"The earth was not made for us, she was made
for the dinosaurs."
Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd)
This review meanders...
go down just past the Carnosaur trailer
should you not enjoy verbosity. Let's hear it for mad scientists (cum
doctors): where would the world be without them? The staple of bad films
everywhere, the prototype of course comes from literature, namely the good ol'
doctor Frankenstein (1818), with the
next mad docs of note arguably being the eponymous ones of Robert Louis
Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896).
All three mad-to-misdirected men have been portrayed on-screen many
times, the earliest versions being, for Moreau, neither Charles Laughton (1 Jul
1899 – 15 Dec 1962) in The Island of Lost
Souls(1932) nor Erich
Kaiser-Tilz (7 Oct 1875 – 22 Nov 1928) as Prof. McClelland in the unauthorized
German version Die Insel der
Verschollenen a.k.a. The Island of
the Lost (1921), but someone unknown in a lost British film from 1913, The Island of Terror; for Dr Jekyll, neither
John "I Need A Drink" Barrymore (14 or 15 Feb 1882 – 29 May 1942) in John S. Robertson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920 / full movie) nor King Baggot (7 Nov
1879 – 11 July 1948) in the 1913 short of the same name (full short), but Hobart Bosworth (11
Aug 1867 – 30 Dec 1943) in a lost version from 1908; and for Dr Frankenstein, not
Colin Clive (20 Jan 1900 – 25 June 1937) in the undisputed classic must-see
Frankenstein (1931 / trailer) but, some three
or five film versions earlier, Augustus Phillips in James Searle Dawley'ssilent short Frankenstein (1910, our Short
Film of the Monthfor May 2021). [In a total
aside: John Barrymore's fourth and final wife, Elaine Barry, starred in our Short
Film of the Month for March 2016, Dwain Esper's How
to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937).] The archetypical filmic
portrayal of the mad scientist is probably Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge of Hexen
[1949 / full film / poster below]) in Metropolis
(1927 / trailer), but
the generally male stock character itself comes in many shapes and sizes in fun
and not-so-fun films throughout film history.*
As probably to be expected in this perfect world of omnipresent equal
rights and universal equality, female mad scientists (like Afro-American ones*) are a far rarer breed. In
literature, perhaps the earliest of the "lunatic ladies in the laboratory"is the titular protagonist of George Griffith's long out-of-print
1894 novel, Olga Romanoff (akaThe Syren of the Skies),
who has never made the jump to the silver screen. On screen, the first might be
housewife-turned-mad-scientist Malita, played by an immensely enjoyable Rafaela
Ottiano (4 Mar 1888 –
18 Aug 1942), in Tod Browning's The Devil-Doll (1936 / trailer above, starring John Barrymore). Thereafter, the first
"real" (mad) female scientists to promptly come to our mind are Dr
Myra (Katherine Victor) of the no-budget anti-classic Teenage Zombies (1959), Dr Lil
Stanhope (Renee
Harmon) of Frozen Scream (1980), and Dr. Pamela Isley aka Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) of the mega-budget, ultra-campy
critical flop, Batman & Robin with Nipples (1997 / trailer). A name
that we now know must be added to that illustrious list of three is that of Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd), of this Roger Corman
production, Carnosaur.
*Though we do
promptly think of The Blob
(1988 / trailer)
remake and, of course, Dr. Jekyll, Mr.
Black (1976 / trailer).
The first Black mad doctor to appear in film, however, appeared eight years
after the first Dr. Frankenstein: an unknown actor plays the unnamed mad-doctor
daddy of the "race film" Mercy,
the Mummy Mumbled (1918 / what's
left of it), a 13-minute comedy
short that is more or less a Black-cast remake of the white-cast short, The Egyptian Mummy (1914 / full film). "[Mercy,
the Mummy Mumbled]
was made by the 'Historical Feature Film Company [us]', which was a white-run
company, but distributed by the Ebony Film Company [us]' to make it appear that
it was released by a black-controlled company. [imdb]" True, but the statement glosses over the fact
that Mercy was, nevertheless, "an all-Black production in terms of
the director, writers, production crew and actors," as Scared Silly points out. But as Scared Sillyalso goes on to say, the film is problematic in many
ways. (Go to Scared Sillyto find out more.) In turn, if one looks at the
definition of "mad scientist/doctor" loosely, the first female Black
mad doctor (actually less mad than simply misguided) is probably Dr Jackson
(Laura Bowman) of "the
first science fiction horror film to feature an all-black cast," the contentious Son of Ingagi (1940 / full film).
Trailer to
Carnosaur:
As directed and
written by scriptwriter & director Adam Simon (co-scripter of Bones [2001] and S&D of the pretty good Brain Dead [1990 /trailer]), this dino film and its mad doctor sit amidst
appropriate company when it comes to the three previously listed "mad
female doctor" films. Like the previously mentioned movies, a masterpiece this
movie is not — but then, who really expects a film named something like Carnosaur to actually be a
"good" movie? Based, in theory, on the eponymously named book from
1984 by some guy named John Brosnan (7 Oct 1947 – 11 Apr 2005), the script for Carnosaur takes so many liberties with
its source material that it could be argued that the original novel has yet to
be adapted.*
*A relatively
productive author with diverse pen names (Carnosaur
was written, for example and as you can see below, by Harry Adam Knight),
Brosnan saw three feature-film adaptations of different books of his during his
lifetime: this film here, Proteus
(1995 / trailer),
based on Slimer, and Beyond Bedlam aka Nightscare (1994 / full movie), based on Bedlam. While some see Brosnan's
novel Carnosaur as derivative of Michael Crichton's best seller Jurassic
Park, Carnosaur preceded the latter author's novel by six years.
Even if the source
novel of Carnosaur was not a rip-off,
the film itself is of course and definitely a cheap & quick attempt by
Corman's Concorde-New Horizons production house to rip off and ride on the
coattails of 1993's big budget hit production, Spielberg's Jurassic Park (trailer).
In an inspired casting turn, Corman even got Diane Ladd, the real-life mother
of that film's lead female actor, Laura Dern, to play Carnosaur's mad scientist. As might be expected of a professional
actor whose feature-film career spans back to an un-credited appearance in Something Wild (1961 / trailer) — Lane's first
credited feature-film appearance is in The
Wild Angels (1965 / trailer)* — she does an unexpectedly
professional acting job considering that she's working with a one-note stock character
("mad scientist"). Indeed, her thespian turn and that of Harrison
Page,** as the one-note stock character Sherriff Fowler, are notably miles
above the quality of the absolutely terrible acting job Raphael Sbarge (of The Hidden II [1994 / trailer]) does playing
the movie's male lead and hero, the security guard "Doc" Smith. Sbarge
is simply unconvincing throughout the film as either hero or nice guy, but it
is during his attempts at playing drunk that he achieves an almost sublime
textbook example of everything you can do wrong when "acting" a
drunkard. One can only wonder that unlike the somewhat nominally better female
lead of the movie, Jennifer Runyon***
(playing the eco-activist Ann "Thrush"), he maintained an acting career
after this film.****
*Diane Ladd and fellow
co-star Bruce Dern were already 5 years married when they appeared together in
this legendary Roger Corman movie starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra.
According to common Hollywood lore, their daughter Laura Dern was conceived
during the shoot of this movie. (See Dick
Miller, Pt II.)
**Harrison Page might be
not be in all that many feature films, but he started his career with two roles
of note: he made his debut playing the Afro-American draft dodger Niles in Russ
Meyer's classic Vixen! (1968 / trailer) and then
appeared in Meyer's camp masterpiece Beyond
the Valley of the Dolls (1970 / trailer / see R.I.P. Charles Napier) as Emerson Page, the good-guy beau of the bodacious
Petronella Danforth (Marcia McBroom) versus her hotly muscular and violent one
night stand, Randy Black (James Iglehart). Iglehart may have had the muscles,
but Page got the acting career.
***Runyon, aged 33, who made her film debut in David Hess's slather To
All a Good Night (1980 / trailer / see R.I.P. Harry Reems Pt. V), retired from acting after this movie. In the teens
of the 21st century, she returned to make special appearances in three
films: Silent Night, Bloody Night 2:
Revival (2015 / trailer),
Terror Tales (2016 / trailer) and Bloodsucka Jones vs. the Creeping Death
(2017 / trailer).
****The only other actor of
note, whom we fail to mention in our review, is everyone's favorite Republican,
the cult actor Clint Howard. He does a typical Clint Howard turn, if perhaps a
bit more subdued than normal, and then dies.
As a rip-off of a blockbuster, Carnosaur comes nowhere close to being as good as the best of earlier Corman blockbuster
rip-offs like John Sayles's Alligator (1980) and Joe Dante's Piranha (1978 / see R.I.P. Dick Miller Pt V). The flaw lies not just in the uneven acting, but
far more in the substandard episodic script, atrocious editing and dearth of
humor. Not that there is no humor present in Carnosaur, just that too much of it is budget-related (the
"big showdown", with its obvious toy trucks and dinos, is pretty
funny) or is lost amidst the bad acting and editing, the latter of which causes
the movie to come across as if swathes of the narrative were inexplicably
ripped out and left on the editing room floor. The result is that the narrative
often feels like a bunch of scenes strung together but lacking the bridge
between them. Not that these gaps make the movie hard to follow, they merely
make the narrative extremely inconsistent and full of "Huh?" moments.
On the whole, the
movie is as much a mad doctor and dinosaur-on-the-loose film as it is — fitting
to the times we chose to finally watch it — a pandemic movie. If we got the
plot right: Dr. Tiptree (Ladd), hired to biotech-pimp chicken, instead creates
a virus that infects everyone but also specifically causes women (including,
one would suppose, post-menopausal women) to self-fertilize and give — in
belly-bursting homage to Alien (1979
/ trailer) — birth to
chicken-basedcarnosauria.
Prior to this mass fertilization, however, one baby carnosaurus (born to a
chicken) gets loose and lays waste to almost everyone introduced anywhere in
the movie. The government is then called in to handle the situation, but as to
be expected it basically lays everyone else to waste in their typically SNAFU
fashion...
Anti-big business, anti-biotech, anti-government and
oddly anti-woman (the ability to get pregnant definitely feels like a
biological flaw in this film), Carnosaur is definitely
third-rate Corman trash, far closer in its entire id to the ineptitude and lack
of intelligence of Piranha II: The Spawning (1982 / trailer) than the film
that that slice of Italo-trash followed. But much like that Z-film, there is a
lot to be found in Carnosaur for fans of cinematic flotsam to enjoy: you
name it, but for Diane Lane and Harrison Page and most of the practical gore
effects, it is all laughably terrible. And to crown off all that badness,
screenwriter/director Adam Simon has the cahonas
to pay a direct homage to the ironic, hard-hitting and extremely bleak ending
of the original George Romero version of The Crazies (1973 / trailer). (Kudos, dude!)
Yep, Carnosaur is pretty crappy, but in a
fun way. It goes well with pizza and beer. That said, the less you expect the
more you'll probably be able to enjoy it.
A success during its
theatrical release, Carnosaur went
on to spawn two direct-to-video sequels: Carnosaur
2 (1995 / trailer), with the great John Heard, and Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996 / trailer). Roger Corman, being the legendary penny-pincher
that he is, also reused Carnosaur footage
in Raptor (2001 / trailer) and The Eden
Formula (2006 / trailer) — the last wreckage of a film with Dee Wallace, Tony
Todd and Jeff Fahey!
Really: we have probably all heard of this thing, but
how many (especially those born after 1970) have actually seen this classic,
"1952 civil defense animated live-action social guidance film"? In
1999, Duck and Cover received the
honor of being inducted into the US National Film Registry, which describes the film thus: "This
landmark civil defense film was seen by millions of schoolchildren in the
1950s. As explained by Bert the Turtle, to survive an atomic attack you must
'duck and cover.'" A description that totally ignores the film's most
attractive aspect today: it's pretty funny.
But before we look at the film,
let's take a gander at the catchy title track, entitled Bert the Turtle (Duck and Cover) written by Leon Carr and Leo
Corday, and sung by the Chicago-based singer and entertainer Dick
"Two Ton" Baker (2 May 1916 – 4 May 1975); in its day, it sold three million copies (though
some sales may have been due to the 45's A-side song, Fuzzy Wuzzy [contemporary cover version]). Baker, a successful local musician in
Chicago who once said, "The only thing I've ever wanted to do in this
world is play piano and sing on the radio. This isn't work, it's play — and I'm
getting paid for it!", released other popular novelty songs over the course
of his career, including everyone's favorite, I Like Stinky Cheese. Oddly enough, however, Two Ton's
version of Bert the Turtle (Duck and
Cover), though obviously enough released* as a tie-in to the film, is actually a cover version. The
original version heard in the film is sung by a typically generic easy
listening chorus, by all accounts arranged by the jazz musician Dave Lambert
(19 June 1917 – 3 Oct 1966) of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.
*It
was released by Coral Records, a subsidy of Decca whose roster included such
great as Patsy Cline and Liberace. Coral ceased to
exist in 1973.
Dick "Two Ton" Baker sings
Bert the Turtle (Duck and Cover):
The short itself was filmed
somewhere in Queens in the autumn of 1951 by the Manhattan-based advertising
firm Archer Productions. "The first public showing of Duck and Cover (and Our Cities Must Fight*) was at the Alert America Convoy launch in
Washington, D.C. on January 7, 1952. The Alert America Convoy was the grand
gesture of the new FCDA [Federal Civil Defense Administration]. The convoy comprised three
caravans of 10 large trucks and trailers that toured the country for nine
months in 1952. Each vehicle contained various civil defense exhibitions including
dioramas, posters, three-dimensional models and movies. The theme of the convoy
was to show what 'might happen' and then provide education on what every
citizen could do to 'beat the bomb.' The Advertising Council, working closely
with the FCDA, promoted the convoy like a Hollywood B-movie with screaming
posters that read: 'Don't miss it…it's the show that could save your life!' [Conerad]"
*Like Duck and Cover, Our Cities Must Fight was an Archer
Productions production.
Obviously intended for a young
audience, this "educational" film enjoyed a long life despite already being
pulled from circulation by the contracting Federal Civil Defense Administration
by June, 1955, and being officially declared "obsolete" by the same
administration in 1957. (For more info on all that, see Jake Hughes's essay at the National Film Registry.) But as every
American knows: if a school ever bought an educational film, it was shown until
it fell apart, so this short continued to be screened for years to come. Thus
the film was indelibly burned into the brains of generations of kids and, once
it was truly no longer shown in schools, it achieved a second life as pop
reference material perfect for such fun stuff as the documentary The Atomic Café (1982), a 2013 National Film Registry induction, or Weird Al Yankovic's
Christmas at Ground Zero (1986)
Full short —
Duck & Cover:
Like most educational and/or civil
defense films, the cast is a cast of nobodies. Perhaps some went on to this or
that level of fame and success in business or crime, but as the names are
unknown we will never know. One name is known, however: that of the narrator. Duck and Cover is one of the first
known film projects of the deceased and mostly forgotten American character
actor Robert Middleton (born Samuel G. Messer, 13 May 1911 – 14
June 1977), who went on to have a decent
career usually playing the bad guy.
Aside from his numerous TV appearances, he
can be found in such fine feature-film fare as Paul Newman's film debut The Silver Chalice (1954 / trailer), the classic noir The Big Combo (1955 / full film), The
Desperate Hours (1955 / trailer), Elvis Presley's film debut Love Me Tender (1956 / trailer), The
Glass Cage (1964 / full film), Nancy Sinatra's film debut For Those Who Think Young (1964 / trailer), Which
Way to the Front? (1970, see Dick Miller, Part III), The Harrad Experiment (1973
/ trailer), and the anti-classic The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977 / full film).
As an added attraction —
Billy Chambers' 1962 non-hit, Fallout Shelter*:
* "Fallout
Shelter, which was recorded in two or three takes along with
the ironically titled A-side of the disk (That's
When I Stopped Living), was sung by 24-year-old Billy Chambers and a chorus
of back-up singers from Florida Southern College. Chambers, who was in a rock
band called the Dynamics, was recruited for the session because [producer &
writer Bobby]
Braddock liked the singer's voice. This record would remain
the only solo music issued by Chambers, who left show business shortly after the
single's release for the more stable field of construction. Chambers passed
away in 1991 at the age of 52 from cancer.[Conerad]"
Lastly: For another take on when the
bomb falls, let us suggest either our Short
Film of the Month for September 2015, A Short Vision (1956), or for February 2018, Pica-Don
(1978).
Another
obscure direct-to-video slab of independently made, unmitigated trash from
Germany's premiere Outsider filmmaker, Jochen Taubert (born 14 Jan 1968), whose
films anyone outside of the German-speaking countries will probably never
bother to see, unless of course they are bad-film masochists who happen
understand some German and go the extra mile to search them out. In general, we
would recommend trash-lovers to watch at least one of Taubert's films someday
(perhaps not this one), for we here at a
wasted life find his socially irrelevant and intellectually
empty examples of ugly, no budget, feature-length idiocy extremely enjoyable
when watched in a group with the right state of mind and access to a lot of beer. But then, that is more or less also
how Taubert's films are intended to be viewed, according to the filmmaker
himself. "Back then [when we made our first film] like now, we always film
under the influence of alcohol. It is also imperative not to be sober when
watching our films. [ghostshit
reviews]"
Exhibitionisten Attacke ("Attack
of the Exhibitionists") is possibly/probably his fourth full-length project, made a year
after his similar but superior — if one can even use that word when discussing
Taubert movies — Ich pisse auf deinen Kadaver ("I
Piss on Your Cadaver"). The "plot" this time around involves a
mad ninja doctor who turns his mostly male patients into murdering exhibitionists, although only three or so ever truly go the full monty and flash full frontals
with out-of-focus, pube-crowned hooded soldiers (hairlessness wasn't really de rigueur yet in 2000), and a young
woman singer (Adriane
Sondermann) out to stop him. Along the way, more or less
everyone introduced on screen dies a bloody or ridiculous death. There is also one singular female exhibitionist, BTW, but she is somewhat demure by usual
Taubert standards.
Exhibitionisten
Attacke –
minus
everything that YouTube might flag:
To
talk logic is illogical when it comes to Exhibitionisten
Attacke, but if there is any form of logic at all to the film's narrative it
is at best dream logic, the kind of narrative development one has in dreams or
nightmares: the action continues scene to scene, but no scene really lines up
fully logically to the preceding or subsequent one despite coming across as chronological. The dialogue is just as non-sequiturly obtuse — typical example:
after the lead female escapes death for the umpteenth time and has even killed
an exhibitionist or four, she shows up at band rehearsal and simply excuses her
late arrival with, "Sorry, I've had a hard day." Then she sings the
crappy techno song (something about saving nature) as the film's only female
exhibitionist attacker — at least: she dresses and kills like the other exhibitionists
but she never flashes — saunters into the same studio and everyone in the
room ignores her as she pours poison into the fog machine which, because that
is what one does in a recording studio, gets turned on…
The lead female is the only survivor, of course, and
thus narrative continues and everyone around her keeps dropping like flies,
sometimes by her own hand. Despite an occasional emotionless outburst of
"You asshole!" or "You fiend!" or "Help! There's a
killer after me!", the film's heroine more or less
just tumbles forward unaffected and unreflective by anything that happens to
her. Regardless of whether her brother dies, friends die, her hairdresser dies,
she hunts or is hunted by the bad guys, goes shopping for bandages, runs over a
seeing-eye dog, or gets chased through the countryside, she remains pretty much nonplussed by the death
and destruction around her and just barrels onward and forwards. In that
sense, she is a bit like the title character of Christian Marquand's (15
Mar 1927 – 22 Nov 2000) star-studded flop of a filmic take of Terry Southern's Candy (1968 / trailer), with Babe of
Yesteryear Eva Aulin, who as Candy just continues in a nonstop and unaffected forward
trajectory no matter what sexual shenanigan transpires in her presence. (Again,
however: instead of the sexual situations of Candy, in Exhibitionisten
Attacke it is just death and blood and terrible acting).
This
consistency of inconsistency in dialogue and action and nonsensical forward
trajectory of Taubert's movie is indubitably magnified by the fact that Exhibitionisten Attacke was made
without a true pre-written screenplay. As Taubert reveals at ghostshit,
"No, there is no script, there's a story as a guiding thread and what ends
up happening is the result. For example: my friend is a policeman, so a police
car shows up; my brother is in hospital, so we shoot at his bed in the
hospital; and so forth…."
His brother also ends up being the first
exhibitionist attacker, but that flasher isn't around all that long. In the case of Exhibitionisten Attacke, in any event, we
would conjecture that true source of the film's creation is the footage of real
internal operations that is intercut every time the mad doc is seen operating
on one of his future exhibitionists. Taubert probably found it somewhere and
knew he just had to use it, somehow, and then the bro in the hospital was just
an unexpected extra.
Regardless
of the true sequence of inspirational events, the film would probably be
"better" without the operation footage. It undeniably serves its purpose, which
is to shock and repulse and push boundaries, but it also seems oddly unneeded
and, unbelievably enough, clashes with the bloody but childish glee and general
immaturity of the rest of the movie. In contrast, the old-man flasher showing
his grey-domed skin-turtleneck is likewise an obvious attempt to shock and push
borders, but it is puerile instead of nauseating and is at least as groan-inducingly
funny as it is distasteful. (The Opa
was far from a GILF, in any event.) The OP stuff does little but ruin the taste
of one's beer and chips.
Ditto,
unexpectedly enough, with the film's only notable female nude scene, which
feels oddly dirtier than normal for Taubert's films (at least going by those films that we
here at a wasted life have seen). True,
the inanity of the situation and how it transpires is played for laughs, but it
is shot like illicit porn using a woman who obviously did not want her face
shown, thus it exudes an odd almost revenge-porn aura. (We like naked
women as much as the next bisexual, but revenge porn sucks.) But then, the
situation itself is a hard one to make funny:even filmmakers like Almedover are incapable of successfully playing
rape for laughs, so it is hardly surprising a rapey situation in Exhibitionisten Attacke doesn't really
work either. What is particularly odd about the scene is that it is the only
breast scene of the movie, while Taubert, a typical heterosexual breast man,
generally thinks that in film, "Tits are the most important thing. And
there are so many [kinds]: big, small, middle-sized, real, silicon… and all of
them have nipples. [ghostshit]"
Had, however, more breast been seen in the movie, this singular scene might perhaps
not come across as so forced, so un-fun, so pointless. (Indeed, Taubert forwent
a major opportunity by not having the four women singing and dancing during the
consciously interminably long opening credit scene do their laughably bad
singing and dancing naked — indeed, it a shame that the well-orbed but thespian-challenged lead female
never truly gets naked once. There are numerous scenes throughout the movie
that would've lent themselves well for her to gratuitously get her dress ripped
off.)
A
true plus point of Exhibitionisten
Attacke is that at roughly 1:40 hours in length, it mercifully and
enjoyably short (unlike, for example, the painfully long Pundelmützen Rambos
[2004]). Without the OP footage, the film would have been both shorter and more
fun. But as the "independent and 'amatuuuure'" filmmaker Taubert
himself points out, "The best thing about our films is that you can go to
the toilet while the film is running and you don't miss anything." Our
suggestion would be to use the OP-footage to take a pee, get a new beer,
concentrate on rolling that joint or doing something similar, and to enjoy the
rest of the movie for what it is: the apogee of filmmaking inability, and a
visual and moving illustration of a total lack of anything remotely
professional, be it the mildest capacity to tell a story, act, direct, do
special effects or gore, anything. Enjoy!
Trailer to Taubert's most recent
& professional film, Romeo
& Julia, Liebe ist ein Schlachtfeld [Love Is a Battlefield]:
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 8 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 Addendums Parts I – 4, which looked at
the films that we somehow missed or skipped in our extended and heavy Parts I through VII. And then we went and lost
the stick we had our Harry Reems file on (a lesson learnt 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, Addendum Part I appeared, much like delayed
ejaculation: better late than never. Then came the relatively short but meaty Addendum Part II, followed by the somewhat longer
and fatter Addendum
Part III. And now, this is the end, my friend: year
1985 and then some... Way back when, we seriously lost interest in the undertaking
as of the films around 1985 and after, which is why this Career Review sort of peters out at this point.
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 that
1973 film wasn't funny enough to keep us watching until the end.
According to Jason S.
Martinko's book The XXX Filmography,
1968-1988, "Stuart Canterbury directed this movie starring Nina
Hartley and Harry Reems. It's for couples that like to get together Late after Dark." No one's
bothered to write about the film online, though over at Vintage Erotica Forum a member did offer a slight plot: "It
features Jerry Butler as a bar/pub owner closing up the bar and reminiscing
about why his marriage is going downhill, about his love life and about some
people coming to his bar."
Speaking of Jerry Butler
(13 May 1959 — 27 Jan 2018), he was interviewed here at the Rialto Report. Jerry made rare and
minute appearances in non-porn productions, such as Chuck Vincent's Preppies (1984 / trailer) and Deranged (1987 / see below),*
Hennenlotter's Basket Case (1982), and Mardi
Rustam's hilarious Evils of the Night (1985
/ trailer).
*
Not
to be confused with the really great 1974 movie based on the legendary Ed
Gein (27 Aug 1906 — 26 July 1984), Alan Ormsby's Deranged (trailer), starring the eternally underappreciated character actor Roberts
Blossom.
Full
film —
Chuck Vincent's Deranged
(1987):
Among Butler's porn films
of note, we must mention the typically Ed Woodian Carlos Tobalina (5 Apr 1925 –
31 Mar 1989) feature fuck film, Sexual
Odyssey (1987), with its typically inane Tobalina plot: "Jerry Butler
was gay, but after getting in on with Rachel Ashley and Karen Summers he
becomes straight!"
With Love from
Susan
(1985,
"dir." Hal Freeman)
D2V released the same
year as Desperately Seeking Susan
(1985 / trailer), the
better film upon which Freeman's title refers. Like so many films of this
period of porn, it's a cut-and-paste job made of scenes from other films. Here,
the selling point is the then-popular porn actress Susan Hart (nee Susanna
Probyn), and each scene features her with a different famous [white] stud,
including (aside from Harry Reems) Peter North, Tom Byron, Marc Wallice, Paul
Thomas and Jesse Eastern.
The Susan Hart giving her love in this obscure clip compilation should, of course, not to be confused with the only slightly less
obscure non-porn actress Susan Hart, above, (nee Susan Neidhart) of such fabulous film classics
as The Slime People (1963 / trailer) and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965
/ trailer)... for more
on her, take a look at R.I.P. Dick Miller, Part I.
Non-porn
Susan Hart's non-hit from 1981,
Is This a
Disco or a Honky Tonk?
Director Hal "Backdoor"
Freeman (1936? – 1989), intentionally or not, ended up being a domino in the
legalization of pornography. When the Moral Majority* and hypocrites in power at the time in the State of California
took him to court on the grounds that hiring people to fuck on film was
actually "pandering", the battle reached the California Supreme Court
in 1988 — "People
v. Freeman" — and "[Freeman] proved to a Grand Jury that because
it's being filmed and released it gives it first amendment protection hence
legalizing hardcore pornography in California. [Filmow]"
*"The
Moral Majority, which began in 1979 with multi-millionaire minister Jerry
Falwell and eventually infected all manner of politics, law, art and culture.
The organization set goals that included all the usuals like overturning Roe
vs. Wade, making sure gays remained second-class citizens, opposing equal
rights measures and affirmative action, censoring or trying to ban things they
didn't like, trying to force prayer into schools and saturating the media with
propaganda / scare tactics in an effort to convert people over to conservative
Christianity. [Bloody Pit of Horror]" Sounds
like the current Republican Party to us...
Amidst all his porn
productions, in 1987 "director"/producer Hal
Freeman made a rare, non-porn gore project, a long-forgotten violent and misogynistic
— it was the 80s, after all — horror movie entitled Blood Frenzy, featuring the original Wednesday Addams (Lisa Loring)
of The Addams Family TV show
(1964-66 / theme song)
in a transparent bra. The same year as she made Blood Frenzy, she married working stiff Jerry Butler (see Late after Dark, above), but she and Butler divorced by 1992.
German title: Grenzen der Lust. One of three Bob
Chinn films made/released in 1985 that included Harry Reems in the cast. Passage to Ecstasy is to be found all
over the net for free, but we couldn't locate a review or detailed plot
description. Indeed, the only plot description for Passage to Ecstasy we found was an extremely vague one at the NSFW forumphilia:"Everyday life of a small European diaspora in a South Asian country
(possibly Thailand). Intrigue, betrayal and of course sex."
Harry Reems has a scene
with Stacey "I do it for the money" Donovan (nee Kelly Howell), who
later dissed the industry for that waste of tax payer's money known as the Meese Commission, and one
with Honey Wilder (nee Shirley
Thompson-Starks). Honey Wilder, as Shirley Starks, went on to become a
successful set decorator and production designer for mainstream film and
television productions. (Early in her career as a set decorator, she did such
masterpieces as Severed Ties [1992 /
trailer], Dollman [1991 / trailer], and Grim Prairie Tales [1990 / trailer].)
Director Bob Chinn,
born Robert Husong, a Chinese American, was the inspiration for Burt Reynolds'
very Caucasian character, "Jack Horner", in Boogie Nights (1997).
One of three Bob Chinn
films made/released in 1985 that included Harry Reems in the cast, in his book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 Jason S.
Martinko deigns to say little more about Losing Control than to call it
"a fairly obscure Bob Chin movie". Obscure, perhaps, in that no one
seems to find it worth writing about, for it is easy to find online.
Of the onscreen
couplings, Harry Reems coupled but once and that was with Erica Boyer (22 Dec
1956 – 31 Dec 2009). Ms. Boyer (nee Amanda Margaret Gantt), who retired from
porn to Panama City, Fl., with her husband, former football player Derrick
Jensen (27 Apr 1956 – 7 Apr 2017), and son, was killed by a hit-and-run driver who later
proved to be an off-duty member of the Florida Highway Patrol.
The same year as the porn
movie Losing Control was released
and didn't make waves, the unknown Irish electropop musician named Barry Warner
released his debut single Real Man,
which went nowhere, just like the single's B-side, a song not inspired by Bob
Chinn's movie of the same name...
Oh, yeah – The Good Name
Never Dies Department: since Chin's film, the title Losing Control has seen two reiterations, neither a remake. 1998
saw Playboy's Losing Control (image
below), a softcore thriller directed by Julie Jordan, and 2011 saw a comedy use
the title (trailer).
Of the three Bob Chinn porn
flicks made/released in 1985 that included Harry Reems in the cast, this one
was the only one shot D2V... "Scriptwriter" Philip Dennis Connors' only
non-porno scriptwriting credit we could find is as co-writer of Mardi Rustam's Evils of the Night (see Late after Dark).
Mardi
Rustam's
Evils of the Night (1985):
According to Jason S.
Martinko's book The XXX Filmography,
1968-1988, "Tom (Eric Edwards)
and Sue (Josephine Carrington) run a business that lets people live out their
fantasies, which are put together by a high-tech computer. Tom fantasizes about
Sue, but has never had sex with her. The fantasies of the clients make up most
of the movie."
Christie
"Yummy" Canyon is presented on the video box as having a major
presence in the film, but her singular scene, which opens the film, blinks out
and away when the fantasy machine breaks down. Harry Reems' character is also a
fantasy figure, a fire inspector, created to fulfill Tamara Longley's fantasy...
Over at the imdb, that literate purveyor of porn
lor saw this
"winner from Bob Chinn" with a "literate script [that] neatly
conveys the message that all this fantasizing can't hold a candle to
reality" and wrote: "Team of Eric Edwards and underrated Josephine
Carrington run a computer-driven service that permits clients over the phone to
live out their sexual fantasies. [...] Key through-line in the script is horny
Eric's oft-expressed desire to get into his co-worker's panties [...]. The
various clients who play out interesting fantasies include: Tamara Longley
humping fire inspector Harry Reems in her kitchen; Goldie [aka Summer Rose] fantasizing
making love to plumber Blake Palmer; Eric fancying himself a magician to hump a
groupie backstage in the form of Bunny Bleu; plus a brief opening segment
featuring Christy Canyon, a vignette of Peter North and his wife plus a fine
turn as a fantasy nurse by Brit Stevie Taylor. The climax has Pamela Jennings
guesting quite effectively as a zaftig
blonde who Eric contrives to be in a would-be three-way with Josephine and
himself, but a glitch ends this before he can arrive. [...] Considering the
subsequent rise in popularity of computer gaming and now a rush toward 'virtual
reality' as the next big thing, this quaint video has some relevance still."
Eric Edwards
explains fluffing:
Eric Edwards, a man who
seldom left the thespian corners of porn, made a rare and very short,
uncredited, appearance as a gypsy (as did fellow pornsters Arcadia Lake [3 Sept
1957 – 13 Sept 1991], his then-wife, and John Leslie [25 Jan 1945 – 5 Dec 2010])
in the nudity-heavy burning scene tacked onto the slasher The Prey (1983), "one of those movies that amply demonstrates
why slasher films don't get that much respect [FMM&R]" and the last
feature-film project of Uncle Fester, otherwise known as the actor Jackie
"The Kid"
Coogan (26 Oct 1914 – 1 Mar 1984).
Trailer
to
The Prey (1983):
Talk Dirty to Me One More Time
(1985, writ. & dir. Anthony Spinelli)
By now, the day of groovy
porn film posters for even the cheapest of productions was long over: crappy
VHS covers like the one above, with hirsute John Leslie (25 Jan 1945 – 5 Dec
2010) in full performance glory, were the new norm — fitting, perhaps, to the
general genericness of the product they packaged.
Compare, for example, the
VHS cover to Talk Dirty to Me One More
Time withthese two posters of
earlier movies to feature John Leslie's reliable tool, V – The Hot One (1978) & The
Other Side of Julie (1978).
The D2V Talk Dirty to Me One More Time was
followed by a dozen of "sequels", but it was itself a "sequel"
to AnthonySpinelli's theatrical
release Talk Dirty to Me (1980),
which also featured Jack (John Leslie) as the main male character (star) of
both films. (Even the poster to that first movie, below, is better than the
cover image of the VHS sequel.)
Prior to Talk Dirty to Me One More Time, Jack
(John Leslie) also appeared in Nothing
to Hide (1981), an unofficial
sequel to Talk Dirty to Me as
Spinelli, due to legal rights, couldn't make an official sequel. Over at Huff Post, Paul Fishbein, the
founder and former owner of Adult Video
News, rates "1981's Nothing to
Hide is the best porn film of all time because it has good acting and a
sweet romance that has never been duplicated in a sex flick."
By the time Talk Dirty to Me One More Time was made,
Harry Reems may have been a name but drugs and alcohol had already made his
"performance capabilities" unreliable, thus his general secondary or
tertiary roles. It is perhaps also fitting, then, that in Talk Dirty to Me One More Time he plays a man who pays another man,
Jack, to bonk his wife (Colleen Brennan) while he watches — or as the film
scholar Linda
Williams describes it in Pornography:
Film And Culture (edited by Peter Lehman), "In Talk Dirty to Me One More Time, it is a voyeuristic husband's view
of his wife that finally cures him of impotence." Elsewhere, a more
typical porn synopsis describes the plot as follows: "Leslie is back as
the smooth-talking Jack, and this time he is hired by a successful doctor
(Reems) to seduce the doctor's wife (Brennen) and turn her into a wild minx in
the bedroom. Nikki Charm has an incredible squirt scene here, and this film
marks [Brittany] Stryker's first appearance [credited as Judy Jones]."
Director Anthony Spinelli
(21 Feb 1927 – 29 May 2000) was one of the busiest directors in pornographic
films both during and after the "Golden Age of Porn". BornSamuel Weinstein, under the stage name Sam Weston he
began a career as a mainstream actor and producer, but unlike his older brother
Jack Weston (21 Aug 1924 – 3 May 1996) — of Wait until Dark (1967 / trailer), Fuzz (1972, see Uschi Part VI), Gator (1976 / trailer)
and more — he wasn't all that successful. The biggest success during this
period of his career, as "Sam Weston", is undoubtedly (as producer of
and bit player in) the unjustly forgotten message film One Potato, Two Potato, Polish poster above, "a very low
budget production that made a bit of commotion back when it debuted in 1964.
Despite its lowly pedigree (it was filmed in the Cleveland area and the actors
were mostly unknowns at the time), the lead actress (Barbara Barrie) received
the Best Actress award at Cannes and the film was nominated for an Oscar (Best
Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen). Sadly, today
it's a pretty obscure picture. [imdb]"
Scene
from
One Potato, Two Potato:
Eventually reduced to
selling encyclopedia's to support his family, Spinelli entered porn filmmaking
in 1971 with Diary of a Nymph — which
was not in any way based on the "serious" study of nymphomania
originally published in 1961, Dr. Nathan A Shiff's Diary Of A Nymph.
Deep Chill
(1985, dir. Conrad Fuego)
Direct-to-video "spoof"
porn, a.k.a. Deep Thrill. Anyone remember that extremely
dull, 1983 yuppie-centric comedy-drama directed by Lawrence
Kasdan, a master of Hollywood mainstream product, about a bunch of privileged
thirty-something white folks who need to get a life, entitled The Big Chill (trailer)? Basic idea:
when one of their kind kills themselves, they all get together for the first
time in 15 years and bore the audience while great, classic pop songs play in
the background.
A pseudonymous
"Conrad Fuego" made this porn take-off two years later slightly less
lily white by including two minority porn names in the cast, Kristara
Barrington (of Asian descent) and blue-eyed Billy Dee (of
Afro-American decent). The basic plot, as revealed by Jason S. Martinko in his
book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988,
remains the same: "In this porn spoof of The Big Chill, friends gather at Rick Savage's
house after the funeral of their old pal Jerry Dubin [played by Marc Wallice],
who was hooked on drugs and killed himself. Harry Reems suggests that since
Jerry was a fun-loving Irishman, they should celebrate rather than mourn his
passing. This leads to sexual encounters on every bed and couch in the house.
Jerry would have loved the party." Harry Reems appearance is short and
sexless — his talents were somewhat less than dependable talents by the time he
was earning his drug and alcohol money with cameos like this one.
Is Deep Chillany good? Well, the anal sex scenes
were deemed good enough to be later added to compilations like Rear Busters (1988) and Assfucking in the 80s (2008), but
inclusion in such money-fishing projects are hardly a true measuring stick of
quality. Indeed, the only review we could find, written by fu_q on 8/17/2017 at adult dvd talk, reveals a seemingly undecided fuq-film fan:
"[...] Deep Chill [is] an
overall-good, 1985 release from VCX. A takeoff on the early-80s mainstream hit,
The Big Chill, this film does a
fairly mediocre job as a parody, as it only weakly attempts to capture the
theme and emotions of the original material. Moreover, the acting is poor, and
the script is paltry. As a porno, however, its sex is fairly strong — headed up
by the sexy Kristara Barrington (who does anal) and bolstered by Tiffany Black
(who also does anal) and the stunningly erotic Susan Hart. The production
values are average(ish), and a lot of time doesn't appear to have been put into
set design, etc. It's a shame, really, that more effort wasn't put into the
'feature' side of the production, as a golden opportunity for a truly great
adult film was lost."
The legendary Marc Wallice,
an anal fan born as Marc Stephen Goldberg, did a rare gay porn flick under the
name Don Webber in 1984, Matt Sterling's "classic" A Matter of Size, "one of the gems
from the pre-condom era of gay porn", in which he was on both ends of the
fun. (Peter North, as Matt Ramsey, is also found in the movie, but he's all
hands-only.) That Wallice plays a victim of drugs in Deep Chill is almost typecasting, for he was an infamous bad boy,
if one of formidable reliability: it's claimed that he performed in over 1,700
porn films while active as a working stiff.
Dream Lover
(1985,
dir. Jim Reynolds)
Not to be confused with
Alan J. Pakula's flop thriller of the same name, Dream Lover (trailer below), released the following year, starring
an at the time still-closeted Kristy McNichol, of the truly enjoyable Little Darlings (1980 / trailer), the
contentious White Dog (1982 / see: Dick
Miller, Part VI), and the turgid Two
Moon Junction (1988 / see: R.I.P. Zalmon
King).
Trailer
to
Alan J. Pakula's Dream Lover:
As normal by this time in
his career, Reems does only one sex scene. Nora Louise Kuzma (otherwise known as Traci Lords) also
has only one scene in this film; by the time she made this D2V film, the
"Princess of Porn" had already been in the business for over a year...
But, at 17 years of age, she was still one year underage to legally be in films
like this. At least in the United States, her presence has been excised from
all legally available versions of her films from her heyday as a porn star
(including the video-age classic New
Wave Hookers [1984]), with the exception of Traci, I Love You
(1987), which was filmed after she became of legal age (18). Her first
"mainstream" film of her new non-porn life was the 1988 remake
(trailer below) of the 1957 Roger Corman science fiction film Not
of This Earth (see Dick
Miller, Part I). The remake is not a very good film, and when she isn't
pouting in it she's displaying copious flesh — more or less for the last time
in her career.
Trailer
to
Not of This Earth (1988):
We don't know whether Dream Lover is available in the US
without Lords' scene or whether it was reshot with a new starlet, but reviews
or plot descriptions are hard to come by. Which is why we once again turn to
Jason S. Martinko's book, The XXX
Filmography, 1968-1988: "This is a haunted house story about newlyweds
Roger (Harry Reems) and Amy (Pamela Jennings). They're thinking about buying an
old mansion and Amy sees all sorts of weird paranormal sex activity while Roger
is at work. The former owner even shows up having sex with a girl in a foggy
room."
The singular review we
could find is at imdb, where arcadiafan seems to have watched an illegal version, possibly at one of
the myriad of porn sites that have a version of it online: "Amy
(Jennings) and her husband (Reems) move into a house that seems to be filled
with ghosts of people having sex every place. She wants to tell the real estate
agent about it, but the secretary (Traci Lords) is too busy having sex with Tom Byron on her
desk to pay much attention to her troubles. Traci and Tom have only one scene in
the movie. She's stuck in one position, hollering a lot, and certainly could
use a promotion beyond entry level. Maybe if she got on top of things she could
be an office manager!"
A song that appeared in
neither Jim Reynolds' nor Alan J. Pakula's Dream
Lover (poster above), but which surely would have fit well in either, is of course the
classic...
Bobby
Darin's
Dream Lover (1958):
Educating Mandy
(1985, dir. Royce Shepard)
A starring vehicle for
the not-yet-known-to-be-underage reigning Princess of Porn, Tracy Lords — so
keep in mind, should you choose to watch it on one of
the myriad of porn sites that have a version of it online, you are breaking the
law in more ways than one. (Probably not in Western Europe, though.)
The drawing
card for us, in any event, would be the co-starring Christy
Canyon, who even in her big hair days (the eighties) was a pleasant sight
to see... The photo of Christy above is not from Educating Mandy.
Christy Canyon talks about
working
with Traci Lords!
The title of Educating Mandy, a 10-moneyshot fuck
film with only all-natural talent is naturally a play upon the film whence it
takes its basic idea of a woman gaining an "education", the 1983
comedy-drama directed by Lewis Gilbert
(6 March 1920 – 23 February 2018) entitled Educating
Rita (1983 / trailer).
That film was Gilbert's
follow-up directorial project to Moonraker
(1979), the most entertainingly retarded James Bond film ever made. Educating Rita, in any event, which was
nominated for three Oscars but won none, came in 84th on the British
Film Institute's 1999 list of the top 100 "culturally British" films
of the 20th century...
Educating
Mandy, in comparison, only got nominated as "Best All-Sex Film"
at the AVN, but left dry-handed.
Let's
hear it for Goodhead —
Trailer to Moonraker
(1979):
The plot to Educating Mandy, as found in Jason S.
Martinko's The XXX Filmography,
1968-1988: "Mandy (Traci Lords) seeks the advice of her bisexual
friends (Christy
Canyon and Heather Wayne) when she discovers her husband (Harry Reems) is
cheating [with his secretary, played by Gina Valentino nee Rosalind Lowe]. She
ends up in bed with a lawyer named Jim (Peter North), who has wanted her all
his life and will be faithful."
An interesting addendum to the plot
description found online: "Women may not like this film, but men will be
entranced with the lush bodies of Traci and Christy." Reems does the down
and dirty, successfully, with Traci Lords and Gina Valentino.
Official
video to
Traci Lords' Control:
Hot Nights at
the Blue Note Cafe
(1985, dir. Jerome Tanner)
By 2008, director Jerome
Tanner had graduated to deeply political films like Who's Nailin Paylin? (2008).
The supposed plot of Hot
Nights at the Blue Note Cafe, as taken from the back cover of the DVD:
"When a young and innocent girl (Kari Foxx nee Karin Callieros) comes to
the big city and takes a job as a taxi dancer to pay her tuition, she soon
finds her education to be faster and racier than she bargained for. Her boss,
played by the legendary Harry Reems, gives all his female employees the
sizzling, throbbing bonuses a boss is expected to give. When his ex-partner,
played by Jamie Gillis, gets out of prison, he derives a plan to turn the
nightclub into more than just a dance hall. The sex-starved ex-con figures he
can increase profits by having his sensuous taxi dance girls offer more than a
simple dance for money, and our country girls learns about the sexual side of
life the hard way... very hard." (Plot description aside, Reems does only
one sex scene, with Kathlyn Moore, an actress possibly slightly better known as
"Sheer Delight". Kari Foxx, BTW, made her porn film debut in this
movie.)
The plot might sound
simple on paper, but avn.com says, "The plot is
nearly incomprehensible, the settings amateurish. Yet, Hot Nights at the Blue Note Cafe is a sizzling sexvid featuring
some kinky couplings that'll knock your socks off. [...] But the potentially
interesting storyline is forgotten. Once the director introduces the premise,
it's off to the sexual races. And all his performers win, place and show
everything. [...] Although the Blue Note Cafe of the title is nothing more than a
house decorated inexpensively with tables and tacky lighting, most of the sexplay
takes place in a nearby bedroom. [...] Often, Hot Nights at the Blue Note Cafe is quite hot and blue. If that's
all you care about in a sexvid, spend an evening with it."
Only one non-white person
shows up in Hot Nights at the Blue Note
Cafe, and he has a non-sex part: you see him above, lower right, manhandling
Nina Hartley. Jack Baker (4 June 1947 — 13 Nov 1994), born John-Anthony
Bailey in Cleveland, had a minor non-porn career in films that began
un-credited in 1965 in Harlow (1965
/ trailer) and pretty
much ended in 1982 with Tag: The
Assassination Game (1982 / German trailer). He
turned to porn, doing both sex and non-sex scenes up until his untimely death
from bladder cancer. We don't remember his brief appearance in the Pam Grier
vehicle Friday Foster (1975 / trailer), but we'll
never forget his appearance in The
Kentucky Fried Movie (1977, see Marilyn
Joi Part IV).
Jack
Baker in
The Kentucky Fried Movie:
Loose Ends
(1985, dir. Bruce Seven [4.06.46 – 15.01.00])
An anally fixated film,
as can be perhaps inferred by the title, directed by a man whose film titles almost
all reveal an anal fixation. Loose Ends
has been followed by endless sequels...
The "plot", as
explained on the backcover of a DVD release: "The portrayal of anal
rituals found on Loose Ends benefits
tremendously from its exertingly talented cast. A frustrated Heather (Janey
Robbins), never having had and orgasm, seeks out an old schoolmate Linda (Erica
Boyer) for new explorations into the mysterious world of lust beyond love.
After an unbelievable performance in anal erotica between the two, Linda
further bursts Heather's inhibitions as she leads her into the S&M world of
Mistress Ann (Karen Summer). Her domineering expertise by her two slaves (Marc
Wallice & Tom Byron), and kinkiest sexplorations by an anal-minded supporting
cast, reem Heather into sexual plateaus beyond all expectations."
Despite the claim of
"Starring Harry Reems", he has butt one scene [HaHahHa], the second
sex scene, an anal scene with Erica Boyer. Rame.net, which calls the flick "the absolute best Bruce
Seven film ever", says that "the scene is very romantic and the facial
is the only downside".
Banal titles die hard:
not to be confused with, and definitely not inspired by, the 1929 musical Lucky in Love, featuring a lot of long
forgotten names, like the movie's romantic leads, Morton Downey ( 14 Nov 1901 —
25 Oct 1985) and Betty Lawford (1 Feb 1912 – 20 Nov 1960).
Morton
Downey sings Love Is a Dreamer,
main
tune to Lucky in Love (1929):
The [possible]
directorial debut of pornster Stuart Canterbury, contrary to what some people think/claim online, the
full title of the movie was once upon a time Lucky in Love — The Seduction of a Nerd. That Seduction of a Nerd (poster below) should not be mistaken with the
psychotronic flick from 1970, Seduction
of a Nerd, the most recent title bestowed upon a movie a.k.a. Mother, Hot Mother, Up Your Teddy
Bear and The Toy Grabbers, the
only known directorial project of Don Joslyn.
Plot of the Don Joslyn's non-XXX
Seduction of a Nerd: "When the
indomitable CEO of the Mother Knows Best Toy Company, Mother (Julie Newmar),
sees her sales slipping, she goes to extremes to find the next big toy to save
her company. She finds her salvation in nerdy toy designer Clyde King (Wally
Cox [6 Dec 1924 – 15 Feb 1973]). With the help of her man-child son (Victor
Buono [3 Feb 1938 – 1 Jan 1982] of The
Evil [1978 / trailer],
Arnold [1973 / trailer]), The Mad Butcher [1971 / trailer] and so much
more) Mother tries to lure Clyde to the company with a string of luscious
prostitutes, all to no avail. Just as Mother is about to give up hope, she
discovers that the hapless nerd is truly in love with her, because she reminds
him of his mother! [Troma]"
Trailer
to
The Seduction of a Nerd (1970):
By the way, although
Quincy Jones generally gets all the credit for the music of that movie, he is
actually co-composer with guitarist (& songwriter) Ritchie Francis of the unknown
and long-gone Welsh group, The Eyes of Blue, who perform the original
soundtrack. We couldn't find the music to The
Seduction of a Nerd, but we did find:
The
Eyes of Blue —
Supermarket Full of Cans:
But to return to Stuart
Canterbury's (possible) directorial debut, which was enough of a
success to lead to a sequel a year later Lucky in Love 2 a.k.a. Happy Go Lucky (1988), which does not
feature Reems in the cast but is far easier to find online than the first film.
The original poster to Lucky in Love
featured Reems (playing the nerd, Ronald), but he only had one sex scene with
Leslie Winston. (Trivia: Like Reems, Leslie "Got Milk?" Winston went
into real estate after leaving porn.)
The lead stud
of the movie, like its sequel, was played by Jerry Butler, whose description of
the film in his bio is a succinct: "Shows 'nerdy' Harry Reems the ropes on how to pick up Nina Hartley and
Tracey Adams"). Indeed, for its later DVD release,
the selling focus is on Nina "GILF" Hartley, who has two sex scenes.
Released the same year as the film –
Mick Jagger's single, Lucky in Love (1985):
The only plot
description we could find online focuses on her as well: "To be in love
you have to be lucky. Nina Hartley is very lucky." Jason
S. Martinko's normally mildly informative XXX Filmography isn't all that much
more helpful, though they do tell that the film was filmed in San Francisco and
Brittany Stryker does a double penetration scene — selling points indeed, for
some.
Older Men with Young Girls
(1985, dir. Jack Remy)
D2V porn, a.k.a. Older Men with Young Women. Both titles
say it all. If anyone's watched it, they haven't written about it online; we
would think it nothing more than a compilation of scenes from other movies.
Jason
S. Martinko's normally mildly informative XXX Filmography doesn't offer much
information of use: "Cast: Bunny Bleu, Joanna Storm, Summer Rose,
Tamara Longley, Harry Reems, Jerry Butler (non sex), Nick Random, Tyler
Reynolds (as Rusty Zipper). This movie was filmed in Los Angeles, California.
The screenplay was written by Valerie Kelly. Cinematography was done by Sabre
McKay and film editing was done by Conrad Paul. Original music is performed by
Sir Gregg. It's also known as Older Men
with Young Women." Assuming it's the same
Valerie Kelly, twenty years after this film she was a "wardrobe
assistant" for a better movie which, despite its title, isn't porn:
Trailer
to
Boy Eats Girls (2005):
To the meager info above,
we might add that Harry Reems has two sex scenes, one with Bunny Bleu and one
with Joanna Storm and Summer Rose. Joanna Storm, since retired, has the
distinction of having an entire LP dedicated to her: The Sporting Bachelors'
1990 release, Love Letters to Joanna
(that's her on the cover).
The
Sporting Bachelors'
Cry in the Night
(from the album):
Amongst the "old men" is
Tyler Reynolds, a.k.a. Rusty Zipper (and: Maurice Tyrone, Aries, Lance Henning,
Trish Horne, Roger Wills, Terry Mound, Phil Garde, Pencil Sharp, Edmound
Hornsby, Ed Pastram, Lance Stringer, Ty Horn, Edmund Hornsby, Jason Welles, W.
Tyler Horn, Y. Tyler Horn, Lance Hemmy, Dirk Southgate, Tyler Horne, Theodore
Horne, Jason Wells, Phil Gar and probably more names). For his 1997 spread in Playgirl shown below, he chose the name
Tyler Horn.
Prior to disappearing, Tyler
Reynolds actually made one or two non-porn exploiters, like the absolutely
terrible comedy with the grammatically incorrect title, Hey! There's Naked
Bodies on My TV! (1979).
Clip from
Hey! There's Naked Bodies on My
TV!
Voyeur's
Delight
(1986,
dir. Still Unknown)
And this D2V hand-helper
is just another perfect example of why we lost interest in doing this career
review: the entire video is nothing but archive footage — scenes culled "from some of the 1970s' and 1980s' hottest flicks and [...]
filled with plenty of amazing all-natural eye candy", stitched
together with the thinnest of plot devices: the purloined vignettes are what a
"brunette beauty" voyeur sees when looking through a telescope. Harry
has fun, one assumes in an apartment across the way, with Jessica Wylde, Lili
Marlene and Sheri St. Clair...
Sheri St. Clair, BTW,
also appeared in three of Chuck Vincent's non-X-rated movies, including his
totally WTF porn-cast-heavy WIP T&A comedy Slammer Girls (1987), a fact we mention so that we can present...
Chuck
Vincent's Slammer Girls
in 14
minutes:
Harry & Jessica &
Lili & Sheri's scene is taken from the 1985 film Obsession, for which we could find no cover art or poster or any
real information, other than what is found in Jason S. Martinko's book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, where
he writes:"Harry Reems plays a guy
who's hit it big and become a millionaire. He invites six of his married high
school friends over for a weekend of fun and sex."
Sounds better than Voyeur's Delight, in any event.
Martinko also claims that Obsession
was directed by Chad Ariana and Jonathan Ross, while Copyright Encyclopedia claim that
the Electric Hollywood video release Obsession
was produced by Chad Ariana and directed by Jonathan Ross. (Electric Hollywood also released Voyeur's Delight.)
Also from 1985, but in no
way related to either of these two D2V handhelpers, the New Wave dance tune Obsession, a cover version of a song
from the 1983 TV stripper flick A Night
in Heaven (Christopher Atkins strips). A song better
than either video discussed here.
As good titles (?) never
die, Voyeur's Delight was reused for
a softcore TV flick 19 years later: "Yet another softcore film [...] where a
few characters sit around talking as a way to introduce sex scenes which are
clips from older softcore shows. [imdb]"
The main man of that film is Steven "Man
Breasts" St. Croix.
And this is where we stopped back in 2013/14... But an addendum to the addendums came to be: older films and "maybes" that we missed the first time
around but stumbled upon while updating the addendums.... Five films, found here.
