BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA
Remember the days when you would wear a baggy
raincoat, visit your local independent theater and abuse your genital region
while watching “naughty†films? Maybe the younger “internet porn†readers don’t
(I actually don’t either. I just remember hearing about it while OD’ing on VHS
porn in the 80s), but I know some of you older perverts know what I’m talking
about. You see, during the 1960s and early 70s, you could hit your local
grindhouse theater and see films that are now classified as sexploitation.
These low-budget independent features contained plenty of nudity, but showed
very little in the way of actual onscreen sex, giving them the nickname
“soft-core.†Until hardcore classics like 1972’s Deep Throat and Behind the
Green Door as well as 1973’s The
Devil in Miss Jones arrived on the scene rendering the tamer stuff almost
obsolete, these soft-core flicks (which were also frequently viewed by couples)
were all the rage. And now, the nice folks at Vinegar Syndrome have unearthed
three of them for you to relive or to discover for the very first time.
In the first feature, Marsha, The Erotic Housewife, a young woman (soft-core queen Marsha
Jordan also from Count Yorga, Vampire)
whose businessman husband (Mark Edwards) is cheating on her, decides to teach
him a lesson by fulfilling her sexual fantasies with other men. The second
feature, titled For Single Swingers Only,
tells the tale of Gracie (Ann Myers) who moves into an apartment complex for
swingers, but gets much more than she bargained for. Last, but not least, Her Odd Tastes once again stars Marsha
Jordan, this time as a woman who goes from having an incestuous relationship
with her sister to becoming a door-to-door vibrator saleswoman. She eventually
kills a man in self-defense before being hired by a book publisher to research
sexual pleasure and pain. The insatiable woman travels the world, visiting Hong
Kong, Africa and the Middle East in order to satisfy her strange sexual
cravings.
All three films (which were directed by Don
Davis) may contain washed-out colors and plenty of pops, scratches, jump cuts
and lines; not to mention drab-looking locations, but hey, no one buying a
ticket to see these movies was interested in things like cinematography or
production value. They paid to see some skin and there’s plenty of nudity on
display here. There’s also a lot of kissing and groping (in lieu of everything
else) as well as a bunch of unintentional laughs thanks to silly dialogue, stiff
acting and quite a few so-bad-it’s-good moments. Highlights include a hilarious
“Marsha†theme song, a woman with a very thick Swedish accent, a satanic orgy
where one guy wears a silly-looking goat head mask and, finally, death while
boinking on an electrified chair.
On the downside, the three movies, although
each one only running a little over an hour, all move along at a somewhat slow
pace. Still, I enjoyed them all for
what they are. (I found Her Odd Tastes to
be the better paced and most entertaining of the three).
The three films have all been released on one dual layer DVD by Vinegar Syndrome.
The disc is region free and the movies are presented in their original 1.33:1
aspect ratio. The aforementioned pops, scratches, jump cuts and lines (which us
grindhouse cinema junkies adore) never detract from the story, and the images,
although far from Blu-ray quality, are more than watchable and pretty much what
you would expect something from this genre to look like. There are no special
features, but the DVD sleeve and disc both contain the original poster art for
all three films; my favorite tag line being “In Throbbing Color.†If you’re a
fan of soft-core sex flicks or are just curious to see what they were all about,
I recommend giving this retro drive-in collection a look.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON