INSATIABLE HOUSEWIFE GRINDHOUSE COLLECTION

After Hours Cinema are at it again, this time serving a banquet of no less than five portions of smut on one disc.

VIRGIN HONEYMOON begins the show, with a fairly unattractive pair of newlyweds ascending tenement block stairs and entering the shabbiest-looking new apartment imaginable. The bloke, Jimmy, immediately gets the horn and sets about getting his new bride in the mood with his tongue.

A fairly nondescript sex scene ensues, with the wife sucking Jimmy effectively before the inevitable fuck and eventual money shot flung over the wife's white belly.

At this point I feel it only fair to mention that the film had no audio (whether this is an error unique to this screener disc, or the audio to the film does not exist, I'm unsure - although the accompanying liner notes do suggest the former). So once the film provides what seems to be a semblance of plot, I'm afraid I can only by what the booklet tells me: the wife telephones her sister and invites her over to fix her up with a neighbour. Though how this pans out I'm not sure, as the film is edited in such a ham-fisted manner that it would be tough to follow even if it had sound.

What I did understand is that a cute blonde girl then turns up at the couple's apartment while the wife is out, ostensibly selling newspapers. She soon ends up sucking and fucking Jimmy in a badly shot but energetic sequence. The wife returns during this episode in time to witness Jimmy spunk on the girl's belly, and exits in disgust.

Then the action cuts to black bloke Pete who we first meet while he's being orally pleasured by grindhouse favourite Desiree West (BABYFACE; SEX WORLD; FEMMES DE SADE etc). Pete calls Jimmy apparently to say he has a job proposition for him (again, the liner notes assisted here) ... all of which leads to an agreeably spirited orgy as Pete and Jimmy give two girls a hard seeing to.

Even without sound, VIRGIN is an ugly and unappealing film. It's hard to remember mere minutes after it's come to an alarmingly abrupt end, and has nothing to offer in the way of erotica. The sex can almost be smelt through the TV screen, and it's not pleasant. Two sex scenes, as mentioned above, are performed with verve. The rest are distinctly listless.

Ugly people, dark photography and a haphazard editing style make this no-budget one-day-wonder one to miss.

LOVE ON THE BEACH is next. Robert and Carol first appear as silhouettes standing on a bus. They get chatting and soon hit it off. When their ride ends, businessman Robert takes Carol for lunch at an outdoor cafe and fantasises about fucking her while they chat some more.

After walking Carol back to her house, Robert picks her up the following day in his Volkswagen convertible for a trip to the beach. During their terminally long car journey, the film attempts to hold our attention with random images of people rutting. The effect is odd and bizarrely unsettling.

Finally our new lovers reach the beach and get naked. But as they are about to have sex, Carol suddenly suffers a flashback to when she was raped in a car (a moderately effective scene, set to eerie music). This leads to Robert having his own flashback to an unsavoury sexual escapade he shared with some slut in a seedy motel room.

Just when you're losing the will to live, our two leads get their act together and fuck. Unfortunately (?) the filmmakers appear to run out of film before the deed is completed ...

Badly shot, overly dark, and further blighted with poor framing, BEACH is another turd that can only hope to titillate its viewer if it's going to be at all watchable. Alas, there's little to raise your pecker here. Although the terrible post-dubbed dialogue may inadvertently raise a titter.

Next up is INSATIABLE WIFE.

Sticking out like a sore thumb, INSATIABLE WIFE is a modern film given fake scratches and grain in a bid to evoke the 70s feel of the other films on offer here. It doesn't convince.

This short offering opens with fake psychologist Elliot Forbes (Adam Trash) in comedy glasses introducing us to a tale of the titular insatiable wife (Betty Lynn). Then we meet Betty, wanking in black knickers on her bed one afternoon. She just can't get enough.

Moaning that she needs the love of her husband to sate her urges, Betty suddenly remembers the Magic Bum (also portrayed by Trash) who lives drunkenly in the alley beside her apartment. She rushes into the alley and begs the Bum to give her some of his magic. He explains to her that it's in his balls, and that she must suck it out. Which she duly does, in a lengthy blowjob sequence set to vintage music.

Betty then goes back home and, newly invigorated, fucks her middle-aged slob of a husband. In a finale I won't pretend to understand, the Bum emerges from their toilet after witnessing Betty masturbating her husband to a climax, and turns hubbie into a girl (Tracie Hayes)! She then sucks the Bum off, which was apparently his plan all along.

The girls are rough-looking, while Trash is an absurdly sweaty man with a small cock. The film is acted in a deliberately over-the-top manner so as to escape criticism for inept performances, and is totally devoid of style. It can't even emulate the griminess of the 70s no-budget affairs it aims at. And that's bad.

PLEASE TRY MY WIFE is slightly better. It begins with married couple Stephanie and Al in bed while a sultry female voiceover tells us how he's lost interest in sex while Stephanie's libido has increased. Stephanie sucks her husband off slowly while he sleeps (curiously, he doesn't wake up for an age!). When Al eventually awakens from his slumber, he does so in time to participate in a sensual 69 that ends with him cumming on her mouth.

The narration resumes as Stephanie ventures out to a dingy house one afternoon to attend a job interview. It transpires that the job is that of a hooker. The interviewer, an aged brunette Madame, seduces Stephanie into getting naked rather quickly.

Meanwhile we discover why Al has had so little time for fucking his wife: he's been getting it on with a pretty redhead who pops round to his apartment.

The remainder of this messy but watchable film is divided between scenes of Stephanie's lesbian tryst with her new boss, and Al's hot fuck with the redhead (this girl uses three fingers on herself then gets a can of hairspray shoved up there, before greedily taking cock).

Sporting the best-looking women on the disc, and the slowest, most arousing sex scenes, PLEASE TRY MY WIFE is the most entertaining film here. But that's not saying much.

THE LONESOME WIFE concludes our evening's viewing with another tedious hour of silent film set to post-dubbed vintage library music and shoddily applied narration over each scene to offer a vague idea of what's going on.

We're told the three people we're watching from behind squabbling at a table in a bare office are journalists working on a newspaper called "Shag Rag". One man - dubbed Johnny Gonad by the narrator - gets annoyed and leaves the scene. The remaining man and woman proceed to get fresh and take their urges to the nearest bedroom. After a few minutes of humping, the first man returns and gets in on the action. This takes us into a lengthy scene with umpteen sexual positions being tried out ...

The film continues from there, punctuated by sparse sets, barely adequate lighting, horrid 40s-style music and repetitive sucking and fucking as the incomprehensible "plot" unwinds.

The lead woman is actually very attractive, and knows how to blow. There's also a nice facial 34 minutes in, but otherwise there's little to remark upon. Virtually plotless, occasional voiceovers are just daft during the final half of the film which is non-stop badly edited, badly shot porn.

Each film is presented in anamorphic 1.78:1. Picture quality is generally worn and faded, with colours appearing washed out and blacks sometimes seeming a little grey. Images are clear and bright enough, but print damage is unavoidable. But four of these films are zero-budget efforts from over 30 years ago, shot on cheap film stock ... so what more can you expect?

INSATIABLE WIFE undeniably looks cleaner, bolder and more vibrant. But even that has been doctored to look worn and battered.

The English mono audio is fair throughout, catching all of that ludicrous post-dubbed dialogue and bad library music without issue. Aside from in the case of VIRGIN HONEYMOON, of course, which - on this screener disc at least - has no audio.

As is the norm with After Hours Cinema discs, there are no scene-selection menus. However, each film can be remote-accessed via the following number of chapters: VIRGIN has 3 chapters (49 minutes); BEACH has 3 chapters (50 minutes); INSATIABLE has 3 chapters (24 minutes); PLEASE has 3 chapters (29 minutes); LONESOME has 5 chapters (60 minutes).

The only extras are the standard "Grind It!" function allowing you the option of playing all five films as one mammoth feature (I admire your stamina if you take this task on), a link to the Alternative Cinema catalogue on the DVD, and a 6-page fold-out booklet with liner notes from 42nd Street Pete. Even he seems bored by this collection, but offers his usual irreverent take on them regardless.

While it's difficult to criticise no-budget porn for lack of technical or dramatic merit, it is fair to chastise it for failure to titillate. And in this case, this collection fails miserably. It's another generous package from After Hours Cinema though, even if the contents aren't up to much.

Review by Stu Willis