These Pleasures Condemned

As the new wave of hardcore filmmaking was rampaging through grindhouses and other exploitation venues in the early '70s, a number of interesting films arose grappling with the trend. Long unavailable, John Hayes' THESE PLEASURES CONDEMNED marks an interesting (if unpolished) diamond in the rough, attempting to address then-current issues like the Report of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography while generally choosing to do so in the loudest and most obnoxious manner possible.

The farrago of a plot concerns Dr. John Clifford, tapped to lead a government inquest (the film refers to his panel as the President's Committee, rather than Commission) into the most egregious excesses of the sexual revolution. Following a credits sequence over a montage of historical photos of fascists, the film joins Dr. John ducking into his bookshop headquarters off what looks like Santa Monica Blvd., where his stern former psychology professor (Marsha Jordan) is waiting to mete out punishment for his leading a study on, as she puts it, "smut." Mere minutes in and the audience is already confused, with too much information presented too quickly - it's unclear whether John is for or against the Committee, or, for that matter, pornography.

Things get even more confusing as John's associate shows up, dashing out of a car pants-less while being pelted with vegetables by a couple young ladies he appears to have sexually wronged - his crime left a mystery by the shredded print. Dashing inside, he gets sucked into an orgy with a quartet of John's college students, who bring along a camera and invite the professor to film them as part of his research - sure to yield valuable experiential data. Somehow, John and his friend end up making nice with the two women outside, and each takes one as his de facto partner for the rest of the film.

Further exploits involve John and his cohort's explorations into the realm of sexual liberation, followed by a delivery of the final report that runs off the rails when John's new squeeze provokes him into a frenzy by disrobing in the background. Driven to the brink of madness, John is carted off by the authorities, though his new consorts come to the rescue, leading to a bizarre shootout/orgy in an abandoned ghost town. Absolutely insane climax finds John, now completely off the deep end and having adopted the role of censor, ranting into the camera in the manner of a fire-and-brimstone preacher about how he's coming to get all the pornographers and perverts who may be watching, while the rest of the cast sits off to the side quietly singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic. In an astonishing meta touch, the film intercuts long sections of A FREE RIDE (aka A GRASS SANDWICH), thought to be the earliest known American stag film, suggesting that as "modern" a problem as pornography may seem (at least ca. The early '70s), it's actually a tale as old as time and not going anywhere.

The result is a fascinating film that screams to have a college term paper (or, heck, even thesis) written about it, while also frequently becoming so confusing and irritating it's hard to watch. It's difficult to sus out how much of this is due to shoddy craftsmanship and how much print damage, as the copy used by Alpha Blue Archives features some major and often disorienting jumps (not to look a gift horse in the mouth - I'm glad we have it at all!). Hayes' was an erratic career that spanned highs, lows, and middles, and this is one more distinctive data point. In many ways, it's one of the director's most interesting films - you just have to put up with a lot of screaming and confusion to get anything out of it.