Title: Hot Summer in the City (1976)

Genre: Roughie
Director: Gail Palmer         
Rating: XXX
Length: 0h58
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Lisa Baker
Duke Johnson
Shorty Roberts
Stitch Umbas
Coke Cain

Plot:
Debbie, a lily-white virgin, is abducted by a gang of black men being paid by whites to start a race riot. After violating her in a Cadillac, the men take her to a country cabin. Duke, the leader, takes possession of her but then loses her in a poker game. The violence escalates to a full throttled climax. Filled with stark, brutal imagery from start to finish, Hot Summer In The City is a haunting film you won't soon forget. The characters are so believable that it seems like a documentary. Lisa Baker's sexy screen presence is mute and ghostlike.

After everything I've heard and read about this one, I was expecting something really good and violent. Did, I expected too much? Maybe... This film is one of the worst adult movie made in the seventies that I've seen. The acting is painfull, the four black men are impossible to hear (they always talk like the 2 black guys in Airplane), the cinematography is crappy (no good angle, not in focus,...), except for a whipping scene (where the girl is under a blanket) all the violent moments look phony and ridiculous, ...

But two things are good; the performance of Lisa Baker and the music in it. They had used many great classic songs for this movie, just a few of them to give you an idea : Summer in the City by The Lovin' Spoonful, Leader of the Pack by The Shangri-Las, Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys, She'd Rather be With Me by The Turtles,...

Finally another proof that Quentin Tarantino is an untalented idiot, he had already said that this movie is "the best porno ever". What an idiotic, ridiculous, untalented and not praise worthy person, how can he be respected by his fanboys is beyond me... How this idiot can be an autorithy on anything is something I can't understand... 
 
Rating :

Title: Passage Thru Pamela (1985)

Genre: Third Sex
Director: Leslie Brooks (probably Tom De Simone under an alias)         
Rating: XXX
Length: 1h17
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Pamela
Kimberly Carson
Sharon Kane
Ashley Moore
Johnny Nineteen

Plot:
Are you ready for an utterly unique erotic experience? Are you ready for PASSAGE THRU PAMELA? Pamela is an Argentinian beauty who has all the right assets to make it as a model in New York--as long as no one discovers her shocking secret. Rising quickly in the high-gloss world of sexy models and horny shutterbugs, Pamela takes charge of every situation with her lusty Latin charms. She jumps head-first into a torrid affair with a delicious female photographer, Ashley, who turns Pamela into the toast of Manhattan--and keeps Pamela's secret safe from the world. But when a rival agency tries to reveal the truth about Pamela, they set the stage for one of the most unusual climaxes in erotic film history...a climax that takes us on the unbelievable PASSAGE THRU PAMELA!

This is a movie that had catched my attention the minute I've seen it's trailer on 42nd Street Forever XXX-treme Special Edition (by the way I recommand it if you have an interest in vintage adult movies). But every place I've checked listed this dvd as oop (the reason is more that VCA had retired it of the market because they are idiots), so I've finally get it last week on a forum and to be honest : I don't feel guilty at all, if the adult label don't release or butcher their material I couldn't care less to get them "legally". In my review of The Openning of Misty Beethoven I've already said that the scene between Constance Money and Ras Kean is the most erotic one ever put on film. In fact that scene deal with my sexual phantasm. Now what this have to do with the movie reviewed here? Very simple, Pamela the star of our movie is a real life pre-op transexual who had made two adult movies (the other is Girl Busters) to pay her final chirurgy.

First thing to say, Pamela is really beautifull and sexy (the cover doesn't really show this, but I will not post any picture. Since the last time Rich had laughed of me ). She really looks like a girl and you could be fooled easilly by her in real life, she doesn't have a big adam apple that is usually the big giveaway. The only sad thing is the visible scars for the breast implants. Yeah, I know she had a penis too...

Surprisingly this movie isn't exploitative. The sex is really good, the scene between Pamela and Sharon Kane is highly erotic and another one between Pamela and Frank Serrone is funny in a way (the scene is played seriously, but you can't block a smile since the Serrone character had no idea that she is not fully a girl). The story is good too, I've seen better but for a mid-eighties production this is surprisingly well made.

Certainly not a movie for everyone (I can hear the man here shouting "WTF Jimmy, this is a girl with a dick!!!!!") but I have really appreciated my viewing experience. But you know that sometimes my choices of film are weird      
 
Rating :

Title: The Good Girls of Godiva High (1979)

Genre: Comedy
Director: Jim Buckley      
Rating: XXX
Length: 1h27
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Robert Kerman
Kittsy Storm
Susan De Angelis
Denise Sloan
Diana Sloan

Plot:
The Good girls of GODIVA HIGH, opens in the girls gymnasium when we are introduced to a lovely set of young ladies. Then we are introduced to the problems inherent in any modern education. While scanning Playgirl, our young heroines are discussing the doing away with the conservative band and instituting a new tradition at Godiva High; a Disco Party. But how to convince Miss Lena, the headmistress? The school psychologist lets them know how(wink)! Through one of the boys who just happens to be her gardener. Convincing her is not "hard". Our heroine, Kitsy directs her girls in the fine art of extricating what is needed , from the men & boys, to make this "Graduation Disco Party" one of the best memories of the young girls lives. Super Hot!

This is the film made by Buckley after the success of Debbie Does Dallas and this isn't a very good follow up. The story is again set in a school, but this time that looks creepy. In DDD the girls had a relativelly good reason for doing what they do, but not in this one (sorry it's just to have a disco party, no need to sleep with everything that move and breath for a dying fashion). The story isn't really funny, sorry but a janitor who sleeps with 2 high school students doesn't make me laugh. The only moment that I've found comic is the one where the twin students use this fact to win a bet with a businessman. Complete waste of talent in a really bad script, everyone look bad in it and the sad thing is that many members of the cast are good actors (Robert Kerman, Herschell Savage and Merle Michaels). Even the sex is annoying, badly edited and for most of the scene done with really bad generic disco music in the background.

Complete waste of time...
 
Rating :

Title: Through the Looking Glass (1976)

Genre: Surrealist Horror
Director: Jonas Middleton      
Rating: XXX
Length: 1h31
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Catherine Burgess
Jamie Gillis
Douglas Wood
Laura Nicholson
Marie Taylor

Plot:
Catherine Burgess plays an ultra rich matron who escapes her boring aristocratic lifestyle when a demon resembling her father beckons her to the other side of the mirror. Her secret passions eventually lead her through the mirror into a world of carnal desire. She becomes immersed in an insane sexual hell where demons jerk off on their faces and bathe in mud and piss. Images of this movie are right out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. It was released not only in adult theatres, but also was a top grossing 'R' release in the Drive In Theatre circuit. Jamie Gillis, as Catherine's father, and the angel-faced Marie Taylor as Catherine in her adolescence. Using perverse smoothness, Gillis talks his daughter out of her clothes and onto her knees in one of the most erotic hardcore scenes of any year. Looking Glass expresses dramatic values through skilled camera work and good production quality.

This is one of the perfect exemple of why I love so much this period. This movie is visual poetry on screen, a complete surealist haunting experience and a symbiotic relation between the viewer and the movie. This is much more than an adult film, in fact very little sex happens on screen and the majority of it happens at the end. This isn't even a feel good representation of the sexuality, since it happens in hell and this is probably the best representation of what the inferno looks like if it really exists. You can't never anticipated what will happen through the movie, but at the end you understand the logical progression.

The acting performances of Jamie Gillis and Catherine Burgess are astonishing. I can't understand why the career of Burgess doesn't get better. The young Laura Nicholson in her first and only role is also great, it's so rare to see a child actor who can act without playing the "I'm cute" game (she never get a career and I can't understand it). The rest of the acting isn't that great, but at the defense of the actors/actresses when you play a character in hell you're supposed to act wooden.

This is a real professional production with a great location, a superb filming job by a professional cinematographer (João Fernandes, who continue to works on television movies and series today) and even the film score was done by Harry Manfredini. This is the last film that Middleton had directed and I sure want to see his previous one. His last credit in the cinema industry is the story that was the base for the horror movie Just Before Dawn in 1981. Truely a great director who had never get the career he deserve.

It's evident that I recommand this movie, it had even replace "Misty Beethoven" as the best film experience of my life. 
 
Rating :

Title: Unwilling Lovers (1977)

Genre: Crime Story
Director: Zebedy Colt      
Rating: XXX
Length: 1h26
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Zebedy Colt
Jody Maxwell
Rod Dumont
Renee Sanz
Terri Hall

Plot:
Timmy is a semi-retarded man who still lives as a child in his backwoods home.His view of sex is distorted by memories of his mom and dad having sex then falling off a cliff,so he tries to emulate their sick sex acts with any girl he sees.He violently kills five women and rapes them post-mortem.This sordid little sickie offers a lot of hard core sex and perversity.

I was again in the mood for a Zebedy Colt's movie and this one is a hard one to find. So what I have is a third generation betamax copy with a lot of background noises and a not so good image. But, after a while you stop to notice and who care this is a 30 years old movie that was never released on VHS, Laserdisc or DVD I'm just happy to have it in my collection for my enjoyment.

This is a pretty good story and this is probably the best acting performance of Colt in his career (at least in the 6 movies where he is that I own). His interpretation of a traumatized man who had stop to grow mentally since he had seen his dad die when he was 10 years old (it's a guess since the age is not really said) is just incredible. He plays the character without overacting it, the complete opposite of Dustin Hoffman in Rain man that I can't stand because his overacting is a complete joke. His character possess so much childishness and innocence that you can't see him as bad person or a killer, even if he is and his final act is rather repulsive. The way he learn about sex is played with the same innocent side, he learns by catching the gardener (Rod Dumont) and his mother's helper (Jody Maxwell) doing it. Jody Maxwell is again really good in it as is Rod Dumont also (very different than his demon role in The Devil Inside Her).

Don't judge this movie by it's synopsis that make the movie appear like a vile pieces of trash. 

Rating :

Hands up for redheads too 

Picture of my better half below

Title: Mary! Mary! (1977)

Genre: Light Comedy
Director: Bernard Morris      
Rating: XXX
Length: 1h19
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Constance Money   
John Leslie
Sharon Thorpe
Jon Martin
Sandy Pinney

Plot:
Constance Money brings to the screen the kind of beauty that easily ranks her among the most internationally famous women of our time. Her appearance in Misty Beethoven brought her worldwide acclaim as the most beautiful actress ever to appear in an adult motion picture. Now in Mary! Mary!, she proves that she is not only breathtakingly attractive, but a sexual superstar, as she, John Leslie and Sharon Thorpe prove beyond any doubt that this is without question the hottest and most erotically arousing film ever made. Truly a collector's treasure.

I was in the mood to watch a movie with Constance Money the impossible love of my life

The plot doesn't explain the film a lot, so I will resume the movie a little. Mary (Constance Money) and Ned (John Leslie) are two lovers but they have one problem, Ned came too fast. Since this is 1977 the viagra isn't available to them, so what is the second best solution possible? Easy, make a pact with the devil. The condition isn't too bad, Ned will have to give his soul and like Mary tell so logically : "I can't fuck your soul so do it". After the pact it will be just normal action for an adult film.

I really like the underwater cinematography in the openning that is really greatly done. A car chase action scene is present in the film, certainly something unusual and as good as any other one that I've seen in any other seventies movie. It was nice too to see Rene Bond in a small cameo, sure she's hard to recognize since her hair are black (she's blond) and she wears a pair of sunglasses but her face is easy to spot when you know her. John Leslie is reliable as he is usually and Constance Money is Constance Money... What do you want me to say? I worship her, she would read a grocery list and I would be glued at the screen . You get Jon Martin in one of his first role and Sharon Thorpe is good in this too (even if this isn't her best movie).

A real good movie with some funny moments, sensual sex, the most beautifull woman who had ever appeared on a movie screen and for Jon a car chase

Rating :

Title: The Violation of Claudia (1977)

Genre: Drama
Director: Bill Lustig     
Rating: XXX
Length: 1h01
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Sharon Mitchell   
Jamie Gillis
Don Peterson
Waldo Short
Crystal Sync

Plot:
Sharon Mitchell plays a bored housewife whose husband Jason (Don Peterson) is too busy to give her the attention she needs. Taking matters into her own hands, Mitchell proceeds to bed her tennis instructor, Kip (Jamie Gillis), who puts her to work as a callgirl.

Nobody can't say that I'm the biggest fan of Sharon Mitchell, I've never find her particullary good looking and attractive. This is probably because I've mostly seen her in her later films after the drugs gave her an unhealthy look. This is the first time that I've watched her at the beginning of her career (in fact it's her first movie) and she is surprisingly beautifull, she possess a boyish look that isn't anyone taste but I like that. By the way the cover is a piece of crap and nothing on it had something to do with the film, pretty usual for a Video-X-Pix release as is the stupid logo that appears before every sex scene.

This film is the first one directed by Bill Lustig (yes, the same one who had made Maniac and Maniac Cop later and the owner of Blue Underground) and this isn't a bad movie. This is evident that it's a first time movie since it miss a little bit of finition, but like I've already said everybody had to start somewhere.

The acting without being incredible is correct, but Sharon Mitchell had certainly the innocence needed for her role. One of the actor (Waldo Short) at the minute of his apparition on the screen gave me one reaction, screaming comic relief in my head and I was sure right. I was unable to stop laughing the 5 minutes he was there in a funnier way to use food than the one in nine and a half weeks.

At the end, be prepared for a surprise ending after a scene that you will probably not like if your a guy.

Nice movie, but way too short.

Rating :