RENE BOND SLEAZY 70S TRIPLE FEATURE

Rene Bond was nothing if not prolific in her early 1970s heyday (LES CHIC; FLESH GORDON etc), as After Hours Cinema has demonstrated previously with several releases devoted to her. And now, here's another one ..

What we get this time around are three films crammed on to one disc.

The fun begins with SOUNDS OF SEX.

It opens with Bond addressing the screen, caressing a semi-erect cock while telling the viewer how much she loves sex. Ignore the horrendous hiss on the soundtrack, and enjoy her tips on giving a great blowjob instead - from biting the tip of the penis to using a lot of saliva for lubrication, and beyond.

I've accused Bond of looking a little like Frances De La Tour in the past. While I can still see that (which is more than a little distracting), she comes across as genuinely sexy in this hour-long film, cooing softly through the opening scenario claiming it to be a tutorial in love-making but thankfully offering something much less po-faced: good fucking.

"I like the way it feels sliding down my throat" Bond exhales after bringing her opening partner to a climax. Then we're off to meet some rank women who are looking for men who'll fall in love with them.

This is the film's excuse to move episodically through scenes of women enticing, seducing and pleasuring men in various situations. It's all high-energy stuff with smiles aplenty and more hair than you'd find on a barbers' floor on a busy Saturday.

And, with Suzanne Fields along to assist Bond in the gutsy sucking (although neither is in it a great deal), it's a film that often titillates.

Next up is 1974's CITY WOMAN.

Here, a male Rod Serling-type voiceover narrates as we watch random women go about their daily business in a busy city. He tells us of how women often fantasise about sexual encounters in a bid to escape their boring daily routines.

The narrator continues, sewing together the linking material with four unfolding short stories that serve to illustrate the daytime fantasies of a quartet of women.

The first is an office secretary who, while enjoying a smoke on her lunch break, daydreams about frolicking semi-naked on a beach with a hirsute hunk. Naturally he gives her a jolly good rogering before the episode is over.

Following this, the narrator introduces us to Bond's character - an art lover who dreams of being rammed by an aspiring bearded artist.

After wasting a little too much time (well, for a 41-minute film) wallowing in the artist getting paint playfully thrown at his naked frame by half a dozen fillies, the inevitable orgy finally comes. And it's worth the wait.

Two more vignettes follow, purporting to further examine the female psyche in terms of repressed sexual urges. I'm not sure how medically accurate these are, but the farm-based one is quite erotic (benefitting from a hot female performer with an insanely large pubic area) so we'll let them off.

The final film offered for your delectation is SHOW AND TELL HOTEL.

This cheeky 50-minute number wastes no time at all in getting down to the nitty-gritty. It opens with Bond in a hotel corridor, getting on her knees to peer through the keyhole of a room door. She witnesses a lesbian couple indulging in graphic dildo action ...

Then some bloke suddenly appears in the hotel corridor, inviting us along as he beckons "c'mon, let's look through the second keyhole".

This introduces us to a bickering couple (she calling him a "born loser") who settle their financial differences with a spot of fevered sucking and fucking. She groans a lot: I'm not sure if that's through the pleasure of feeling her partner's cock, or pain from the unsightly boils on her bum cheeks.

And so HOTEL plods on through other keyholes, returning to our lesbian friends at one point to wrap up their particular story (one has trouble satisfying the other) before ending abruptly in the middle of a hetero fuck scene.

Each film is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio in new telecine transfers struck from the original film elements. But don't expect wonders. Although they look great in terms of colour, flesh tones and brightness, they are understandably blighted with the usual print damage that 'lost' 70s porno obscurities tend to suffer from.

The English mono audio proffered throughout is also a mixed bag. It's great that it's been preserved at all, but is undeniably muffled at times and positively rife with background noise, After Hours Cinema appear to have replaced some score segments too with anonymous jazz.

An animated main menu page allows instant access to each film individually. It also provides the option of watching them in one mammoth run, via the "Grind It!" function.

Although there are no scene-selection menus proffered, each film can be sped through with your remote handset via the following chapter stops: SOUNDS (16 chapters); WOMAN (11 chapters); HOTEL (11 chapters).

The only extras are trailers for EXTREME SLEAZE 3, FILTH ON 42ND STREET, KINK-O-RAMA, NEW YORK FANTASY CLUB, SEX EDUCATION DOUBLE FEATURE and SEXUAL INSANITY.

The three films on offer here may well be justifiably obscure in the greater scheme of things. But they're not without merit or, at the very least, interest. Some hot sex, a couple of agreeably enthusiastic turns from Bond (although she doesn't get much screen-time considering this set uses her name to sell itself) and more hairy balls than any cat could cough up in a month ... It's got to appeal to someone, surely?

Review by Stuart Willis