"Success
has many fathers. But particularly in highly disruptive markets, communication
plays a central role in determining whether the brand succeeds or not. So seize
the opportunity, analyse the competition's TV advertising and create something
unique."
A.k.a. Don't Worry, Sleep Happy, this short
here is actually an advertisement — as in commercial — of a European mattress
company. Where and when this advertisement was ever screened or broadcast, we
know not, but obviously enough it can be found on YouTube.
The advert is an attempt by the mattress firm to
follow the concept explained above by The
Restless CMO. Success when doing so can lead, in the best case, to
internet success: a meme that gets spread all over the place, reaching an
audience far beyond that which simple screenings on TV or in cinemas ever do — and that, free of additional charge.
(Example: the Volkswagon terrorist
commercial, which supposedly VW did not authorize and was never officially screened on TV or in cinemas.)
The Sleep Fairy didn't quite do that, and still remains obscure today. The
Restless CMO's review of the advertisement also functions well as a possible
explanation why it never 'memed': "Lukewarm. Good idea, good story, but
implemented too long-windedly and conventionally. With a braver narrative
structure this spot would have made the top of my list. Too bad. Frank had more
in him, the old sleep fairy."
But much of what the Restless CMO
sees as flaws are what we like about this well-made commercial: the leisurely
pace helps remove the "advertisement feeling" and makes the production seem more like a "real" short film, something
the conventional filmic style also
underscores. The humor is always present, but never overstated. And while it
might be "long" for a commercial, its length is perfect for a short
film.
In any event, to quote
the creative agency that made the commercial, MOTOR Kommunikation: "Let us
introduce you to Frank, professional sleeping fairy. A real professional. How 'Emma' first changed his job, and then his life, is best told
first-hand."
(Spoilers.) Entitled Jessabelle instead of Jezebel so as not to be confused with
the 1938 drama starring Bette Davis (trailer), the film for
which Ms. Davis won her second Best Actress Oscar. Not! (The bit about the confusion,
not the Oscar.)
Naw, the flick's entitled Jessabelle probably to make people
think of the better Blumhouse flick of the same year, Annabelle (2014 / trailer), or simply 'cause
it's one of the myriad of ways the name (meaning "Wicked,
Wealthy, Beautiful") is spelt in the USA, a land where you're free to
spell names any ol' way since most people can't really spell all that well anyway.
And going by what transpires in this movie, some people can't write horror
movies, either.
Trailer to
Jessabelle:
A Deep South horror flick, Jessabelle, as directed by Kevin
Greutert (Visions [2016 / trailer] and Jackals [2017 / trailer]), one of the
progenitors of the dead-horse-flogging Saw
franchise, and written by Robert Ben Garant (Hell Baby [2013 / trailer] and The Veil [2016 / trailer]), has enough
plotholes that if it were a sieve your pasta would fall through it. The nicely
nasty opening scene, in which the saccharine-sweet declarations of love between
pregger Jessabelle "Jessie" Laurent (Sarah Snook of Predestination [2014 / trailer] and Brother's Nest [2018 / trailer]) and her daddy-to-be
fiancé Mark (Brian Hallisay of Hostel
III [2011 / trailer])
come to an abrupt car-crashing end is probably the most horrifyingly effective
scene in the movie, and the ending is unexpectedly downbeat and thus
commendable, but the problem lies in everything in between. (And that, if you
get down to it, is roughly 85 minutes of the 90-minute running time.) The scares
are generic and almost always expected, and should you actually start to question the developments in the
narrative or the actions of the characters, you might find yourself scratching
your head so hard that you reach your brain.
The basic premise of a young
woman who has lost everything and is now stuck in a wheelchair returning home to
a father she hardly knows only to be confronted with ghosts of the past is,
well, as much a realistically horrifying idea as it is the fodder of TV movies,
which this film sometimes feels like. Here, of course, since it's a horror movie, the ghosts of the past are not of a figuratively speaking kind, but real spirits in the night (and day, actually). The concept that ghosts age, however, is
pretty bat-shit out there — does that mean they grow old and die, eventually?
(Where do dead ghosts go, we wonder.) But aging ghosts is a peripheral (and
never mentioned) aspect of the tale told in this movie: a murdered, mixed-race
baby born the same day as white-gal Jessie obviously has aged year for year within the walls
of Jessie's dad's home and in the waters of the adjacent lake, matching Jessie's growth in the corporal world.
Oddly enough, however, going by
how they look when they finally appear in the final scenes of the flick, the
ghosts of Jessie's "mom" Kate (Joelle Carter of Cold Storage [2009 / trailer]) and Kate's
former Afro-American lover Moses (Vaughn Wilson) don't age a day in the
afterlife. Not only that, Moses the Ghost can obviously teleport, for he is the only
ghost to appear far away from the location where he died, rather unlike the now
young-adult Dead Girl with unnaturally immobile boobs (Amber Stevens West, seen below not from the film), who
can take solid enough physical form to beat the shit out of Mr. Former Hometown
Boyfriend Preston (Mark Weber of 13 Sins
[2014 / trailer], Uncanny [2015 / trailer], Green Room [2015 / trailer] and Antibirth [2016 / trailer]) but keeps her
appearances only to the backwater homestead. (Of course, could all the ghosts
of the flick teleport like Moses, then Jessie would never have to had come home
to start experiencing the supernatural.)
The ghosts have other powers,
too. Not only can they smash whiskey bottles while unseen, they can regenerate
the bottles as well, so that for whatever reason, the bottle is back at the bedside again
later on. And they can close doors and latches, the latter
particular handy when it comes to taking an exceedingly late revenge upon Jessie's
"dad", Leon (David Andrews of Cherry
2000 [1987 / trailer]
and Graveyard Shift [1990 / trailer]).
Most amazingly, with a blink of
an eye they can miraculously clean a flooded and ruined bathroom and fully
re-dress Jessie, who seconds before was fighting for her life nekkid in the
tub. (Even odder, not only is she suddenly dressed when the ghost pulls her from the tub, but no one notices that she somehow got dressed and dry while she
was having her screaming fit behind the mysteriously locked bathroom door, not
even the caretaker who had helped put her get nekkid into the bathtub.) And the
ghosts obviously like to clean, too, because when Jessie moves into the old
room of her "mom", which has obviously been closed off since mommy's
death almost two decades earlier, the room is spotless — something neither she
nor Leon find in any way odd.
These and many other sloppy
non-details, combined with the general predictability of the movie (but for its
opening and closing scenes) make Jessabelle
definitely non-essential viewing when it comes to the genre of horror films. On
the plus side, the acting is mostly okay (the actor playing Jessie is actually
and unnoticeably from The Land Down Under),
the locations great, and the direction perfectly competent. In the end,
however, both the talent and the location are basically wasted in Jessabelle, a movie so narratively
stunted and lazy that one wonders how it ever got made, much less released.
Really, we love how, towards the end, Jessie the Rocket Scientist suddenly realizes
everything behind everything and tells it all out loud so that the slower (as
in most) viewers can finally catch on to the what, why, how, when and where of
the events.
One mildly interesting inference
of the flick that is less poorly developed than simply dropped in the viewer's
lap for a few moments during the big closing showdown is that the haunting and ghosts could all be the manifestations of Jessie's
own guilt for surviving the crash that killed her beau and unborn babe as well
as for being unable to help her father when he gets stuck and dies in the
burning shed. But the final scenes beneath the waters of the lake and her last
words to Sheriff Pruitt (character actor Chris Ellis of way too much to mention)
pretty much render that interpretation a big "Nope". Them there be
ghosts, and them ghost don't be nice.And this movie don't be good none, either.
Way back in March 2013, when the studly
and hirsute Golden Age porn star Harry Reems
(27 Aug 1947 – 19 Mar 2013) died, we began our long, fat look at his tool
career and films: a full 7 lengthy blog entries! (Links to each are found
bellow.) And while length is almost as much fun as girth, by the time we got to
Part
VII (1986-2013) we were really ready to roll over and go to sleep. Which
is why we never got around to finishing the already-started Addendum Parts I – 4, which
looked at the films that we somehow missed or skipped in our extended and meaty
Parts I through VII. And then we went and lost
the stick we had our Harry Reems file on (a lesson in backing documents up,
that was).
But recently, while trying to distract
ourselves from the Covid-related death of our paternal parent, we cleaned house
in corners we have never cleaned before — and low and behold! The stick was
found, probably where the cat kicked it.
And so, seven years later to the month but not the day, here
is our typically meandering and unfocused Addendum Part I. Much like delayed
ejaculation: better late than never...
Not that we actually plan to finish the Addendum(s): merely to finally put
online what we had already finished way back then, mildly updated. (Way back when,
we lost interest in the undertaking as of the films around 1985.)
We dedicate these rediscovered Addendum(s) to our departed paternal
parent, who inadvertently introduced us to Harry Reems when we, as a late teen,
stumbled upon his VHS copy of Deep
Throat (1972, see Harry
Reems Part II) hidden in the VHS box for Key Largo (1948 / trailer).*
*He also had The Resurrection
of Eve (1973 / Purple Skies and Butterflies) hidden in his To Have and Have Not (1944 / trailer) box, but the
1973 film wasn't funny enough to keep us watching until the end.
Commonly given a.k.a. titles includes La reina Corporativa, Essayez-moi and Das Haus der 1000 Perversionen. The last title was also later used in
Germany for a 1979 X-rated comedy originally entitled Frat House (full
film, German poster below), a.k.a National
Lamporn's Frat House.
In all truth, it is highly doubtful
that Harry Reems really appears in The
Corporate Queen: we found only one website online, the French film site Encyclo
Ciné, that currently (19 March 2015 [& 27 Jan 2021]) lists Harry
Reems as a featured actor. That website, however, also lists an a.k.a. title as
Every Inch a Girl, which leads us to
think that they are confusing this film here with the 1975 Amero Brothers' porn
movie Every Inch a Lady, which does
indeed feature Harry Reems (see Part
IV) as well as some of the other stars listed at Encyclo
Ciné (most notably Andrea True) not found in Corporate Queen.
Both movies, in any event, feature the never-well-known
prowess of another mustachioed, hirsute actor named Tony Vito (possibly a.k.a. Ron Skideri and Ron Scardera), seen below with co-star
Janet Banzet, and mustaches are easy to confuse. (BTW: We were unable to
locate a Tony Vito or Ron Skideri anywhere, but Ron
Scardera, who like Vito & Skidera worked with the Ameros, has since retired
with his wife Roberta, who also worked with the Ameros, to a nice house in the
Hollywood hills.)
That said, including The Corporate Queen here gives us another opportunity to present some
photos of the tragic star of the movie, Janet
Banzet (17 May 1934 – 29 July 1971), credited in the movie as "Marie
Brent", seen below with the movie's director, John Amero.
Her full story can be found at the great website whence we took two images, The
Rialto Report.
A literal translation of the German title (Das Haus der 1000 Perversionen) is
"The House of 1000 Perversions." The German book Das größte Filmlexikon der Welt at the website Zweitausandeins
says that the film features more dialogue than perversion, and foregoes a plot
description. Unlike TCM, where
they offer the following plot description: "Elegant Crystal Laverne (Renay Clair), who rules over one of the largest
prostitution empires in the country, dismisses her followers from the plush New
York City penthouse where she holds court and relates the story of her success
to her efficient, man-hating private secretary, Edna (Banzet): Suffering financially from a police
crackdown, Crystal picks up Chino (Tony Vito), a handsome young man who has been
sleeping near her door. He has nothing to offer her but his bounteous sex drive,
and they pool their talents to open a massage service. Chino accepts clients of
both sexes, and business booms. [Like many early sexploitation movies,
though the The Corporate Queen was
meant for a heterosexual audience, it nevertheless included some guy-on-guy
action. — awl] They move to new quarters, expanding the facilities to serve men and
women of every sexual inclination, including clients seeking sexual experiences
with lesbians, nymphomaniacs, and foot fetishists. Crystal falls in love with
Chino and showers him with gifts, but he devotes less of his time to his work.
She momentarily suspects him of infidelity, but he allays her suspicions, and
she takes him out for a night on the town which ends up in a private club where
they watch an erotic show. Chino proposes marriage, and Crystal gladly accepts.
Crystal leaves for an appointment with a real estate agent in
preparation for her forthcoming marriage, and Edna climbs into her employer's
bed to make love with Chino, demanding that he perform a variety of sex acts.
Crystal returns unexpectedly to retrieve some papers and watches through her
two-way mirror as Edna and Chino plot to murder her by causing a gas explosion.
She turns the tables on her perfidious lover and secretary and laughs
sadistically as the bedroom explodes."
If that plot description isn't detailed
enough, we suggest the one found at the One-Sheet
Index.
Find Janet Banzet
in this trailer to
the debut film of Sylvester Stallone:
Also found in the movie, the unknown
Germans Ula Kopa(of School Girl Bride [1971 / trailer] and The
Erotic Adventures of Siegfried [1971 / trailer])
and Alon D'Armand (of Das gelbe Haus am Pinnasberg [1970
/ music] and The
Terror of Doctor Mabuse [1962 / trailer]).
The film's NYC premier was held, as
revealed above, at the since-demolished World Theatre, the same
place where Deep Throat (1972 / soundtrack / see Harry
Reems Part II) eventually had its NYC premier. Renay Clair(e) was
there, and then disappeared off the face of the earth. The co-feature, Copenhagen Open City, is either now
lost or an unknown a.k.a. title for some other movie. (Off the top of heads,
how about Sexual Freedom in Denmark
[1970 / see: Uschi
Part III] or Alex de Renzy's Pornography
in Denmark [1970], the latter of which even used a travelogue format.)
When
screened the now-closed Cinema
Art in Troy, NY, in January 1971, The
Corporate Queen was paired with Interplay
(1970), a lesser feature of the lettered man Albert T.
Viola (16 June 1919 – 21 Feb 2007), a year before he made his most commercially
successful movie, Preacherman (1971
/ trailer). Interplay, a B&W X-rated flick that
probably wouldn't qualify for an R-rating today eventually got an R-rated
re-release as Part Time Girls a.k.a Part Time Virgins — under any name, in
2013 it became Case File #128 on Temple
of Schlock's Endangered List.
Changes
(1970, dir. Gerard
Damiano)
While Reems is not found in any of the
cast lists to this film that we could find, Changes supposedly got re-released at a later date as This
Film Is All About…, and
both rame.net and
the iafd
list Harry Reems as an un-credited performer in that film. If this is true,
then we must assume a loop or film scene featuring his talents is featured
somewhere within this "documentary" or got added for the re-release.
In any event,
in the This Film Is All About… version
of Changes, "we get to see 2 loops … The Plumber Cometh and The Pick-Up.* They were shot silent on full-color 16mm film, and the voices and
other sounds were dubbed in later. They were both less than 12 minutes long,
and Harry Reems was featured in both of them. [rame]"
If Changes and TFIAS are indeed one and the same film, the inclusion of the two loops
would indeed indicate a re-cut because, at least according to that great
purveyor of porn lor, in Changes "Damiano [only] crosses
the line into hardcore footage for less than a minute, showing fellatio between
husband-wife team Patrick & Tally Wright (who both provide interesting
voice-over commentary on their careers in porn) and several models'
masturbating far more explicitly than usually presented in this era. [imdb]"
*A good title seldom dies: this
Plumber Cometh should not be
confused with the 1985 Helga Sven movie, Pipe
Dreams a.k.a. The Plumber Cometh. Likewise,
The Pick-Up here is a loop, not the
1968 feature film (trailer)
directed by Lee Frost (14 Aug 1935 – 25 May 2007), nor the seventies'
sexploiter Pick-up (1975 / trailer).
That said,
Gerard Damiano's later documentary Sex
U.S.A.(1971)— supposedly released in Sweden as Inbjudan till gruppsex (poster above) — definitely
includes Harry Reems (see Part
II), and while we used to think that documentary was indeed an
independent film project all of its own, we cannot help but notice that the
cast list for Sex U.S.A as found at
the imdb
is far closer to the cast list given for This
Film Is All About… found at aifd
then to any cast list given anywhere for Changes.
Ergo: we now tend to think that This
Film Is All About… might not be an alternative title for Changes, but for Sex U.S.A. (Having not seen any of the films yet, we present this
only as a hypothesis and nothing more.)
That (not) settled,
let's nevertheless take a look at Changes,
the first "documentary" Gerard Damiano (4 Aug 1928 – 25 Oct 2008)
ever made. Over at Something
Weird, Don
the Deviate of America Moralia says: "A pre-Deep Throat Gerard Damiano informs us
that the Sexual Revolution ushered in 'Changes that have come too soon for
some, not soon enough for others... Changes that will liberate or destroy.'
Following this ominous pronunciamento
are a series of interviews conducted by Damiano himself, intercut with sex
scenes on the bodacious border of hardcore. [...] A psychiatrist discusses censorship; a porno shop clerk
(actually skinflick actor Larry Hunter [of The
Headless Eyes (1971 / trailer)
and The Amazing Transplant (1970 / trailer)]) fills us in on
perversions; a theater manager talks about sex in the cinema (during which we
get to see a marvelous trailer for a [Damiano] movie called Teenie Tulip [a.k.a. Hungry Mouth, poster above and below]);
and ecdysiast Carol Barr [a.k.a. Candy Barr] speaks about
stripping. Damiano also interviews a feminist member of N.O.W. on women's lib;
the owner of a 42nd Street 'model studio' who talks about 'tipping'; the
editors of a homo magazine; and gay activist Arthur Bell, here billed as Arthur
Irving. Best of all, Al Goldstein and Jim Buckley of Screw magazine are interviewed about... well, just about everything
under the sun. [...] Then we get to see them in action during a Screw photo shoot with Kim Pope and
Alex Mann (of The Defiance of Good
[1975 / trailer], I Drink Your Blood [1970 / trailer], and more). Via
a hidden camera, we then visit the set of a peep show in the making, then onto
the stage of a live sex show in a private club where Tally Wright [a.k.a. Lillian
Rose 'Tallie' Cochrane (7 October 1944 — 21 May 2011) of Five Loose Women (1974 / trailer below), Girls for Rent (1974 / trailer), The Centerfold Girls (1974 / trailer), The Candy Tangerine Man (1975 / trailer, see Marilyn
Joi Part III) and more] gets it on with a blonde dude while a black
chick has fun with a huge white dildo. Speaking of dildos, we next meet 'Nancy,'
a sculptress who creates her own dildos and discusses the importance of shape
rather than size.* Finally,
Damiano's own son, 7-year-old Gerald Jr., talks about religion with his dad. A
powerful, informative, nostalgic, lewd, funny, sex-filled documentary that, as
a special bonus, also includes vintage shots of the old 42nd Street
in its wonderfully sex-crazed, pre-Disney heyday. Another truly remarkable
collector's item for deviates everywhere."
*Nancy and her work made
appearances in other movies, including Pornography
in New York (1972), which we look at further below. But another movie in
which she appears (possibly reusing material from the films we look at here) is
the Yugoslavian art film by Dusan Makavejev (13 Oct
1932 – 25 Jan 2019), WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971
/ trailer), in which
we see "Nancy Godfrey in New York sculpting a plaster-cast replica of Screw
editor Jim Buckley's erect penis". (Whatever happened to Jim Buckley?) Nancy
has since disappeared from the art world, though there is a Nancy Godfrey working
at an art school in Florida (probably unrelated: "Nancy Godfrey" is
not exactly rare name).
Trailer to
Five Loose Women a.k.a. Fugitive Girls:
While more than one website mentions that
the song Reflections of My Life
(by The Marmalade) is used throughout the movie, probably without permission,
the actual opening song commissioned for the documentary is Getting Off, written and sung by Monti
Rock, and while Monti doesn't mention the song in this interview, the
interview is a fun read. We mention Monti because even if you don't know him
under that name, if you're old enough you might remember him as Disco Tex...
Disco Tex &
His Sex O Lettes
singing Get Dancin':
Making the Blue Film
(1971, dir. Jerald Intrator)
A.k.a. Making the Blue Movie. In his book Sexuality in World Cinema, James L. Limbacher offers a terse
description of the film: "Some porno loops are strung together with some
interviews with sex actors to make a sort of 'documentary' under the direction
of J. Nehemara." Going by the cast supplied at the imdb, the loops probably feature Harry Reems, Tina Russell
and her husband Jason Russell (3 Dec 1942 – 26 Oct 2005), and Shaun Costello.
Supposedly, outtakes were used to create Sensuous
Vixens (1976), a film we look at later...
"Jeraldo Stuarti" (name on the
Blue Movie poster), like "J. Nehemara" (name offered by Limbacher), is actually
the filmmaker Jerald Intrator (24 Sept 1920 – 28 Oct 1988), the director of the
classic B&W sexploiters Orgy at
Lil's Place (1963, poster above) and Satan
in High Heels (1962 / full
movie); Making the Blue Film is currently
his last known directorial project.
In any event, though the poster is easy
enough to find online, no one has bothered to write about Making the Blue Film anywhere — could it be a lost film?
If so,
before it got lost it was screened, even outside of New York City: the first
advert above is from the now holy Trans Lux Krim of Highland Park,
MI — that would be Detroit to outsiders like us — while the second is from a
double feature with Mona (1970 / full NSFW
film) at since burnt-down Art Cinema of cosmopolitan
Binghamton, NY.
While Deep Throat generally gets all
the credit as opening the Golden Age of Porn as the first porn film with a plot
to get a theatrical release, Mona the
Virgin Nymph, which also has a similarly mild plot, hit select theatres two
years earlier. ("One could say that Mona launched the money shot heard
'round the world.")
The first theatrically released film to feature real sex is Warhol's Blue Movie (1969 / full NSFW art
film) a.k.a. as Fuck (despite
the fact that there's only around 10 minutes hardcore sex).
Trailer to Jerald
Intrator's first film,
Striporama
(1953):
The Gang That
Could!
(1971, dir. Still Unknown)
The same year Al Pacino made his name in
Francis Ford Coppola's classic mafia film The
Godfather (trailer),
Robert de Niro replaced Pacino in a now forgotten mafia comedy entitled The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight,
a movie based on a novel of the same name and that has the added distinction of
being considered by many as the "real" feature film debut of Hervé Villechaize (23 Apr 1943 – 4 Sept 1993, of Seizure [1974, with Jonathan
Frid], Forbidden Zone [1980,
with Susan
Tyrrell] and Zalman King's
Two Moon Junction [1988]), whose
speaking voice was supplied by "The Man of a Thousand Voices", Paul
Frees (22 June 1920 – 2 Nov 1986).
Trailer to
The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight:
Perhaps it would be a bit much to call
1971's X-rated The Gang that Could!
a "mockbuster", but the title is obviously an intentional play upon
the at the time well-known book and subsequent film version. To what extent the
plot of The Gang that Could! in any
way references the inspirational source of its title is open to conjecture, as
the movie is apparently lost. Online sources are rare — it isn't even found at
the iafd — and the few that exist
only repeat the information found at the website of the film's original
distributor, distribpix,
which is unable to supply a director's name but claims that the film features
the talents of Cindy West & Harry Reems... and both are actually discernable
amidst the field of flesh found on the poster, most noticeably at the lower
right. (Anyone know who the blonde dude is?)
Going by the Getty poster, we here at a
wasted life would assume that the basic plot involves a gang that bangs
and shoots and bangs and shoots and bangs and shoots and bangs and shoots and...
By the way: among the various pre-Golden
Age and G.A. porn films in which white chick Cindy West (a.k.a. Susan Sands, Lori
Lake, Terry Ruggiera, Cindy Travers, Helen Highwater, Tammy Twat, Tania Tittle,
Linda Terry, Cherry Aims, Laura Bentley, Joy Otis, Terri Scott, Teri Reardon) is
found are Lialeh (1974), the first
predominantly "Black" (as in "Afro American) porn film,* and Devil's Due (1973), poster above, a rare excursion into semi-horror porn dealing
with Satanists in which she had the lead female role and the classic line is
uttered: "Kiss the cock of Satan!" Cindy West disappeared from porn
circa 1976, never to be heard of again.(Again, good titles never die: in 2014, there was a non-porn horror Devil's Due [trailer].)
*For more info on Lialeh, we suggest looking at our
review of Christmas
Evil (1980), which was directed by Lewis Jackson, Lialeh's associate producer.
Opening scene of
Lialeh (1974):
His Loving
Daughter
(1971, dir. Still
Unknown)
An obscure film that infers incestuous
shenanigans, but though the film does toss in a scene or two of a geriatric
Daddy (Daniel Harin) getting it on with women of all ages, he never does his daughter.
We were unable
to locate either the director or original poster to this film, but the DVD
covers to the re-releases are easily found (see the images above and below).
The
delectable Tina
Russell, so prominently displayed on the above cover, is not in the film — were she,
perhaps we would try to make it past the scene between Daniel Harin (pictured below) & Dolly
Sharp (a.k.a. Helen Wood) described in the plot description below.
The plot explanation as compiled between the
DVD's backside and the website Video
Zeta One: Daughter Claudia and her 18-year-old Tina (Gina Fox) peeks
through a keyhole into Claudia's dad's office and watches Ray Edwards (Harin) get his client (Sharp) drunk and take advantage of her. This gets
Tina all hot and bothered, so Tina calls her boyfriend, Chucky, for some sex.
The problem is: he can't get it up! "Tina breaks
the fourth wall and stares directly at the camera and says that anyone in the
audience would have performed better." Later, after complaining to Claudia, Tina seduces the pool man (Paul
Matthews) who "is able to provide her what Chucky could not". Claudia
then gets it on with her boyfriend, Freddy (Reems, seen below), while her daddy gets it
on with another client, Elizabeth (Barbara Grumet). Claudia suddenly pops in
with her high-school biology teacher, Mr. Carter, who gets it on with
Elizabeth, and when Claudia and Tina show up, Elizabeth teaches them all about girl-on-girl
action.
"What can be
said? It's so much like a cheesy early seventies porno, that it almost seems
like a parody of one. I like that they kept a light-hearted vibe throughout,
with the characters frequently breaking the fourth wall and cracking
wise. [Video
Zeta One]"
Daddy Daniel Harin had a
brief career as a studly old man (usually un-credited) in the early days of hardcore
sexploitation, can also be found in a few other films, including The
Debauchers (1971 / scene
— that's him on the poster above) and Professor of Sex Ed (1973 / NSFW)
and Sexual Customs in Scandinavia (1972 / poster
below).
Aside from Video Zeta, the only other person we could find who seems to have
ever watched His Loving Daughter to
the end — despite the ease with which it can be found online for free — is lor
of NYC, who says the film is "by-the-numbers porn" and "slapdash
and sloppy": "Its title intentionally misleading, His Loving Daughter does feature a
father and daughter as characters but never the twain shall get it on. [...]
The father is good ol' Daniel Harin, [and...] I suspect it gave the older
demographic of the adult movie theater audience somebody to identify with, but
it's a bit disconcerting, sort of like Walter Huston getting the girl. The
daughter is an unidentified actress as Claudia, but it is actually the
daughter's best friend Tina who has the hots for Claudia's daddy. Dolly Sharp
also appears as a wealthy widow who gets it on with old Harin, who is her financial
adviser. Continuing the 'mature' theme, Harin has another client, a busty
redhead played by Barbara Grumet, who gives both young girls a 'sex education
class' in lesbian lovemaking. [...]"
Another one-day wonder about which
absolutely nothing is known, including the names of all performers other than a
recognizable and moustacheless Harry Reems, who is also seen on the poster.
Plot:
"A young nympho
visits a shrink (Harry Reems) to talk about her masturbation and illicit
fantasies involving guess who? Her fantasies involve sucking, fucking, riding,
lesbians, and threesomes in every single position! This is a true fantasy come
true and our lovely shrink Harry will make every single second of the session
count. [Hot Movies]"
Thus, Plotwise, Oh Brrrother could be an a.k.a. of any number of movies, including
the just as obscure flick we mention further below, Love Shrink... Shrinks, psychoanalysis and sex have been a favorite
plot device for porn, well, probably since sex films started having plots. Shrinks
and sex also play heavily in Shaun Costello's 1974 sex film, Lady on
the Couch, which we mention here primarily because we have an advertising
image to it, found directly above.
Sensuous Vixens
(1971 or '76,
dir. "Freddie Williams")
If truly from '76, then the
"movie" may well be the last "feature" porn film release to
star Tina
Russell (23 Sept 1948 – 18 May 1981). The originally credited director is the
unknown "Freddie Williams"; according to the International Adult Film Database,
he also supposedly directed one other film entitled Violated (1971) which, unlike Sensuous
Vixens, is not in general circulation.
In turn, according to Jason S.
Martinko's book The XXX Filmography,
1968-1988, which dates Sensuous
Vixens as from 1976, Violated and
Sensuous Vixens are actually one and
the same movie, a concept that gains weight when seeing that both supposed
films feature the exact same cast. (Still, going by the plot description
further below, Violated seems rather
far-fetched for an a.k.a. title.) Martinko also credits Shaun Costello as the
movie's director and co-scriptwriter with Barry Smith, a name also generally credited as a.k.a. Shaun Costello.
According to imdb, which also lists the film as a 1976 release, "Freddie
Williams" and "Barry Smith" are indeed that Renaissance Man, Shaun Costello, who no longer makes films but occasionally blogs. Costello
also appears in the movie, if we are to believe the imdb which, like Martinko, also claims that Sensuous Vixens and Violated
are one and the same movie, Violated
being merely the video-release title. Both the iafd and imdb claim that the movie uses a scene from Cheri (1974), while the imdb
adds that "outtakes [from Making
the Blue Film (1971)] were used to create Sensuous Vixens" — indeed, Sensuous Vixens does play out very much like a cut & paste job
utilizing loops and scenes from other movies around new narrative footage.
The back cover of the DVD re-release gives
the plot of the film as follows: "Tina Russell
[below] leads us through the tumultuously sexy New York City searching for modeling
opportunities. After a series of long days and no results, she takes an offer
to model in some 'artistic photographs'. When she arrives, she quickly learns
what art means in the shady underworld of Manhattan. Tina quickly moves from
tame, softcore photography to hardcore fuck films, embracing her pornographic
urges while feeding her lust for the camera. Sensuous Vixens is the classic tale of a good girl releasing the
nympho beast inside while exploring her own sexual urges. Filmed on location in
1970s New York City, Sensuous Vixens
is a landmark piece of work that all XXX connoisseurs must see."
According to X-Critic,
"Sensuous Vixens is a pretty solid early seventies entry that
delivers some nice New York City location footage and some very healthy doses
of steamy sex. Tina Russell
is in very fine form here, looking beautiful throughout and performing with
some pretty sincere enthusiasm. Top-billed Harry Reems is only in the movie for
a few minutes, but it's fun to see him pop here without his trademark Deep
Throat moustache. Russell's narration is campy and the soundtrack,
made up of some pretty familiar numbers, is fantastic. The film's biggest flaw
is that the sex scenes were obviously shot without live sound and the same guy
makes the same 'ooo' noises over top of each scene, regardless of how many guys
actually appear in it. It's possible this was put together from a bunch of
loops and that the narration was added as an afterthought to give it some sort
of context, but either way, it's entertaining enough and Tina Russell's
fanbase will enjoy seeing her featured prominently."
By the way, search as we could, the only
movie entitled Violated that we
could find that was released in a timeframe related to Sensuous Vixens is an Albert Zugsmith (24 Apr 1910 – 26 Oct 1993)
production with a completely different cast…
Trailer to Albert
Zugsmith's
Violated (1974):
Curious Women
(1971
or '73, dir. Still Unknown)
Though it's easily available on DVD, as a
download or free on any number of porn movie sites, we couldn't find out much
about this one-day wonder other than that it features Davey Jones, Harry Reems,
Jamie Gillis, Cindy West, Barbara Benner and Darby Lloyd Rains... and a few
other unknowns.
Cinema
Headcheese
seems to have found the movie entertaining, going by their film description:
"Uncle Hans is an overalls-wearing, German-speaking, Hitler-saluting
farmer who loves his nieces — one a cute blonde (Cindy West), the
other a frumpy, hairy brunette (Barbara Benner). In possibly the most oddly
disturbing scene on the set, the furry brunette is shown
fantasizing Uncle Hans urinates in the yard. Like most red-blooded women,
she diddles away on her giblets at the sight of Hans draining his pecker. Yeck!
If that's not crazy enough, there's even a murder by wine bottle at an orgy.
This one is just crazy, but it's a whole lot of fun. Watch out for Jamie Gillis
briefly yanking it on a lazy-boy while viewing a couple screwing."
Harry Reems, without 'stache, shows up to
ball one of the girls in a cheap-looking hotel room, he on the floor and Davey
Jones in the bed.
Not to be confused with the earlier movie The Curious Female (1970), a sci-fi
exploiter starring Angelique Pettyjohn (11 Marc 1943 – 14 Feb 1992), of Biohazard
(1985).
Trailer to
The Curious Female (1970):
Love Shrink
(1971, dir. Still Unknown)
A film that we could find nothing about,
other than it did at least get released in New York in 1971, where the tiny
advertisement (second from the bottom, left) of the Sept 17th issue
of the Daily News indicates a
screening at Cine Orleans (Off Broadway), one of the many now-lost grindhouses
of the formerly great city: "Located on Broadway at W. 47th Street,
the Mark Strand Theatre was opened on April 11, 1914, with the photoplay The Spoilers (full film) starring
William Farnum July (4 July 1876 – 5 June 1953). […] After dropping stage shows
on July 3, 1951, the Strand Theatre was renamed Warner Theatre, and opened with
Strangers on a Train (1951 / trailer). [..] On July
31, 1968, the theatre was twinned, becoming the Warner Strand Theatre. A third
450-seat theatre was built on the old Strand Theatre's stagehouse, named Cine
Orleans (Off Broadway), which had its own entrance on W. 47th Street.
On June 3, 1971 […] it reopened as the RKO Warner Twin Theatre. […] The former
balcony became the 1,200 seat Penthouse Theatre. Unfortunately, on February 8th,
1987, after a long and eventful life, one of the greatest movie palaces of New
York City closed and was demolished. [Cinema Treasures]"
In 2013, the original Ronnie Cramer's Cult Film Site was selling the video, but the current site only features Cramer's own
products. But way back in 2013, the site offered the following two-line plot
description: "Finally — a doctor who has what it takes to cure 'physical'
ailments as well as mental ones. Needless to say his couch sees plenty of
action." Long ago (2013), we wrote Ronnie Cramer — the director of such
masterpieces as Back Street Jane
(1989 / trailer) and Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend (1992) —
at rcramer@ix.netcom.com asking for
more details, but nadda was the
response.
According to iafd,
the flick features the muff of some gal named "Betty Boston" and a
brunette and a blonde, plus an additional penis of some guy. Anyone out there
know anything about the movie?
Mondo Porno
(1971 or '72,
dir. Still Unknown)
Not to be confused with the close-up and
splooge-filled D2V Mondo Porno from
2002 "directed" by Anthony R. Lovett (13 May 1961 – 26 Jan 2014). And
also not to be confused with the 1972 West Coast "documentary" Porno Mondo, which "looks behind the scenes of pornographic film production in Los
Angeles", although it often is (which is why we'll look at
that film here, too, a few paragraphs down).
No, Mondo Pornois an East Coast production, as is obvious by its
featured wieners and hotdog buns... but if there is an original poster of it
still in existence, it has yet to find its way online. As for Beyond the Commission Report's Report on
Obscenity and Pornography, the poster of which is presented above, online
there is general disagreement about whether that movie is a re-release of Mondo Porno or Porno Mondo... anyone out there know for sure?
In any event, "Beyond the Commission's Report
on Obscenity and Pornographypremiered in New York in August
1971. Advertisements stated: 'This film covers the full spectrum of sexual
experiences. After viewing it you will be given an IBM card to register your
reactions … All data will be processed by a computer and the findings will be
made available to the commission …' (Screw magazine, no. 127, August 9,
1971). Even a classic exploitation roadshow man would have been proud of the
IBM card gimmick, offering the audience the chance to make their views known to
the commission (though it had stopped sitting almost a year earlier). [Bright
Lights]"
In turn, Mondo Porno was released either in 1971 [iafd]
or 1972 [imdb]. Both sites list Dolly
Sharp and Harry Reems as appearing in this white-coater of sorts. At imdb, lor
of NYC, one the few who has seen this flick, writes that Mondo Porno is "clearly
inspired by the 1971 Presidential Commission's Report on Obscenity" (italics
ours) and that it "adequately covers various sexual topics": "An
annoying on-camera filmmaker keeps emphasizing 'You be the judge', and then
shows us vignettes covering material surveyed in the report. Harry Reems demos
the usual in & out with a lovely girl in the opening scene, minus a money
shot. Dolly Sharp and a cute brunette (Suzy Mann) give a lesbian routine
featuring vibrator and dildo. [...] What is unusual about this film is that it
also includes a homosexual threesome, in which the fellatio is explicit while
the anal sex is only suggested, perhaps in deference to the target audience.
Instead of loud music, this particular sequence features insightful interviews
voiced over by the three guys, one of whom expresses a liberated attitude and
approach to living that still sounds fresh nearly 40 years later."
Over at Something
Weird, they have the right film, Mondo
Porno, in the product description but use the trailer to the West Coast Porno Mondo — go figure. There,
homophobic Mike Accomando (the gay scene caused him "to pull a hamstring
sprinting for the fast-forward button") of Dreadful Pleasures writes "Mondo Porno presents us with a hodge-podge of segments hosted by a
filmmaker who urges us to 'judge for yourself what should be labeled obscene.' [...]
With the sincerity of a game show host, our guide introduces us to a series of
'case studies.' The first is a standard mating ritual where Harry Reems introduces
himself to his girlfriend's clitoris. [...] Dolly Sharp and some chick in a
headband do the Macarena on each other. [...] Three sissy-looking dudes ('Evan,
Vinnie and Henry') mince around and snap naked photos of each other's boymeat
[...]."
But let's now to turn our attention the
film Something Weird's trailer is of:
Porno Mondo: An In Depth Study of Porno
Films (1971). As the trailer voiceover says, "Direct from the Jenkins
Film Festival in Hollywood comes the most sensational motion picture of the
decade, winner of the coveted Kraft Award: Porno
Mondo. An in-depth study of pornography in the making, this picture is not
for the squeamish. It tells all the truths about adult motion pictures..." Well, about the West Coast scene at least.
Directed by an unknown "Federico Schwartz",
with cinematography by "George Gentilia Jr.", Porno Mondo is a 100% heterosexual (and triple-X) documentary on the
making porn films on the West Coast. As to be expected, it has a lot of hairy
close-ups, bad hair and bad wigs and features, among others, the great Rene
Bond (11 Oct 1950 – 2 June 1996), above, the spunky San Diegan girl-next-door adult
actress who appeared in an untold number of exploitation and sexploitation and
hardcore films and loops — including a number of Ed Wood / Stephen Apostolof
films, such Fugitive Girls (1974 /
trailer above at Changes), and a
variety of Harry
Novak productions.
Rene Bond's last
known appearance
was not on film:
BTW: The
Mood Mosaic is a multiple volume music compellation series from Italy that
focuses on obscure lounge and chill-like music. It began in 1997 and is still
releasing compellations today. Somewhere along the way (2007?), they released
the compellation Mondo Porno — and
on it, not from the film, is a great song entitled Mondo Porno by the one-song wonders The Blow Jobbers. And so, for
your aural pleasure:
The Blow Jobbers
—
Mondo Porno:
Klute
(1971, dir. Alan
J. Pakula)
A serious film by a serious filmmaker, Klute brought its star, Jane Fonda, her
first Oscar. Plot? Well, with Fonda's former radicalism in mind, let's look at
what TV Guide,
the bastion of Middle American taste, says: "Along with Barbarella (1968 / trailer) and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969 / trailer), one of the
best things the highly variable Jane Fonda has ever done. When a research
scientist turns up missing, his best friend, John Klute (Donald Sutherland, of Hollow
Point [1995] and so much more), a small-town police detective, goes to
New York City in search of Bree Daniels (Fonda), a prostitute to whom the
missing man had written letters. Bree, who is trying to switch professions,
tells Klute that she has been getting threatening phone calls from a violent
former client who she also thinks has been following her. In the process of his
investigation, Klute falls for Bree, though she has difficulty returning his
affection. After another prostitute who had contact with the sadistic caller is
murdered, Bree finds herself alone in a dark warehouse in the exciting finale.
[...] Sutherland is either an excellent sounding board for [Fonda's] nuanced
portrait or he's a big zero, probably both. Fonda, however, transcends her
limitations, making the most of her often forced quality as an actress. Bree
emerges as likably strong yet dangerously weak, refreshingly intelligent yet searching
and confused."
Trailer to
Klute:
And where does Harry appear? Well, he
worked as an uncredited extra, and it is almost a joke to list it here because,
as Newsweek
put it, "The eagle-eyed viewer could spot him — or, more precisely, his
knees." He plays a patron at the disco, as did, supposedly, some unknown
NYC actor by the name of Sylvester Stallone.
Someone noteworthy who had more time than
both of the two studs combined (but not by much) is Shirley Stoler (30 Mar 1929
– 17 Feb 1999), in her second feature-film appearance after her co-lead
performance in the low-budget masterpiece that is The Honeymoon Killers (1970).
