Long, diverting—if
a tad superficial, by design—clip show documentary on American cinema
sleaze. Severin has released on Blu-ray THAT’S SEXPLOITATION!, the 2013
documentary from Something Weird Video, produced by SWV’s Mike
Vraney and Jimmy Maslon, written, edited, and directed by Frank Henenlotter,
and starring Henenlotter and legendary schlockmeister David F. Friedman
in his final movie appearance. A lengthy compilation of sexploitation clips
from the 1920s through to the early 1970s, lent a historical framework by Friedman’s
spirited recollections and Henenlotter’s brief footnotes, THAT’S
SEXPLOITATION! is as much (if not more) a two hour and sixteen minute trailer
for SWV’s back catalog as it is an exploration of the dirty little secrets
of America’s hidden “sinema” past. And as such...it’s
quite entertaining, particularly for newcomers to the genre. A commentary track
with Henenlotter and SWV’s Lisa Petrucci is included, along with a remarkable
3 ½ hours worth of bonus sexploitation shorts from SWV’s archives—that’s
a big bag of sleaze.
Labor-of-love THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! apparently came about through the
long association between SWV’s founder, Mike Vraney, notorious sexploitation
producer/director David F. Friedman, and director Frank Henenlotter. Seattle-based
movie collector Vraney had built a profitable, well-known video distribution
company beginning in 1990 by releasing public domain VHS copies of works by
directors like Joseph W. Sarno, Doris Wishman, and Friedman—a business
model Friedman initially had some problems with (he called it “pirating”)
before making friends with Vraney (and his money). It was a mutually beneficial
arrangement, particularly for Friedman, who after a long career in movie production
and exhibition, was delighted long-forgotten works like GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE
BARES and THE DEFILERS were making money again for him, as well as bringing
him a measure of fame among a new group of VHS-watching genre enthusiasts. Vraney
was also close friends with director Frank Henenlotter, who had made a name
for himself with big screen, popular-on-video releases like BASKET CASE and
FRANKENHOOKER. Henenlotter went on to work with Vraney and SWV, hosting one
of their most popular VHS series, Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers
from the Vault. Eventually, Vraney and Henenlotter branched out into feature-length
documentaries, the first being the well-received HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS: THE
GODFATHER OF GORE, from 2010. Having obtained over five hours of interview material
from a frail, ailing Friedman at his Alabama home in 2011 (it was the last time
either Henenlotter or Vraney saw Friedman alive; the producer died just months
later), Henenlotter set out to make a doc chronicling the seven decade evolution
and death of the American sexploitation movie, with Friedman’s interview
as the glue holding together selected cuts from Vraney’s vast collection
of stag reels, peep show loops, nudie cuties, roughies, sex hygiene movies,
burlesque shorts, and white coaters. It took Henenlotter two years to choose
material and edit it down for the 136 minute-long THAT’S SEXPLOITATION!
(unfortunately, Vraney died unexpectedly before the doc was completed), where
it received good notices on the festival and art house circuits in 2013.
In total honesty, even though this reviewer had seen his fair share of sexploitation
shorts and reels over the years prior to watching THAT’S SEXPLOITATION!
(mostly back during film school...and a few innocent, ancient hand-crank peeps,
believe it not, at Cedar Point Amusement Park back in the early 1970s), I would
have had a difficult time trying to put examples of nudist camp shorts, roughies,
goona-goona outings, and sex hygiene docs into a proper chronological timeline.
THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! accomplishes that lesson very well for casual fans
like myself, or for newcomers to the genre. As much a clip show as it is a straight
documentary, when there’s a choice between showing half a dozen burlesque
strippers strutting their stuff without commentary on the track, or showing
just two stripper clips after someone explains what we’re seeing and why
it’s important, THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! goes with the six strippers.
It’s content over context. And that approach is fine, for what it is.
You certainly never get bored during THAT’S SEXPLOITATION!, something
that can’t be said for a lot of movie documentaries. It’s wall-to-wall
nudity and oddities: a few gorgeous, a lot fairly pretty, and some quite grotesque
(those hideous Army and Navy VD training films, that one lesbian on the couch
with the heavy mustache...and most of the guys from 1965 on). One could even
make a valid case that THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! does what a documentary should
do, if nothing else: it “documents.” It isn’t just talking
about this hidden aspect of American movies—it’s showing
it to you, in a big bundle, so you can see for yourself.
THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! starts off on an unnecessary, shaky note, with an
awkward intro featuring director Henenlotter and hot-as-hell burlesque dancer
“Gal Friday.” Henenlotter is a genial and animated host—sort
of like an older, good-natured Mickey Rooney—and for my money, Gal can
walk in front of a camera any time she likes. However, these kinds of home-grown
comedy skits can be and usually are, quite deadly, and that’s the case
here. Thankfully, we immediately move down to Alabama where Friedman begins
a long, frequently fascinating (if choppy, by editing) dissertation on the evolution
of the sexploitation movie in America. Silent peep show loops and private 200
ft 16mm stag movies from the 1920s are discussed (beautiful girls on the beach
in WHY GIRLS WALK HOME, a prescient UNCLE SI AND THE SIRENS, showing porn coming
through a futuristic TV set). The Hayes Code and the Catholic Church’s
Legion of Decency in the 1930s are briefly mentioned (Henenlotter says the following
decades of Hollywood movies featured the “morality of angry Catholic nuns
whacking you with a ruler,”), while we’re treated to that “murder
weed” marihuana in WAGES OF SIN and strip poker parties, featuring full
frontal, in SINS OF LOVE (that first woman is amazing).
Friedman very briefly discusses how producers went from theatre to theatre with
their movies, arranging quick exhibitions before laming it out from the cops.
The sex hygiene movies of the 1930s are next up (the infamous THE ART OF LOVE),
with their carny scam of selling old, rebound government sex pamphlets in the
lobby at a huge profit. A brief mention of state censor boards is interrupted,
for some reason, by a look at the “monkey sex” sexploitation subgenre
(INGANI, FORBIDDEN ADVENTURE), before we’re back to a fascinating side-by-side
presentation of a scene from ESCORT GIRL, with one side of the screen the “hot”
version for certain states (they’re in lingerie), and the other side “cool,”
where everyone is clothed. Nudist movies are the next subject, with Friedman
revealing the startling information that the topless SALLY RAND’S NUDE
RANCH was the top-grossing movie at the Chicago World’s Fair. Segueing
into peep show reels and hard-core “smokers,” Friedman mentions
how the latter were ironically often shown in a town’s finest institutions:
the Grange and American Legion halls, and the police and fire stations (a rare
talkie stag, THE SAILOR AND THE HULA GIRL, is briefly shown...just long enough
for the creepy narrator to pricelessly intone, “Boy, whatta babe, whatta
babe!”)
Then WWII comes along and puts the kibosh on sexploitation, according to Friedman,
so we’re treated to some truly repulsive armed services VD training docs
you won’t soon forget (is that Paul Kelly in THE FURLOUGH?). Post-war
pin-ups are briefly mentioned before we’re back to 1940s loops (I love
the card that reads, “Shall we go on? OK...MORE LOOT”),
with the director telling us that even family-friendly arcades had porn loops
in a back room (that BABES IN THE WOODS looks weirdly modern for the 1940s,
with shaky hand-held camerawork and a zoom if I’m not mistaken, and the
ironic clowning of the girls losing their clothes, before that bizarre jump
cut to a guy in a spooky Tex Avery-like wolf mask). Sex hygiene movies make
a post-war comeback, with Friedman briefly mentioning the king of carny exploiters,
Kroger Babb, and his spectacularly successful MOM AND DAD (featuring a live
birth that will make your stomach turn), which Friedman claims made $60 million
dollars over its years of releases. Other smut masquerading as hygiene/warning
movies, including STREET CORNER and THE STORY OF BOB AND SALLY, are featured
(those newspaper photos of ticket buyers lined up around the block at theaters
showing these movies is remarkable, when your only context for how things “really
were” back then comes from sanitized Hollywood fare). A fun detour into
burlesques—burlesque acts and strippers filmed from 8th row center—is
next, including too-brief interludes with Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm (yowza),
Bette Paige, Mary Blair, and Kalatan’s “Fire Dance” in color...as
well as the Junior Samples of burlesque strippers, the (ahem) ample Iva Pratt
(we get a few fun, off-topic looks at some burlesque comics, too, including
Charlie Crafts). Barely acknowledged are the ethnographic “mau mau”
movies and foreign “art films” (a brief shot of Brigitte Bardot)
that also showed up in the 1950s.
It’s the late 1950s, and nudist movies are back, with Friedman spilling
the beans on how producers “salted” those camps with hot models
for movies like THE NUDIST STORY and GARDEN OF EDEN (check out the remarkably
stylized NAKED VENUS from incognito cult director Edgar G. Ulmer). The “nudie
cuties” of the 1960s are up next (“they were the stupidest movies
on the face of the earth,” according to the director), including shots
from Meyer’s THE IMMORAL MR. TEAS, and NOT TONIGHT, HENRY. 1960s loops
are discussed, with an increased surrealism creeping into their plotless scenes
(does it get any more bizarre—or brilliant—than STARLIGHT 207, that
has Day-Glo plastic cowboys and Indians arranged on a naked woman’s body?).
“Nudie cuties” then morphed into “nudies” as the 1960s
rolled on, as Friedman gives some good information on how the number of theaters
showing sexploitation features jumped to an astounding 700, as failing neighborhood
houses had to adapt to survive the Hollywood 1960s slump (that AROUSED looks
pretty crazy—“not recommended to anyone who is emotionally unstable
or under psychiatric care,”). A look at “roughies” interrupts,
with clips from BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, AFTER THE BALL WAS OVER (looks like an
early version of “Helter Skelter”), the Finleys’ THE TOUCH
OF HER FLESH, and the notorious OLGA’S HOUSE OF SHAME (the director insists
these sick outings were merely for “lonely men and frustrated husbands”—a
wildly euphemistic, deliberately innocuous appraisal that misses the point of
these movies entirely: their male audiences got off vicariously on the sadism
towards women). Back to nudies, as stars like Marsha Jordan and Stacy Walker
(THE NOTORIOUS DAUGHTER OF FANNY HILL) competed with increasingly racier material,
before the later 1960s psychedelic revolution hit, with nudies like THE ACID
EATERS, THE HIPPIE REVOLT, and HEDONISTIC PLEASURES (are those kaleidoscopic
bubble projector scenes ripping off Corman’s THE TRIP...or did Corman
see this first?).
Friedman then discusses his role in the Adult Film Association of America, helping
to legally defend small exhibitors’ 1st Amendment rights; as they won
court case after court case, the envelope for what could be shown on screen
was pushed further and further out (gay cinema is very briefly looked at here—as
a straight guy I can say without fear that the two dudes in THE SONG OF THE
LOON look prettier than most of the strippers here). Pretty soon, the “storefront”
phenomenon—makeshift theaters set up with folding chairs and a 16mm projector
on a card table—signals the shift from sexploitation to hardcore (some
great shots of 42 Street (?) theaters), before the “white coaters”
come in, such as Matt Cimber’s MAN AND WIFE: sex hygiene movies designed
to bypass the obscenity laws by providing so-called “educational content”
in-between the hardcore material (the doc avoids any hardcore shots). As Friedman
observes before the final fade-out, “the movies became explicit, and the
fun stopped.”
The fast-paced, content-loaded THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! makes for a good
primer for anyone interested in further, uh...study. And I would suppose further
“study” would naturally lead one to Something Weird’s website
(it’s the last thing Lisa Petrucci calls out on the commentary track).
And that’s cool...but that subtle emphasis of promotional material over
historical context necessarily keeps THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! a minor-grade
doc, at best. Since the subject matter is so enticingly presented, it’s
natural that small questions will keep nagging at the attentive viewer when
set-ups aren’t fully satisfied. How did NUDE RANCH become the
biggest grossing movie of the Chicago’s World Fair? Was it in a tent?
Out in the open? How did the general public accept that being shown, if it was
so outrageous at the time? Why, exactly, was sexploitation “out”
during WWII? We’re not given a convincing answer...but we’re told
it was so. If Doris Wishman was so important a director of nudies...why isn’t
there a discussion of why she was so important? Or even just a few
lines? What was the timeline for the court cases that are vaguely alluded to
in the movie, if they were crucial to the envelope being pushed on nudies? And
how about developing the carnival hucksterism angle a little bit better, since
that seems to be, really, at the center of the sexploitation genre—selling
and making a buck by tricking the customer into thinking he was getting something
he really wasn’t, rather than championing increased sexual awareness while
fighting the courts on principle? And if little things like that nag, the bigger
questions really frustrate us; principally: why doesn’t anybody acknowledge
the irony of nudie and roughie producers pushing the envelope for what can be
seen on the screen...right into the hardcore years that led to their own genre’s
demise (unless of course it’s all bullsh*t and those guys went ahead and
made hardcore, like Friedman, despite his laments). And even more paradoxical:
if censorship and America’s Puritanical DNA were the enemy, supposedly
waving phony “cardboard morality” in our faces that sexploitation
helped to destroy...then why wasn’t it a paradise when hardcore finally
came into being? Why had the “fun” ended, as Friedman sadly offers,
when the opposing force of morality died? Oh well...I guess we’ll just
have to be satisfied with all the boobs and bums on display here....
The anamorphically-enhanced 1.78:1 widescreen AVC encoded HD transfer for THAT’S
SEXPLOITATION! looks—when taken on average—pretty good. The new
segments are digitally shot and thus, digitally crystal clear and sharp. The
various full frame clips from past decades vary in quality. Some of the earlier
black and white stuff looks surprisingly clean, while others are horribly scratched
up and contrasty. Quite a few of the late 1960s stuff looks candy-colored bright
(director Henenlotter admits to boosting the color during the scanning process),
with others looking grimy and muddy. A real fan of this kind of stuff won’t
care. The English LPCM split 2.0 mono audio track can be described the exact
same way: variable, depending on the source material. Overall, though, it’s
fine, with all music and dialogue cleanly heard. Purists, though, may disagree
strongly with Henenlotter’s admitted dubbing in of jokey sound
effects and music for many of the shorts. No subtitles available.
As for extras, there’s a commentary track with director Henenlotter and
Mike Vraney’s widow, Lisa Petrucci. There’s quite a bit of information
offered here that would have served well on the actual doc (Petrucci seems to
know all the names of the anonymous girls in the movies, for example; some deeper
contextual info frequently comes from Henenlotter), along with extended memories
of Vraney and Friedman (Henenlotter’s account of raiding the bankrupt
Movie Lab vault in New York City is positively spellbinding...except when—amateur
hour alert—it’s interrupted by a visitor to the studio, as the commentary
track momentarily goes dead). Henenlotter is quite amusing, but Petrucci began
to lose me when she said she didn’t like Abbott & Costello (whaaa??),
before she lost me completely, trying to defend her favorite sexploitation subgenre,
the roughie, as innocuous comic book fare. You can like what you like, as we
all do for our own reasons, but at least be intellectually honest about it.
There’s nothing about the roughies mentioned in this doc that
were done in a “fun-spirited way,” as she stridently describes them
(Henenlotter politely disagrees with her, and then drops it). They were sick
and nasty, and they appealed to a very dark place in viewers, just like their
progeny today, such as SAW and V/H/S. You can like them if you want (I like
big, glossy, heroic war movies—you don’t get any sicker or phonier
than that genre)...but don’t deliberately misread them to somehow make
it more “okay” that you like them. Next, THAT’S SEXPLOITATION!’s
best surprise is over 3 ½ hours of clips from SWV’s back catalogue,
some of which are briefly seen in the main feature (don’t worry: this
already too-long review won’t add additional thoughts on each of these
extras). Titles included are: UNCLE SI AND THE SIRENS, THE WOOD NYMPHS, NUDE
FROLICS, PERSONAL HYGIENE BOOK PITCHES, THE ART OF LOVE BOOK PITCH, NUDISM—A
WAY OF LIFE?, A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM WALTER HALE, BETRAYED, KALANTAN IN HER
EXOTIC FIRE DANCE, MY TALE IS HOT, SHOCKING SET!!?, NAKED FURY!, an abridged
MOONLIGHTING WIVES, THE SIN SYNDICATE, WILD NIGHT AT THE INTERLUDE, COWGIRL
WATUSI WITH MICHELLE ANGELO, BELLY DANCE WATUSI, BALLOON WATUSI, BULLFIGHT WATUSI,
NUDIST BEACH CONTEST, HOW THE NUDIST KEEPS FIT, and JOY IN THE BOUDOIR MODELLING
‘WAY OUT’ LINGERIE. An impressive array of smut. And finally, a
trailer for THAT’S SEXPLOITATION! rounds out this funny, dirty-minded
disc. (Paul Mavis)