confirms. We would assume that this film is probably a "comedy" for the raincoat crowd that tries to ride of Reems's then-famous persona as the "doctor" that found Lovelace's clit in her throat...

Wet Rainbow
(1974, dir. Duddy Kane)

 

Written by the equally pseudonymous Roger Wald. This relatively unknown film seems to get good press by those who see it. The University of Chicago explains the film as follows: "Made at the height of the so-called 'porno chic' period, this big budget character study drama was directed by the mysterious Duddy Kane, this being his only credit. Sexploitation stalwart actors Harry Reems and Georgina Spelvin play married Greenwich Village artists who become obsessed with a young hippie named Rainbow (Valerie Marron). While Spelvin fears her desires might make her a lesbian, Reems wants to introduce Rainbow into their relationship, but fears Spelvin will not accept breaking their monogamy. Wet Rainbow a rare film which deals earnestly with bisexuality and uses explicit sex to develop its characters." Carnal Cinema, in turn, says "The film was clearly cheaply made and, like others from the period, looks quite primitive with hindsight. The lighting, for example, is very flat and the interiors appear to be filmed in a couple of modest apartments. There are some evocative New York exteriors, and a couple of notable dream sequences — visualizations of Spelvin's emotional turmoil — but nothing particularly imaginative. Spelvin and Reems make an engaging couple but [...] they've both done better work elsewhere. What really makes this movie interesting is its apparent sincerity. Wet Rainbow plays like a dramatic film that just happens to contain explicit sex." Gore-Gore Girl is a bit more amazed by the film: "Holy shit, this film is good. And I mean outstanding. My viewing buddy even said that despite the sex scenes being shot really well, it was almost impossible to find them hot because there was so much to think about (this is a compliment to the film). I think it manages to be hot as well as be intellectually rigorous. This is a complex look at a relationship that involves two people — the excellent Harry Reems and Georgina Spelvin — who are intelligent, artists, probably a bit elitist, and getting older. They fantasize over Reems' young photography student, and eventually things start to fall apart. I don't want to say any more than that, partly because I don't want to spoil the film, but mostly because there's so much subtle complexity to this film that it would be difficult for me to articulate it in this short space. I actually cried during this film. Great stuff." A crappy version (as in quality of the transfer) of the full film can, momentarily, be found online here at Mr. Stiff.

Ape Over Love
(1974, dir. David Sear)

 The Kinks — Apeman:

We would love to see the original poster art for this film, which on its original release got busted for obscenity in Duluth, Minnesota. But all we could find was the DVD cover to the Something Weird re-release. Gavcrimson.blogspot.co.uk reveals the films selling point: "[...] The quirky NYC lensed Ape Over Love, a pornographic visualisation of the Kinks' song Apeman in which a lonely Manhattan dog walker (Harry Reems) escapes his humdrum existence by fantasizing that he is a gorilla, a plot premise that leads to various hardcore sex scenes of Reems fucking in a gorilla costume, whilst the aforementioned Apeman plays on the soundtrack without permission (the director of Ape Over Love seems to have been something of a Kinks aficionado, as their then highly obscure 1969 B-Side King Kong also finds its way onto the film's soundtrack). At imdb, Woodyanders (Woodyanders@aol.com) says "Legendary 70's porn stud Harry Reems [...] portrays Roger, a meek, lonely, dorky guy who works as a dog walker for rich, horny Ms. Mammal (hysterically overplayed by 70's hardcore character actress Mary Stuart). While gawking and making faces at the gorilla cage in a nearby zoo, Roger fantasizes about having sex with Ms. Mammal while wearing a shoddy ape costume (said suit is pretty tacky, with rubber gloves for hands and Harry's naked feet completely uncovered). You see, Roger secretly wants 'to be a gorilla'! Roger's sexually sicko dreams come true when he befriends the adorable Ellen (the luscious Bree Anthony), a lovely lass who's also turned on by gorillas. If the story fails to make you burst out laughing, then several of this film's gloriously ludicrous production touches might very well cause you to crack up instead. For starters, there's the neatly varied array of carnal activity which includes fellatio, lesbianism, cunnilingus, and an especially lively partner swapping climactic foursome. Moreover, the gals holler such inane exclamations as "Oh, you big gorilla!" and "You're such an animal" while doing just what you think with Roger. Plus Roger makes these funny "ooh, ooh, ooh!" monkey noises as he gets it on with the ladies. [...] Director David Sears depicts all the libidinous goings-on in that highly graphic and clinical intense gynecological style which makes 70's porn so uniquely raw and alluring, thus ensuring that this blithely dippy hardcore romp is a real hoot from start to finish."

Stanley Long's famous stag short (without Reems), Beauty and the Beast:

Follow the link to Part IV of Harry Reems' career review.