BY ROD BARNETT
Until
recently I had been woefully ignorant of professional pornography from the
1970's but thanks to Vinegar Syndrome I am undergoing what might be considered
a master class in the genre. Their latest release to attract my attention is A
Saint... A Woman... A Devil... (1977) which has to qualify as one of the more
ambitious of its type I have eyer seen. This film is nothing short of an
attempt to use The Three Faces of Eve (1957) as the template story but taking
the material to places that Hollywood classic would never have dreamed. After
all, what better reason for a fractured personality than shameful feelings of
lust? And what better scenario than a main character that engages in sex with
multiple partners but then cannot remember those encounters? Ah, only in the
1970's, huh?
Sylvia
(Joanna Bell) hasn't been well since the recent deaths of her parents but she
appears to be doing just fine when her cousin Toby (Pamela Serpe) drops in
accompanied by her school roommate Sheila (Helen Madigan) for a holiday visit. The
shocked Toby discovers Sylvia on the living room floor with a door to door vacuum
cleaner salesman engaged in a bit more than a demonstration of just his
product's abilities. Toby doesn't understand what is going on because her
cousin has always been a mousy, boring and even religious person - not one that
would seduce a stranger in her own home! So, when the two visiting ladies
return later to make their presence known to Sylvia they find her praying at a
living room altar and she tells Toby about her current medical problems. It
seems that her doctor thinks her recent migraines and blackouts are
psychological rather than physical in nature but roommate Sheila isn't buying
any of it. She assumes that Sylvia is just a secret swinger and isn't bothered
when Sylvia seduces her on her first night in the house. This lesbian encounter
is done in the butch persona of "Tony" and Shelia is amused by what
she assumes is a sex game.
By
this time Toby has become convinced that Sylvia's childhood personality problems
have returned but decides to consult a priest rather than a doctor. The cleric
(Armand Peters) suggests it is possible that Sylvia is possessed and relates a
flashback of Sylvia's rape of a seminarian (Grover Griffith) in the church
itself! The religious man wisely recommends
psychoanalysis before ordering an exorcism and Sylvia's psychiatrist Dr. Ballaban
(this film's director Peter Savage) tells Toby that Sylvia has multiple
personalities which range from man-crazy Mona to lesbian Tony and devout but
slightly less repressed Mary. These separate personalities have grown as a
defense mechanism to the childhood abuse she suffered at the hands of her
schizophrenic mother (Helen Devine) who we see abuse Sylvia in more flashbacks.
The doctor decides to use deep hypnosis to try to unify Sylvia's various
personalities but Mona is the most resistant to the treatment because she
believes it will destroy her. Sylvia is completely unaware of her other selves
even though they are all part of her own personality so when Toby tries to
convince Sylvia to see Dr. Ballaban again the Mona personality takes over and
convinces a couple of junkies (Sonny Landham and Guido D'Alisa) to get rid of
the good doc before he can get rid of her.
If
this sounds pretty crazy then you are on the right track. Besides being a porn
film it also appears to be a bit of a vanity project by writer, director and
co-producer Peter Savage. If you think
he looks familiar you might have seen him in mainstream films such as Martin
Scorsese's Raging Bull or William Lustig’s Vigilante. The Lustig
connection seems to have started with this very film as he serves as the
assistant director and production manger for Savage here, gaining filmmaking
experience along with a number of other New York University film students. This
movie appears to have been one of many projects used to get future filmmakers
into the industry. Indeed, A Saint... A Woman... A Devil... is a technically
well made movie showing that - subject matter aside - these crew people have
the chops to make a good, solid film on a limited budget which Lustig would go
on to prove with his own work. Of course, no 1980's action movie fan can fail
to notice that actor Sonny Landham of 48 HRS and Predator fame is in this film
and he even performs in the hardcore sex scenes. I can't say I ever wanted to
see this but now I have I can inform you that if you feel the need to watch Mr.
Landham in 'action', here is your chance. But if you're like me and can't
imagine wanting to see fairly unattractive people copulate you might want to
give this movie a total pass. I don't mean to be cruel, but none of the cast
members of either gender are very attractive and by the time we are witness to
a fairly impressive home party/suburban orgy the ugliness of the people
onscreen had become noticeable enough to be a problem. I mean- wouldn't there
be some really gorgeous people in any given group of swingers? Or am I living
in a sexual fantasyland as based in reality as Middle Earth? Oh well.... dreams
die hard.
Vinegar
Syndrome has put A Saint... A Woman... A Devil... out as a standalone release
instead of in their usual porn double feature DVD structure. I would have
thought they would take the opportunity to use the saved space for extras of
some sort as a number of the cast and crew are still around. Then again, they
might not be too keen to discuss this mostly closeted skeleton and wish its
decades old door had remained locked. The only extra is the non-porn R rated
version of the film that simply chops the hardcore sequences out to present a
pretty strange, low budget character study.
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