Today's celebrities take note: LADY LUST is a good example of how one day's big deal/celebrity news is tomorrow's fish wrap -no worse, in our era where newspapers are virtually obsolete (pun intended), gossip about the rich & pampered is even more ephemeral.
This movie was ever so briefly a big deal 30 years back, signaling the hardcore film debut for Edy Williams, the erstwhile Russ Meyer star who was a popular personality of the time, not unlike "Tonight Show" guests Charro and Carol Wayne.
She didn't really go XXX, merely fronting in a porn film a la the even more famous (and just as forgotten) stripper of two decades before Carol Doda was wont to do. I didn't like bait & switch then and I don't like it now, so I have to place this movie into the loss column.
But it is a real movie, shot on film in 1983 right when video production was poised to take over. And more dramatically, it is a professional, watchable movie from Ron Dorfman, who had made execrable fare like one I just suffered through recently, the gross-out exercise A TASTE OF BETTE.
Williams lightly lampoons her fame in the movie, portraying Suzy Croft, a success in San Francisco running an art gallery who arrives in NY to visit her kid sister Irene (cute Kim Carson). After Kim witnesses a lesbian scene featuring Jean Silver (treated as normal, no stump/freak connotation) and a busty girl, Edy describes an afternoon back home and we see her in flashback soft-core humping her hubby.
At a big party a wide range of '70s NYC talent shows up, including George Payne wearing a fancy hat, Michael Gaunt, Don Fernando, a dominatrix and others. An orgy breaks out and Edy does a strip tease to entertain the party-goers, evidently her Vegas (real-life) act preserved on film.
The scene shifts to the Hamptons where Kim goes for a visit. An endless subplot involving a shady character named Margo (with British accent) who seduces mailman (?) Paul Thomas, was more filler than interesting to me.
Back in Frisco Edy has a lesbian tryst with Sharon Mitchell -evidently a flashback (I guess we'll have to concede that Mitch is bi-coastal, though one would like to claim her for the NYC crowd). At this point the film's continuity is questionable - whether we're in the Hamptons or elsewhere is not made clear. Also, when the film tries for a serious moment, it's half-hearted. There's no real conclusion, just Edy leaving town.
Compared to so many of Dorfman's earlier projects, including cult favorites he photographed like BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, this LADY LUST was almost a step up to the big time -almost, but the results merely reflected inadequacy and the Peter Principle.
