Saul Resnick only directed this movie, but he was part of the late 60s sexploitation film scene, serving as cinematographer on Broadway Jungle and shooting Mondo Bizarro and Everybody Loves It.
Also known as Maidens of Fetish Street, this is about Nick (Ken McCormick), who goes to a club to watch girls dance, which causes him to meditate on people’s sex lives. This is less a nudie or roughie and more softcore noir; it feels gross in the best way, sleazy and leering, dirty without penetration, just the way it’s made.
Every man in this, including Nick, is a loser. Women obsess over them and are upset and confused by them. All is, well, lost. Sometimes, like when one guy gets what he wants, they just cry. And this is way ahead of other films of the era, as women of every size and shape are included, as long as they have the most enormous breasts you’ve ever seen.
Speaking of that crying guy, he’s in love with a sex worker. He’s been in love with her for years. He tells her a few stories, and she barely listens; time is money, and she’s already got his cash. She then tells him every filthy tale about her life, all the men she has on a daily basis, and all he can do is weep as he sprawls on top of her, just another number and not the white knight he was hoping to be.
Then, a nude model is the fantasy object for a female sculptor. This sequence feels like raw eroticism compared to the first, as the black and white film makes the clay look like flesh. Is this art?
Imagine: a movie set in 20s Los Angeles, shot like a film noir with distorted sound and non-synched voiced, like Carnival of Souls (copyright to Sakana1 on Letterboxd for that amazing connect the dots) but if Candace Hilligoss pulled her car over in the salt flats and suddenly decided that she wanted to give you the kind of lap dance that gives you blue balls for the rest of all eternity. Supposedly, this was based on a play called The Degenerates. Gentry Austin, also on Letterboxd, reminds us that Andy Milligan had a lost film of the same name; one can hope it had the same inspiration (and that Severin gets it out on Blu-ray ASAP).
It ends with Nick giving a black woman a bath alongside his much older wife, then falling for a gorgeous blonde, only to wake up to his wife whipping them both before he’s locked inside an adult bookstore as the night goes on without him.
The cast includes Althea Currier (Mr. Tease and His Playthings, Lorna, Surfside 77, the writer of the Ask Althea column in Adam magazine), Barbara Nordin (Orgy of the Dead), Kellie Everts (whose adult career goes from this movie all the way to Full Service Butler in 1989, a film she also directed; her stage dancing career lasted from March 1966 to August 1987. She then quit to become a producer of dancing and female domination videos, making enough money to purchase a large property with an island in Upstate New York in 1989, where she has lived ever since. Interestingly enough, she was known as a “stripper for God,” often preaching before she took her clothes off, starting her first spiritual talk at the Melody Theater in Times Square. If that’s not enough, she was also one of teh first female bodybuilders, which led to her winning Miss Nude Universe in July 1967, second place in Miss Americana nd Best Body in 1972, second place for Miss Body Beautiful in 1973, Miss Body Beautiful U.S.A. first place in 1974, and second place for Miss Americana and Best Body in 1974, which found her on the same stage as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, she has her own religion and her followers believe that she’s an “incarnation of God, much like Ramakrishna.” Wow.) and Margo Lynn Sweet (who is also in The Beach Girls and the Monster).
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