Dead Men Don't Wear Rubbers

Perhaps casting perennial crew member/substitute dick Anthony Crane in the starring role as a phony private dick is what sunk this clever movie by Jace Rocker, another perennial crew member who scored huge hits for Wicked Pictures way back in 1993 with similar comedies "Haunted Nights" and "Arabian Nights". IMDb cheated writer-director Jace out of proper credit here, listing this feature as the work of James DiGrigorio, an error I'm correcting.

Prone to lapse into dumb Jerry Lewis-imitating face-pulling throughout, Crane is tiresome as a horny guy who impersonates his buddy Joey Houlihan (played by John Decker, whose shoulder-length hair is a poor anachronism for a story set in 1947) as private eye taking the case of beautiful but untrustworthy femme fatale Ava Vincent. The beautiful Ava, with blonde hair, is more alluring in my book than either Veronica Lake or Gene Tierney, who she roughly resembles.

Feature opens with Crane about to be executed in the electric chair, telling his life story to reporter Britt Morgan, who is uncredited but a welcome sight years after her porn acting career ended (she is credited for BTS on the video, but the DVD doesn't feature a BTS segment).

Flashback ensues, and we see endless slapstick by Crane. There's a period car and costumes, but production is so chintzy that Crane plays the fake gumshoe role in his shirt sleeves, not even wearing a vintage suit or sports jacket. He even lapses into a lousy Bogie impression at one point.

Some of the hard-boiled dialog is amusing, and the overall plot line is on the level of a Red Skelton or perhaps Bob Hope comedy spoof of that era. Besides Vincent, Inari Vachs is smashing as a gum-chewing, Brooklyn accented moll to the bad guys led by Tony Tedeschi, in a typical story of post-war Communist espionage. April as a cheesecake model is also effective in the sex department, but Rocker's cast is decidedly sub-par, especially when compared to his previous Wicked Pictures blockbusters starring the likes of Jonathan Morgan and Steven St. Croix.

The wonderful if under-appreciated Carl Reiner/Steve Martin movie from which this video's title was ripped off was innovative in its ingenious marrying of old film noir footage with new scenes starring Steve and Rachel Ward, all in glorious black & white. Instead Rocker takes the title and does nothing special, even violating its oft-expressed safe sex message by having the final sex scene executed bareback, without the title condom elsewhere employed, and without the promised deadly consequences.

A "plotted porn" movie set in the 1940s. The costumes & hairstyles are nice and authentic, as are the sets and vehicles used - and the (very glamorous) female performers wear suspender (garter) belts and stockings in most of the scenes too, which is another plus.

There also seems to be an underlying "safe sex" message, both in the title and in the fact that all the male performers wear condoms in all but one of the sex scenes - though this always strikes me as a pointless exercise when they remove them for the "pop shot" and the female performers gobble up the result with such gusto.

This hardcore movie falls very much into the "couples" genre, and comes recommended to those who (a) prefer their porn with a plot (as opposed to just "endless humping"), (b) like to see the female performers wearing sexy costumes, lingerie and stockings and (c) are not put off by the presence of condoms in the hardcore scenes.

Its main drawbacks (common to a lot of hardcore porn) are the presence of tedious genital close-up shots and very unattractive male performers (one of is a spiv apparently modelled closely on the Private Walker character from the classic TV show "Dad's Army"), though with a runtime in excess of 2 hours, it represents decent value for money.