The Video Vacuum

Orgy of the Dead director A.C. Stephens (Real name:  Stephen C. Apostolof) was behind the camera for this uneven but fun black and white nudie cutie.  The plot is simple:  A bunch of sorority sisters from “LSD University” go out “looking for kicks” and get it on in a variety of ways.  One chick offers up her body to her grey haired professor in order to get a passing mark.  Another gal gets off on watching her best friend ball a smooth talking frat boy then swapping places with her.  (“C’mon girl, it’s the changing of the guard!”)  Then the two nymphos double team a young pledge to “initiate” him into the fraternity.  It all culminates in a pill popping party in which even more people get naked and have sex. 

Most of the sex scenes aren’t very titillating (the females in the audience will be disappointed to learn that the men keep their underwear ON during the lovemaking) as Stephens more or less uses one master shot and very little editing.  Some of the sex is unpleasant (the old professor rapes his frigid wife), but most of the scenes are enjoyably goofy. Even though College Girls Confidential is rather tame, it’s hard to hate a flick with this much nudity when the running time is just over an hour long. 

I’ve seen better acting from a cardboard cut out, but some of the characters are pretty amusing.  The funniest character is the gay male cheerleader who likes to hang out in the boy’s locker room and ogle football players in the shower.  But the best part of the flick is the hopelessly cheesy dialogue.  It’s loaded with bad puns and double entendres like:  “Let’s review your… assets!”, “Let’s do a little field work!”, and “Talk about higher education!”

Suggested Drinking Game:  If you take a shot of your favorite liquor every time someone says the word “kicks”, prepare to succumb into a coma well before the film ends. 

AKA:  College Girls.

An old Italian dude runs the aptly named Quickie Motel where a variety of customers come for romantic romps, seedy sex and afternoon delights.  The customers include a horny businessman and his seductive secretary, an unhappy couple looking to rekindle their romance, a newlywed who runs all over town looking for condoms to cut down on “the population explosion”, a cheating wife who swindles her prospecting lover before partaking in some light S & M with her husband, a sailor and his insatiable barroom pick-up, and a guy who unwittingly shacks up with a transvestite. 

The sex scenes probably won’t turn you on, but at least there is an abundance of nudity and some really swinging big band music to keep you semi-entertained.  The framing device featuring the motel owner and his pesky nephew is pretty irritating and features a lot of stale jokes (everyone signs the guestbook with the name “Jones”), but whenever the flick stays in the bedroom, it’s rather enjoyable.

Like all these “Confidential” movies directed by A.C. (Fugitive Girls) Stephens (Suburbia Confidential and College Girls Confidential were the others in the “series”), it’s in black and white, is filled with tame sex scenes (all the guys keep their pants on during sex), and features some hilarious one-liners like “I have something very big in mind for you!”, “I’m all spread out and ready to work!”, and “Oh no, a fag in drag!” 

John Savage stars in this middling low budget drama from Crown International Pictures as a hippie drifter who returns home to stay with his family.  His brother used to be a big shot author, but times are tough so he’s reduced to being a low end bagman for the Mob (!?!) to make extra bread.  That means he’s out of town a lot and that means that his sex starved wife (Anne Saxon) is ready to fuck Savage’s brains out.  Tension mounts when Savage bungles his big bro’s heroin deal and begins bedding down with his brother’s MISTRESS (Meridith Baer) too.  Predictably, Savage comes to a tragic end when he is SAVAGE-LY (I made a pun, get it?) gunned down in the streets by some overweight Mafioso. 

Like most Crown International movies being made at the time, The Sister-In-Law is one of those bait and switch deals (like The Teacher or The Stepmother) that has JUST ENOUGH of what the trailers and posters promised (promiscuous sex with a family member), but features way too much extraneous “plot” stuff.  Seriously, at what point did this flick stop being about Savage banging his brother’s hot wife (and his mistress) and start being a shitty Sopranos episode?  I dunno.  Even worse is the fact that Savage SINGS on the soundtrack.  A lot.  And badly.  Really badly.  Honestly, it sounds like someone endlessly pelting a cat in the head with oranges or something. 

Anyway at least director Joseph (The Forgotten) Ruben is smart enough to convince his two very attractive female leads to take their tops off every chance they get.  Baer has two topless sex scenes and Saxon shows off her goods no less than FIVE times throughout the movie.  (Once in the shower, once while skinny dipping, once during an underwater catfight, and twice while doing the deed.)  I’m sure Ms. Saxon could’ve accommodated us at least five more times had her character not inexplicably disappeared halfway through the movie.  (Correct me if I’m wrong, but this flick WAS called The Sister-In-Law, right?)

Despite the lackluster dramatics (it’s essentially a Lifetime Movie of the Week with lots of tit shots); both Savage and Ruben would go on to work on big time Hollywood movies.  Savage later went on to sing… badly in Hair (look, all I’m saying is that Milos Forman obviously didn’t see this flick before he cast Savage in Hair, cuz his singing sucks monkey nuts) and Ruben wound up behind the camera for Dreamscape, a personal favorite.  Unfortunately neither Saxon nor Baer had much of a career after this flick.  While Baer got cast in a handful of other Crown flicks, this was the only cinematic credit for the comely Saxon.  Her nude scenes were easily the most memorable thing about this ho-hum affair and it’s a shame more movies weren’t blessed with her chestocological region.