I guess "hack" status for a film director can encompass not merely the untalented routine types but also a filmmaker whose work is wildly uneven in quality. The latter category describes Rik Taziner, a would-be auteur (he actually signs his films, with oddball spellings of his name) who impressed me no end with TEENAGE DESIRE but flunked out again with CHERRY TRUCKERS.
Film represents within a porn context the very brief '70s flurry of movies latching onto the CB radio craze. It is instructive how dated these films (even Peckinpah's dalliance with the genre CONVOY or Chuck Norris in BREAKER! BREAKER!) quickly became: I suspect our current obsession with phone-related gadgetry will look pretty stupid to future generations watching recent films or TV shows like "24" that are literally "phoned in".
Taziner postulates three beautiful lady truck drivers (actually 2 out of 3 -I'll get to that casting mistake later) en route to San Francisco for a national convention of the Mother Truckers. Along the way, communicating with each other by CB radios, they have sex with folks and kidnap them to bring to the convention. Taziner toys throughout the film with bondage as a key motif, but his approach is so wimpy I'm surprised he bothered.
The film is almost an all-sex opus, as the improvised dialog is poorly delivered and the situations are arbitrary, inevitably leading to overlong, even tedious sex scenes. Throwing in some second unit photography of trucks on the road or highway signs signaling Frisco dead ahead does not a real movie make.
Back to the casting: lead role is assigned to one-shot "Azure Té", an unattractive brunette who spoils the film. Why Taziner didn't hire some A talent from San Fran, most obvious would be Dianne Galke, is beyond me. He did opt for Galke's frequent co-star Desiree West, radiant as fellow trucker Wan (I thought her name was Juan, from verbal-only crediting!), who provides quality mixed-combo action here, as does Black actor Dashile Miguele, playing a gas station attendant kidnapped by the third leading lady, Spring Finlay.
Finlay alone is reason enough to watch CHERRY TRUCKERS -this natural redhead is a true beauty, whose pale-pale appearance probably earned her the best role of her short career, in THREE SHADES OF FLESH. The film comes to life whenever she's on-screen, even though "Azure" drags it down, particularly in a finale where they're vying for a cock in a threesome.
Cheapie culminates in an on-stage sex show at the SF convention where "Azure" presides as the supposed prez of the organization. With canned applause and a never-shown audience, this silly footage is very poorly directed by Taziner, bad enough that he would lose his porn-DGA card if there were a porn equivalent to the DGA. Typically we are presented with plenty of limp-dick humping, a prelude to Taziner working with John Holmes in TEENAGE MADAM.
The VCX video box for CHERRY TRUCKERS makes a big deal about the no-name cast "who you'll never see again" but that false advertising is ludicrous given the enduring popularity of West, plus the under-appreciated Finlay. Only "Azure Té" fills the bill.
Taziner's career as documented in IMDb seems peppered with junk: a KING OF THE ROAD title dangles with zero information, perhaps merely a working title for CHERRY TRUCKERS, while a similarly mysterious opus named INSIDE BABY SITTER has the same fake credits as the wonderful TEENAGE DESIRE and could easily be just an alternate title for that classic. I guess the most interesting stunt was in 1974 when he shot a gay version of THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND, with overlapping cast, as FINGER LICKEN GOOD, a filmmaking gimmick I've encountered with same year's THREE SEX CRAZED BANDITOS. This money-saving "niche marketing" approach to porn never caught on.