41: Alice in Wonderland (1976, Bud Townsend)

Owned version: The DVD released in 2007 by Subversive Cinema, after which they immediately exhaled their dying breath and shuttered.

Acquired: 2008, likely April or May, from an unknown source - I thought I'd purchased it from Amazon, but there's zero record of that, so I dunno.

Seen before?: Twice, both times from this disc - I watched the XXX cut on April 27th, 2009 and the X cut on March 11th, 2010. That second viewing led to this review.

As usual, I find myself in disagreement with my prior review, yet this time it has nothing to do with the film in question - indeed, I have little to add to my drive-by assessment. My disagreement this time comes in fobbing off an entire genre in the process of shrugging over this specific example of said genre. "who really deigns to watch porn films all the way through?" I said, and jesus what a dumbfuck I was back then, I've seen a few other classic-era porn films since then and of course you can watch them all the way through if they're good enough just like any other genre of film. Back then, with limited experience in the genre, I assumed I was safe using Alice to make that generalization; now I can simply point out that Alice is no Sex World. Always growth, that's our aim here.

If it sounds like I'm stalling, engaging in a bit of throat-clearing... well, yeah. I don't have anything to add, really, like I said. This is my third time through it, and it's not a complicated object. It hasn't gotten any less threadbare, the songs haven't gotten any more memorable, the jokes haven't gotten any less corny (seriously, they even throw in the "order in the court"/"ham on rye" gag) and Kristine De Bell hasn't gotten any less appealing. The only real point of fluctuation is on how much I think De Bell's innocent/smutty magnetism compensates for the shabbiness of the film she's in. This time around, I think that well may have finally been exhausted for me. I don't foresee going back to this disc ever again.
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Okay, maybe one thing before I go see what I can get for this on eBay - Alice hinges on the innocent naturalization of sexuality, on the idea that "good girls don't" is goofy and retrograde and everyone does it whatever their inclination because sex is good and fun and positive. Which I am very much in favor of. Yet, this film is so ham-fisted that it manages to fuck up even that easy lay-up. The "If You Haven't Got Dreams, You Ain't Got Nothin'" number is a paeon to keeping wonder and magic in your life, to avoiding the very adult temptation to get exhausted and jaded... but it does so by arguing for a certain child-like approach to the world, to the point of pleading, "If they'd just kept a little bit of kid in them..." Now, I understand that's not meant to be literal. But if you're taking a popular children's book, already made into a famous film by a children's-entertainment titan, and including a song wherein actors in children's-theater-level fur suits make the case that you should stay in touch with the child within, then immediately follow that song with a bit wherein the fur people lick Alice all over her body, including one (played, I believe, by adult-film mainstay Terri Hall) who goes for it and gives Alice her first dose of head... well, I can't help but think you're accidentally advocating pedophilia, is what.

Even if that's indeed accidental, Tweedledee and Tweedledum are totally intended to be brother and sister, it's right there in the dialogue, so all I want to do is scream WHY ARE YOU DESTROYING YOUR FLUFFY, CHEERFUL SEX-POSITIVE PORNO WITH UBER-TABOO FETISH SHIT WHY WHY WHY

33: Abduction of an American Playgirl (1975, no director credited)

Owned version: The DVD released by Vinegar Syndrome in 2014 as a kick-off to their Peekarama porno-double-feature line

Acquired: From Vinegar Syndrome this past Black Friday after the trailer caught my interest.

Seen before?: No.

The title and general knowledge of the evolution of the genre around this point foster expectations that this, like its discmate Winter Heat, will be a grimy, soul-killing wallow in rape-fantasy porn. The opening moments, where two downtrodden dudes (mustachioed Fred and his friend Will) looking to score decide on a whim to spirit away Jackie, a fashionable young woman in a tight chartreuse dress they spy walking out of a local grocery, seem ready to fulfill that promise.

That goes out the window almost immediately afterward during the abduction promised in the title, when the playgirl in question gets a good kick to the nuts in on Fred and he staggers around uselessly while Will awkwardly drags the woman into the back of their car. It's that kind of movie, the kind that would be queasy were its male protagonists not hapless dorks with grievous overestimations of their station and permanent "KICK ME" signs pasted on their backs by life and fate. There's nothing at all threatening about these jamooks; Will, the dopier of the two, turns getting the boots off the unconscious woman into an IKEA-level exercise in mechanical frustration,  while Fred gets flustered instantly and leaves the room when their prisoner starts weeping ("What the hell ya cryin' for... cryin' turns me off!"). They can't even get on the same wavelength when trying to stretch this situation out into a harebrained kidnapping scheme - Fred gives instructions to Will about what to say, ignoring his friend's repeated cries that he hasn't a dime to make the call.

So, they're total buffoons. Laying this groundwork, the film then presents its central joke: in avoiding one rape fantasy, it curiously flips inside out into another, one where two stereotypically-cocksure '70s males find themselves at the mercy of their literally insatiable object of their desire. (To put a button on it, Fred gets to yell, "She raped me!" after he's tied to a coffee table by Jackie.) It's essentially the only joke the film has, as it repeats multiple variations on Jackie fixing breakfast for the two and telling them, above their exhausted protests, to be in the bedroom in ten minutes, but it unexpectedly gets a fair amount of mileage out of that joke. (Best variation: the double-team that runs at double speed and is overlayed with a piano-centric silent-movie-style score - call it slapstick-and-tickle.) It is, in fact, when the film wholly uses up its two hapless cockswains that it loses its bearings; not having its central duo to beat into the ground, it then settles for a brief bit of lesbian incest and an indulging of the Virile Black Man stereotype that leads first to a punchline that can be seen from space, then a mild gay-panic joke as a topper. (Though it is interesting and appropriate, in light of the film's constructions of its sexual power games, that the Virile Black Man gets the film's only popshot.)

Part of me wonders if this was always intended as a comedy or if circumstances of production steered it in that direction - the industry was grinding them out like sausages at this point, and there's a certain exhaustion visible in all the semis and softies on display during the fuck scenes. The other part of me is like, who cares, I laughed. The actors playing Fred and Will have a solid dumb-schmuck chemistry, Darby Lloyd Raines is gorgeous and convincingly energetic and I can't help but respect a film that, intentionally or not, turns its male actors' inability to keep it up into genuine text.

19: An Act of Confession (1972, Anthony Spinelli [as "Sybil Kidd"])

Owned version: The 2014 DVD release from Vinegar Syndrome, which has it not only third-billed behind two other Spinelli films (Cry for Cindy and Touch Me) but relegated to a second disc along with the softcore version of Cry for Cindy. This is not by accident.

Acquired: May 23rd of 2015 from Vinegar Syndrome.

Seen before?: No.

What is there to say about a boring porn film? An Act of Confession doesn't have much to it - it's a series of sexual fantasies dreamed up by a novitiate nun, and despite the long fertile history of the naughty-nun genre, this one runs out of ideas roughly twenty minutes in. A case could be made that this is due to genre constraints, inasmuch as this is a straight fuck flick without any of the demonic-flavored aspects that crop up in wilder examples of the genre. But even accounting for that, this pales next to something like School of the Holy Beast - the perversity ended at the concept. Which makes for a dull watch once you realize that all you're getting is concept.

It's not like this is any fun, either. The pace if this is funereal, and any expressions of ecstasy are limited to the grimacing faces of the involved dudes. The nun whose fantasies these are may be a plank of wood for all the life she shows. Really, the attitude here can be summed up by the disclaimer that shows up prior to the title card, which is as follows:

All due respect, Mr. Spinelli, but you ain't no Boccaccio. Though, like a number of tales in The Decameron, this is structured like a dirty joke, building to one heretical (and, in retrospect, inevitable) punchline. The framing of said punchline is actually fairly inspired - the use of gauzy lighting is hilarious - but it's a long road to get there.

(I should also mention that this release, sourced from a 16mm print that is as of now the only known source, is trimmed of all penetration shots. I assume this is why it's been relegated to an extra on the release of two other films - while extra footage of thrusts and flying semen wouldn't really improve the product at hand from a filmic standpoint, the removal of its raison d'etre does mark this as a historical curio at best.)