Apolitical Home Viewing: A Pair of Sheri St. Clair

Working Girls (1985) ****1/2  A humorous, high-quality anthology film about the different incarnations of prostitution – from call girl action to nagging housewifery – Working Girls is tastefully photographed and benefits immensely from featuring some the biggest and most charismatic names in the business.  Ron Jeremy gets things off to a harried start, with spouse Ashley Welles pestering him for a kitchen renovation and using anatomical leverage to pry an agreement out of him.  Jamie Gillis is good as a cocksure male prostitute, and Patti Petite is photogenically limber as a wife trying to squeeze a raise for her husband out of his horny boss (Mike Horner) at the office.

Especially notable is one of the segments directed by “David McCabe” (Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama creator David DeCoteau), in which Sheri St. Clair plays a prostitute who ties mustached wimp Robert Bullock to a chair at his request and then proceeds to display her body, finger herself, and talk dirty in her distinctively scorching, slightly scary, and awe-inspiring fashion.  The concluding vignette, “Kinky Sex”, also directed by DeCoteau, is really just a scatalogical joke, and one of many unusual situations that set Working Girls apart from the rest of the trash on the corner.  Recommended to 80s porn fans and those interested in seeing DeCoteau’s earliest directorial work.

Air Erotica (1988) **1/2  This is a compilation of essentially plotless vignettes about airline pilots, passengers, and stewardesses.  Big names like Herschel Savage and Taija Rae appear (the latter in her less interesting but still sexy slimmed-down and blonded mode of the late 80s), but none of the segments elicits much excitement with the exception of Sheri St. Clair’s irritatingly brief turn as a horny passenger so hot she has to let Tom Byron take her into the airplane bathroom to plug her variously.  St. Clair commands more nasty and sinister magnetism than all of the other performers combined, and Air Erotica might have been saved by having the sense to include several segments featuring her; but what follows her encounter is a series of tolerable but pedestrian scenes of people screwing, licking, and sucking.

Taija Rae looks a little bored in her threesome with Chelsea and Kevin James, whose Nazi superman looks, protruding veins, and noisy breathing interfere with any eroticism his two scenes might have had.  Rachel Ashley is fine as a slut servicing coke-snorting businessman Nick Random, whose goofy pink neckerchief, gold necklaces, and open shirt showing his hairy chest provide one of the film’s amusements.  Overall, however, Air Erotica suffers from what might best be called a sense of jet lag, of bodies not always completely present, with boring music doing little to enliven the proceedings.  For hardcore fans of the performers only.

Apolitical Home Viewing: Backdoor Double Creature

The Backdoor Club (1985) ***1/2  Opening with primitively video-doctored travelogue footage of Munich, Germany, where this odd pornographic feature was filmed, The Backdoor Club gets things off to an upbeat start with its suggestive synth-pop theme song, “Slippin’ Through the Backdoor”, performed by Galaxy, with a Kim Carnes soundalike female vocal extolling the pleasures of anal sex: “Don’t ever start at the end, but let it begin.  If there is something you want, don’t leave it alone.”  The flimsiest pretense of plot is provided with the introduction of Herschel Savage and wife Danielle, who have, it seems, inexplicably traveled all the way to Germany just to visit Munich’s world-famous Backdoor Club, where they expect to be initiated gingerly into the art of rear entry amour.  Also visiting the club for the first time is main attraction Taija Rae, who quickly pairs off with Savage for some swing action.

So far, so good, as the viewer at this point is probably expecting to get more than his fair share of anal reaming nastiness for the duration of The Backdoor Club‘s very 1980s eighty minutes – and the prospect of seeing Taija Rae, in particular, get her voluptuous bum pummeled by Savage is likely to get the viewer’s hopes up and at attention.  Unfortunately, after the local club talent demonstrates how it’s done for the tourists, doing their moaning and “Ja”-ing and all in their humorous German accents, the payoff never really comes.  The gradually rising level of excitement in the scenes, with Danielle and Taija both enjoying some euro-lesbo action, would seem to indicate that the ladies are being primed for something really special; but so much screen time is devoted to labia-licking, presumably with the intention of finessing the reluctant women into taking a chance with their asses, that this film might just as well have titled The Cunnilingus Club.

In one especially frustrating scene, Herschel Savage is giving Taija Rae the royal treatment, licking and fingering her before treating her to a solid doggystyle hammering, during which he repeatedly asks her if she’s ready to take it in her ass, but every time receives the same humiliating “No” for an answer.  After the fifty-minute mark, the intensity subsides and never really recovers, with Taija, who, one would hope, might return for a scorching anal climax, not only failing to deliver on the expected reward promised by the premise, but disappearing altogether for the remainder of the story.  One cause for this film’s disappointing payoff may be the fact that it was scripted by a woman, Valerie Kelly, so that The Backdoor Club is ultimately insincere in its commitment to its subject matter.  The Backdoor Club does contain anal scenes, with Tracey Adams and Sandra Nova (Uschi Karnat) doing their duty admirably, but the overall experience, sadly, is one of anatomical bait-and-switch.  3.5 of 5 possible stars.

Backdoor Lust (1988) ***  This all-action compilation lifts generous clips from a handful of 1980s adult films, including more than one scene from The Backdoor Club (see above) that feature rear entry relations, usually preceded by other preliminaries.  The picture quality is less than pristine, but the performers generally seem at least to be interested in what they’re doing.  Patti Petite is a standout in her enthusiastic couch session set to some pretty funky music.  Unusual moments in other vignettes  include a woman taking a champagne bottle up her rear, with the man who twists it cruelly claiming he’s going to shove it in all the way; and Francois Papillon playing a gay shoe salesman in a bowtie who only reluctantly agrees to screw slutty customer Buffy Davis.  Not essential programming, Backdoor Lust does, however, serve its basic utilitarian purpose.  3 of 5 possible stars.

Apolitical Home Viewing: Town and Country Loving

Urban Cowgirls (1980) ****

Apart from its country and western swing bar setting, this fun adult feature bears little resemblance to the John Travolta movie that inspired it.  Veronica Hart shines as a free-loving, sophisticated city chick with a thing for flings with well-built cowboys like ready and willing Eric Edwards.  However, her older but still sexy sister played by Georgina Spelvin is suffering through some serious marital doldrums and looking for reassurance, so Hart undertakes to tutor her in the ways of having a good time by taking her to the redneck singles bar run by sleepy-eyed John Leslie.  Joey Silvera, meanwhile, is a stressed-out businessman having an affair with his hot secretary, Hart’s friend and sometime lover Lee Carroll.  In the film’s standout scene, a slightly cruel and clearly ecstatic Hart straps on a dildo and delivers Carroll into transports so neurotically intense that her loss of control can only be real.  Hart also appears to enjoy a moment of anal diversion with Edwards here more than in her welcome but slightly hard-to-watch scene with Leslie in Outlaw Ladies. Hillary Summers appears to touching effect as a barmaid infatuated with Leslie, contributing to the strong sentimental current that distinguishes Urban Cowgirls somewhat from the rest of the beef-bopping herd, making it hardcore with a heart.

 

Sex Drive (1985) *****

Chuck Vincent, the man behind Roommates, delivers another masterpiece in this offbeat peek into the earthy lives and loves of the waitresses, customers, and gas pump boys at Joe’s, a rural truck stop.  Taija Rae is delicious as one of the loose waitresses, but equally memorable if not more so are Sharon Kane in a surrealistic cameo as a feral, growling exhibitionist in a van and Sheri St. Clair as the serial adultress wife of the clueless sheriff.  St. Clair’s naughty facial features and flawless bottom (the latter attribute getting plenty of screentime) do much to make Sex Drive a sultrier feature than some other Chuck Vincent outings, but without sacrificing any of the expected humor.  Care has been taken to make the sex scenes unusual and creative, and the fact that the film is set almost entirely at night means it benefits from the senses in turn of nocturnal fun, unexpected excitement, pranksterism, dreaminess, faint spookiness, and irresponsibility that can only come after the sun goes down and the nighthawks and sluts are at large and inhibitions are at their weakest.  Lots of enthusiastic, high-quality sucking here.  Also, watch for Henri Pachard’s cameo as a military recruiter.

Apolitical Home Viewing: The Science of Sleaze Detection

Spine (1986) ***

In this nicely misogynistic shot-on-video horror, L.A. police investigate seemingly in vain as a madman goes on a spree, murdering nurses by ravaging them with a knife and exposing their spines.  The murderer obsesses over someone named Linda, though none of his victims has that name.

The police and their detective work aren’t exactly fascinating, since it largely consists of sitting around, talking, and typing search terms into a bare, green-text-on-black-screen computer display – and the breakthrough, when it comes, is anticlimactic, to say the least.  There’s something compelling about the unsteady, voyeuristic camera work, the grimy synthesized score, and the whole dangerously sick and seedy sensibility of Spine, however, that artistically lifts it somewhat above the snuff sludge aesthetic from which it springs.

Janus Blythe, a familiar face from a handful of 70s-80s genre classics, and Lise Romanoff, who more notably contributed special effects work to such films as Night of the Creeps and Never Too Young to Die, appear as tortured victims of the elusive back-ripper.  Hippie-bearded R. Eric Huxley gives an interestingly soft-spoken, almost Bob Rossish performance as the culprit, generating menace and humor in moments such as when he pauses in the midst of repeatedly stabbing a woman to lick the blood from his knife.

One aspect of the cast that enhances a film of this type is that none of the actors really seem like actors; they just look like ordinary people you’d see on a street – or would have seen in the 1980s – people you’d see and pass without notice, unaware they were on their way to being hogtied, raped, and butchered by Bob Ross.  Director John Howard, according to IMDb, previously made an adult feature subtly titled Rope Burn, so there’s something to add to your checklists, you unredeemed masturbators.

 

The True Crimes of Passion (1983) ****

Raven-haired, pouty-mouthed Janey Robbins scorches the celluloid as private investigator B.J. Fondel in this adult take on the hardboiled detective genre.  In classic film noir fashion, Robbins delivers dispassionate voice-over narration of her sexual misadventures in a trio of tawdry tales revolving around one or more perversions of varying deviance.

The star is dressed and coiffed differently in each story, which helps to keep it interesting, but the first segment has her looking the best in a shiny maroon jumpsuit as she investigates the lesbian infidelity and light B&D play of a preacher’s wife and her lover – only, of course, inevitably to join in with the sluts.  This is stuff that will have the viewer’s hand down his pants in no time.

Director Kim Christy, who discovered a niche in adult films involving transsexuality, offers more of that in the second story, which features an escaped convict-turned-tranny posing as a maid and exacting revenge against a district attorney by forcing him at gunpoint to screw his sister and get it on in a perverted threesome.  (The maid slips Robbins a mickey, so she’s disappointingly unconscious for most of this one.)

Finally, the flimsiest of the stories is basically an excuse for the insatiable Robbins to take on first one and then two studs in a hotel room – and she earns her audience’s sympathy, if she doesn’t have it already, by bravely taking it in the rear for the climax.  Overall, not at all a bad show.  It’s a shame the B.J. Fondel character didn’t continue through a series of X-rated investigative adventures, as Robbins could have serviced such a franchise with hardboiled and hardbopping panache.

Apolitical Home Viewing: An Alex de Renzy Frenzy

Babyface (1977) ****1/2  Dan (Dan Roberts) is a man on the run after an uptight, psychotic mother (Thundercrack‘s Marion Eaton) catches him with her not-so-innocent pigtailed jailbait daughter Priscilla (Cuddles Malone), so, lucky lug that he is, he gets a gig as a stud at a kinky, upscale bordello for perverted women. Writer John Mulligan’s story is a lot of fun, and director Alex de Renzy shows himself quite the adept at orchestrating sexual mayhem.  By the time Babyface is finished the viewer has been treated to slapping, cougarism, whipping, anal, group sport, plastic wrap mummification, and attempted emasculation, all of which is delivered in a friendly, humorous, lighthearted style. Most important, however, is that all of the participants are clearly enjoying themselves. Oddly, this is the only film listed for both Roberts and Malone at IMDb. Each has a memorable screen presence and, as Babyface demonstrates, had the potential for stardom within the adult genre.

Apolitical Home Viewing: Deux par Pachard

Nasty Girls (1983) *****  Director Henri Pachard (Ron Sullivan) delivers one of the funniest and most erotic features from the classic age of adult film in Nasty Girls, an ensemble comedy that follows the comings, goings, and climaxes of the denizens of a singles bar.  Kelly Nichols, R. Bolla, Sharon Mitchell, Sharon Kane, Joanna Storm, and Fred Lincoln are among the all-star cast and are all extremely memorable.  Reliably interesting screenwriter Rick Marx, who contributed to everything from Roommates (1981) to Tenement (1985), adds his characteristic humor.  The intriguingly quirky and average-looking Barbara Daniels is especially noteworthy in her final role as she drunkenly acquiesces in some welcome anal action.

She’s So Fine (1985) ****1/2  Henri Pachard directs Jerry Butler, Sharon Kane, Sharon Mitchell, Taija Rae, and Joey Silvera in a story about the chaos that befalls a home leading up to Taija Rae’s wedding.  While waiting for the groom to arrive, Taija, her mother, and neighbors are invaded by a new wave group that includes punked out Sharon Mitchell, who seduces Butler in rather unusual fashion.  Full of weirdness and satisfied anticipation, She’s So Fine is special fun for fans of Pachard, Mitchell, Butler, and Silvera, who has an odd role as a pill-addled former athlete.