Infrasexum

Pornographer Carlos Tobalina/Troy Benny switching with the times from soft-core to hardcore XXX saved the world from more narcissistic performances like this one in his debut feature, electing to perform many of the sex scenes himself. In hardcore you need the equipment and ability to do explicit sex, so Tobalina fortunately restricted his future on-screen activities to dumb cameos.

He's the pointless sidekick to our middle-aged hero, whose stage name poorly parodies the great Errol Flynn. It's yet another porn film about limp-dick syndrome, that most common of maladies before Cialis and Viagra killed off that rich vein of plot lines for dummies. Our hero and his 2nd in command at his company reunited in Tobalina's later film on the subject "Marilyn and the Senator".

The defects of this film are too numerous to discuss in IMDb's 1000 words, but I will attempt to hit some of the low points. Starting off, Tobalina despite making dozens of films and owning his own equipment and studio facilities, never learned the craft of lighting. Ghastly shadows are thrown all over the frame in the simplest of scenes, right from an early exposition where Flynn as Peter Alison tells his top executives including William Kirschner that they will take over running his firm, as he's going on an open- ended sabbatical. It's On the Road '60s style, dropping out to find oneself, a theme I generally love in cinema, but not in the untrustworthy hands of CT.

The boys at Vinegar Syndrome who acquired DVD rights to the bulk of CT's catalog, insist on claiming his films have merit, since it's their job to sell, sell, sell. The DVD notes trumpeting fabulous footage of Las Vegas and Cal. mountains is either a bad joke or reflects their falling prey to the archivist's syndrome: falling in love with footage per se, rather than cinema. Yes, CT has second unit footage of Flynn wandering around Vegas and driving around too, but as his narration talks of him winning $200,000 at the casinos, all the relevant scenes INSIDE a gaming palace are missing - CT having apparently not shot them.

His series of attempts to prove his manhood fail, with scrounger pal Carlos (the auteur) inveigling his way into Peter's confidence, to get money from him and procure girls. Nadir of their bromance comes when Tobalina actually homosexually seduces our hero, staged in shadow-play and left off screen, but embarrassing nonetheless when both men are shown zipping up their pants afterward. Of course, Peter's peter remained limp, but perhaps a butt-f*ck from the director was a possible solution to his lack of sex problem.

Full frontal nudity of actresses is the film's draw, if one were able to travel back in time to 1969 and watch it in a cinema, but CT completely wastes the great star (not starlet as Vinegar schmoes call her) Marsha Jordan in a brief role as Peter's abandoned wife. If one wants genuinely nice scenery and full-fledged major roles for Marsha shot a year later merely watch Don Davis's films "Marsha the Erotic Housewife" and the underwhelming "The Golden Box".

Along the way, CT jumps on the bandwagon of attempting to portray the hippie phenomenon on film. He has a nightclub scene that is far from that goal, depicting folks doing the frug to a house band not synced properly to the soundtrack playing Hugh Masekela's decidedly not hippie hit "Grazing in the Grass". The intrepid duo later go to a park and get some documentary footage of folks hanging out, not interesting at all as a period artifact, but apparently justifying CT's opening credits boast of "1000 extras" on screen.

An idiotic subplot involving a kidnapped girl used to lure moneybags Peter to get mugged and tortured by two crooks reveals Tobalina's inability to make hay of the exploitation genre pioneered by H.G. Lewis. We get some stupid gore (the girl's intestines being waved around) and completely inept action footage of Peter killing the baddies. As with Vegas, all the crucial scenes of police follow-up and our hero's exoneration are missing, with quick narration substituted.

Though a nubile model finally gives him a hard-on, Peter finally finds meaning in life by sublimating as an artist, though his work as shown here is crap. But this merely reflects the crap that our artist in residence Carlos Tobalina cranked out over a 20-year porn career.

Carlos Torbalina (Troy Benny) is credited with a large number of hardcore films over the course of his film career, but this venture into the softcore realm leaves the viewer wondering "why...just why??"

The FEEL of the film is that of the regular grindhouse quickies of the 60's and early 70's...yet done with better equipment. Dialog that doesn't quite fit the on-screen activity...a narrated majority of the footage...the overly-worn out "middle aged guy can't get satisfaction" plot.

The only reason this film gets two stars from me is because breasts come in pairs and there's enough bare ones to satisfy a mildly prurient mind. The girls are attractive, the sex scenes are terrible. It's softcore and the fact is not lost on the disconnected body angles and over-dubbed sounds of "passion."

I've had this in my media library for a while now and after finally viewing it, I'm getting rid of it.