GRINDHOUSE HOTTIES: RENE BOND ROUGHIE TRIPLE FEATURE

A double-disc helping of three one-day-wonders starring After Hours Cinema's favourite porno queen Ms Bond.

Disc 1 begins with RENDEZVOUS IN HELL, credited to director Jimmy De Knight.

Four men pull up at a petrol station waving a gun in the pump attendant's face, demanding that he fill their car. Another car pulls up and a shootout ensues, leaving the attendant on the floor as both cars race off.

Meanwhile, molls Cleo and Dot sit bored in the robbers' hideout reading magazines. Within minutes, Nancy and Peggy turn up too. The four girls sit and chat for a while, moaning about how tedious it is waiting for their respective boyfriends to return from robbing the gas station.

The girls get increasingly restless and decide to get it on with each other. Peggy and Cleo grind away on the settee to organ music: Nancy (Bond) and Dot get jiggy on the floor. While the muff diving is clearly genuine, it's unfortunately all hair and no labia.

When the men arrive, they take off their belts and give their respective girlfriends beatings (why? I'm not sure, a reel is missing). This scene is surprisingly long and oddly perturbing, the mix of fake blood and looped screaming post-dubbed onto the soundtrack adding to the atmosphere of sleaze.

Following another jump-cut, the group listen to the radio and are disturbed to hear that the pump attendant is dying. The men decide to block this out with booze and sex. All four couples get it on in the hideout living room, Bond conveniently hooking up with offscreen boyfriend Ric Lutze. Set to what sounds like a dripping tap (the original score was removed due to copyright issues), this extended sequence does allow for some hardcore fellatio and penetration. It ends with a sole money shot.

Afterwards, the men put the radio back on. Bad news again: the pump attendant's dead. Panic sets in and shots are fired. All of which leads to more sex and several bloody killings.

Melodramatic music, ugly home movie-style photography and loud dialogue reminiscent of early John Waters films conspire to make RENDEZVOUS an unpleasant but curiously beguiling proposition.

Bond doesn't do much, but gets the best sex scene (with Lutze). She's a natural who appears to genuinely enjoy her job.

What's better about the film though is it's dark undercurrent and nihilistic finale. It's a crap porno but it works as a bargain-basement variation on downbeat 70s exploitation cinema.

Next up is THE PARTNERSHIP. It opens with that annoying dripping tap score … aargh!

Charlie picks up his secretary Miss Tucker one afternoon and drives round to his business partner Bill. Bill's in a bad way, suffering the after effects of the previous evening's party.

An irate Charlie confronts Bill, saying he won't leave until he's signed some liquidation papers (don't worry, this all the plot we get). Bill retires to his bedroom, leaving a flustered Charlie in his office reception. So Charlie decides to get his own back on Bill, and drags Bill's wife away to another room for sex. I must say, she seems more than willing.

Meanwhile Bill's live-in nurse Brigit (Bond) attempts to seduce Miss Tucker. The prudish secretary isn't interested, which leaves it to Bill's P.A. (Lutze again) to satisfy Brigit's needs.

While the two couples get it on, the young brunette who's been sitting quietly in the corner of Bill's office takes the opportunity to sneak into his bedroom and cure his hangover blues. Miss Tucker soon decides she wants a piece of the action and joins them for a threesome.

A lengthy sex montage follows, cutting between the three sex acts being conducted in three different rooms. It's difficult to focus on one scene as a result. But we get plenty of hardcore footage this time around - along with natural flab, masses of pubic hair and very spotty arses. Lutze's muck is deposited between Bond's new boobs (note the fresh scars beneath her breasts).

This montage sequence takes up a third of the film's running time, and leads into a climactic orgy (what else?). It's pretty ugly stuff, with more pasty flesh and cellulite than I care to recall. It was amusing though, watching the scenes of failed anal entry (they really have kept in everything that they lensed).

There's no plot, just clumsily filmed and strikingly ordinary sex. As with RENDEZVOUS, the film lacks end credits and contains several "new" exterior shots added by After Hours Cinema to link scenes together.

Disc 2 presents us with THE HEIST.

Bond plays hooker Goldie, who in the film's open climbs off hoodlum Joey, having just bonked him. But he still has a stiffy and requests a blowjob. Goldie doesn't like performing that particular act (some prostitute!), but offers to call her friend Gloria for help. Gloria loves to suck dick but hates "taking it in her cunt".

While they're waiting for Gloria to arrive, thugs Sam and Charlie burst in on Goldie and Joey. They say Joey owes money to their boss, Big Mike, and he has just one week to pay it back. The scene ends with Gloria arriving and the thugs banging the girls while Joey watches.

The following day, Joey's acting skills are stretched as he paces the streets frantically trying to think of ways to raise the missing cash. Five days pass and he's still no further forward - until Sam visits him and suggests Joey returns to his pre-hood days of starring in dirty movies.

So Joey sets up a camera on a tripod in his bedsit and dons his best suit in preparation of holding auditions for a porno shoot. His first auditionee is bespectacled beauty Candy.

More shagging ensues (Sam and Charlie enjoy largely softcore fumblings with Goldie and Gloria, while Joey gives explicit cunnilingus to Candy) until we reach a hilarious ending with some of the most enjoyably diabolical acting I've ever witnessed.

Although the sex scenes leave a lot to be desired and Bond, again, is peripheral to the central action, THE HEIST is actually the best of the three films on offer. This is because it's blessed with some sort of a plot, and dialogue that actually feels scripted (regardless of the stuttering deliveries). It's fun, and draws to a conclusion that relies on irony rather than simply more humping.

Each film is transferred from original 16mm elements and presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. Each film looks pretty grainy with plenty of specks and twitching vertical lines evident. Images are occasionally soft and colours do bleed at times. Of the three films, THE HEIST is the best looking.

The English mono audio in each case is inconsistent, being mainly clear but at times suffering from dropout.

But these are no-budget one-day affairs from the early 1970s. They're aimed at the indiscriminate Rain Mac crowd who don't care that they've been filmed in someone's living room and post-dubbed (badly), or that the prints are naturally scratchy. In some ways, their rough presentation adds to their stinky allure.

The discs both benefit from animated main menu pages (the same main page on each disc), but no scene-selection menus. However, each film does contain it's own chapters (RENDEZVOUS has 8 chapters; PARTNERSHIP and HEIST each have 9 chapters).

The only extras on disc 1 are trailers for SYLVIA, GRINDHOUSE OCCULT COLLECTION, WEIRDOS AND ODDBALLS COLLECTION and the excellent BUSTY SUPERSTARS OF THE 1970s.

Disc 2 offers a further 23 trailers, among which are FORCED ENTRY, CHIC 69 and SEX ON WHEELS.

Other extras in this package are a fold-out 6-page booklet with colour screengrabs and liner notes from the ever-enigmatic After Hours Collector, and a fold-out mini-poster of the DVD's front cover artwork.

All in all, these films are not among the finest that 70s porn has to offer. Nowhere near, in fact - hence their obscurity. But they're worth checking out if you're curious about the one-day-wonder ethic, and of course if you're keen on the lady Bond herself (although there are better showcases for her talents already available on DVD).

A couple of questions though:

Why are these films dubbed "roughies"? Because of the aforementioned rough audio/video quality? I thought it was perhaps because of their content, maybe there was a bit of queasy sexual violence going on. But, save for the belt-whippings of RENDEZVOUS, there's nothing of the sort (thankfully?).

Also, am I alone in not sharing After Hours Cinema's fascination with Rene Bond? Yeah, she has a nice smile and looks like she craves what she's doing. But they call her a 'hottie', while all I see in the cover photo is a disconcerting resemblance to a young Frances De La Tour …

Review by Stuart Willis