Joy of Humiliation

Something Weird reissued this mysterious title on Vol. 85 of its Dragon Art Theatre series, and I'm the first to try and unravel its contents.

Although Shaun Costello appears in a dual role and many of his familiar stock company NYC players are on screen, he did not direct this junk. It lacks the loosey-goosey humor of most of his output, veering more into Joe Davian territory, yet also falling far short (though not through lack of trying) of Joe's patented ultra-nastiness. Per an email I received recently from Shaun, the uncredited director of JOY OF HUMILIATION was in fact his co-star Ron Dorfman.

Vanessa Del Rio and her psychiatrist husband take time out from having sex to discuss his troubled patient, who he calls "Joy Doe". Flashbacks limn this underage (looking) girl's torments, at the hands of her evil foster parents (stepdad Dorfman deflowers her in a nasty scene introduced by extreme verbal abuse from both parents, in typical porn-confrontational ad lib style), mistreatment by a couple of bikers (Costello and a black dude), and severe abuse by a satanic cult (led by Costello again wearing a masochist-styled black hood, plus the black dude again in a different role -this is low budget filmmaking).

Mrs. Sympathy personified, Vanessa suggests they invite the poor girl home and comfort her. That translates to Joy showing up at their pad and getting right down to threesome sex, of course. Twist is that Joy has brought along her chains and restraints, so she puts both Vanessa and hubby into bondage, and becomes the Mistress in this situation. But it's non-violent sex this time around.

Film's ending typifies some of the worst porn-proselytizing, so common during the '70s. Hubby admits to Vanessa that he was wrong, and in fact he has been treating patient Joy for a non-existent illness. He concludes that the s&m/b&d lifestyle is perfectly normal, and in fact desirable. Since her career revolved largely around these fetishes, how could Vanessa disagree with this simple pornspun wisdom?

Film's biggest shortcoming is the casting decision for Joy. This anonymous non-actress is quite unattractive, sports a thick European accent, but obviously got the job because she has a dynamite figure. However for this role, that figure belies the underage girl premise completely -she's definitely much older than intended and clearly has been around the block too many times to be convincing in the virgin scene.