DEEP THROAT SEX COMEDY COLLECTION

DEEP THROAT SEX COMEDY COLLECTION

A trio of films from the late great cult director Joe Sarno.

The 2-disc fun begins on disc one with 1973's DEEP THROAT PART 2, the ill-advised sequel to the highest-grossing porn film of all time.

Made a mere year after the original surprise hit, it reunited the stars but director Gerard Damiano had by that time been alienated by the threat of the Mafioso financiers of the film. So, in stepped Sarno. And the results? Mm, well ...

It opens cannily enough, to a fantastically sexy funk tune while Nurse Lovelace (Linda Lovelace) gets out of bed and prepares herself for a busy day ahead by conducting a series of stretching exercises in the nude.

Cut to a Shirley Bassey-type song and footage of spies acting shadily in long overcoats, and suddenly the film feels like the latest Bond offering ... if a Bond film were ever to be filmed on a budget of $10 (it could happen - filming of the latest Craig film has been postponed due to its studio's current financial headaches).

At the behest of a CIA boss (Jamie Gillis), Lovelace is followed home one cold afternoon from the woods by another agent (Marc Stevens). It's something to do with a threat to National Security - but the plot is so haphazard, and the audio so muddy, that I had trouble following the action.

Anyway, the CIA fret some more as their giant super-computer spews out useless information for them, while Lovelace gets it on with her doctor, Jayson (Harry Reems) and his pretty young girlfriend.

It turns out that Lovelace is still enjoying her role as a nurse who makes house calls, offering sexual therapy to her patients. The first lucky recipient of her magic touch is Dilbert (Richard Livermore), who has a problem with premature ejaculation.

It eventually transpires that one of Lovelace's patients holds the programming notes for the aforementioned super-computer, and both the CIA and KGB are keen to get their hands on them - by getting their hands on the curvaceous Lovelace first, naturally.

DEEP THROAT PART 2 has an incredible cast. Aside from Lovelace, Reems, Gillis and Stevens, fans of 70s hardcore cinema will be entertained by the inclusion of Tina Russell, Livermore and Andrea True. They all give spirited performances, relishing in the opportunity to ham it up in a softcore comedy of silly "Carry On" proportions.

As far as enjoying this overlong, messy 88-minute film goes, that's about all it has to offer. It's disjointed, needlessly hard to follow at times and rarely amusing. It's also tragically devoid of any explicit sex, considering the bubbly nature of the actors suggests that, had this been a full-on fuck-fest, it would have been enormous fun both for viewer and cast.

Rumours of an alternate hardcore cut of DEEP THROAT PART 2 persist, but they can be laid to rest with this release. This is the uncut version of the film, presented in its original 1.78:1 ratio and enhanced for 16x9 TV sets. The extras confirm that the only version of the infrequent sex scenes shot were soft, and that is what we get here.

Picture-wise, the film looks okay in a colourful remastered print that is fairly soft but at least free from the usual vertical lines that grace most Secret Key DVD releases.

English mono audio is, as mentioned above, somewhat muffled at times. But it's something you can get used to.

Disc one opens with a static main menu page. From there, there is no scene-selection menu for the main feature but you can advance through it with your remote control by way of 18 chapters.

Extras begin with a highly endearing commentary track from actor Richard Livermore (a.k.a. Levi Richards), moderated by Michael Bowen and Mike Raso. The threesome discuss the film and offer the odd interesting titbit of background information, before focusing more on Livermore's amazing career (THE PRIVATE AFTERNOONS OF PAMELA MANN; THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES; A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER etc). It's a most worthy listen.

An 11-minute interview with Sarno is equally fascinating, revealing how the original DEEP THROAT was the first hardcore sex film he saw, and how it influenced his own film career. An astute, sincere and intelligent man - he will be missed. There are some great clips from the likes of DEEP THROAT and DADDY DARLING peppered throughout this brief-but-fun featurette.

A marvellous array of original trailers for Sarno films follows. We get previews of MOONLIGHTING WIVES, INGA, SEDUCTION OF INGA, DADDY DARLING, SWEDISH WILDCATS, CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE and A TOUCH OF GENIE. All of these titles are available on DVD from Alternative Cinema.

Disc two, again, opens to a static main menu page. Not bad though, considering we get two films and a clutch of interesting extras on it.

The two films are Sarno's 1974 efforts THE SWITCH (a.k.a. OVERSEXED; HOW TO ALTER YOUR EGO) and A TOUCH OF GENIE.

THE SWITCH, one of four films Sarno made in that year, is another softcore sex comedy. This time, the focus is on updating the Jekyll/Hyde story ...

The film follows Shirley (Rebecca Brooke), a scientist who invents a potion that unleashes her inner cravings and gives way to a horny beast that cannot be easily tamed.

The irony is that this is a very tame film, far too much so, and it seems to go on forever at 92 minutes in length. Still, it's occasionally stylish and Sarno has a way of eliciting spirited performances from unlikely actors such as Eric Edwards and Sonny Landham.

Elsewhere, the occasional trappings of the horror genre work fairly well, but this soon becomes tiresome and all we're left with is a laborious softcore "comedy" that's not funny, never titillates and doesn't know when to end.

The picture quality is VHS standard. While the English mono audio is fine, the big problem is that the majority of this transfer has been sourced from a German video and has forced Teutonic subtitles on it.

Finally, we get A TOUCH OF GENIE. It's a great little comedic porn film that was released in two versions for different markets: the hardcore contingent that populated the then-trendy grindhouses, and the mainstream R-rated theatre-goers.

The version on this DVD release is the latter. It's not cut as such - it's an uncut "soft" version of the film, which was pretty normal for filmmakers to do in the 1970s, if they felt that their film had the potential to cross over to a wider audience outside the parameters of porn.

The film tells the tale of Melvin (Douglas Stone), a geeky Jewish lad who works in an antiques store and spends his free time watching filth in a porno theatre. Will he ever get to feel the love of a woman of his own?

Perhaps, when he polishes an antique vase and awakens a sexy genie Amara (Chris Jordan).

The best of the three films on offer here, GENIE is good fun and well-acted. It's colourful in a comic strip style, and filled with agreeable energy. However, if you really want to see it I'd suggest buying After Hours Cinema's 2-disc Special Edition DVD, which includes the hardcore version.

GENIE is presented in a very scratchy but bright 16x9 enhanced picture, with English 2.0 audio that sounds reasonably clean throughout.

Again, there are no scene-selection menus for these films. However, SWITCH has remote access via 18 chapters; GENIE has 14 chapters.

Extras begin with another interview with Sarno, this time 8-minutes long and speaking fondly about his recollections of shooting THE SWITCH.

Next we get three short featurettes detailing a rare screening of A TOUCH OF GENIE. These were filmed at the Pioneer Theater in New York, and last a total of 10 minutes. These include more anecdotes from Sarno, along with Stone - who looks little different today from what he did 30-odd years ago.

A nice 8-page booklet rounds things off with liner notes from Bowen and a few colour stills.

This is an odd bunch of films. It's marvellous to see Alternative Cinema releasing more from Joe Sarno's back catalogue and these films are undoubtedly going to be of interest to serious fans. Intriguing is the key word here.

Review by Stu Willis


 
Released by Secret Key
Region 1 - NTSC
Not Rated
Extras :
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