International Gigolo

I'm sure Europe must have produced some quality pornography in the '70s and '80s, but judging by what American audiences were subject to as dubbed imports, it sure doesn't seem like much made its way to Yankee shores. CALL GIRL is one such example, a poorly dubbed bastardization of a confusing prostitution romp riddled with ridiculous digressions.

Ghost of a plot finds a young woman trying to sell herself on the streets of Paris (I assume it's Paris - it's a city and all the signs are in French). She's soon placed under arrest by a vice cop (French porno mainstay Richard Allan), who wastes no time taking for free what he should rightfully be paying for. Deciding to help out the lady (after, you know, raping her), he fobs her off on his pimp twin brother Lucifer (also Allan), who slots her into his roster of high-class call girls. If the film is trying to make some larger point by having the crime-king villain and head of the vice squad be literally the same person, it's totally undeveloped, and any potential for higher-level social commentary left on the table.

So, for that matter, is the ostensible storyline, with the film quickly becoming dominated by another girl in Lucifer's roster, Marilyn (Olinka Hardiman, credited here as Marilyn Lamour). A popular French sex performer who built her career around a supposed likeness to Marilyn Monroe, Hardiman milks that for all it's worth, appearing here dolled up like her muse and doing ridiculous dances where she raises her skirt, seemingly attempting to evoke the famous dress scene from SEVEN-YEAR ITCH. As stupid as these scenes are, they nevertheless contain the film's few moments of genuine sublimity, if you're willing to abandon all reason and give in to the film's utterly empty-headed stupidity. The rest of the plot is retconned in in the last reel, with kidnappers showing up and Marilyn and a john having to make their escape. No word on what ever happened with the lady from the beginning...

This film is an absolute mess, and not least because, like a lot of Euro-porn from this period, it seems to have been generated off-the-cuff in an absolutely mad cocaine frenzy. Hardiman is pretty, I guess - certainly enough to merit her career success - while Allan is sleaze personified, embodying the absolute worst of the yuppie-hipster crossovers 30 years early with his giant beard and hair pulled back in a sad, greasy little ponytail-manbun. His demonstrated oral technique is a thematically consistent disaster.

As for who we blame for this thing, director Andrei Feher is of Romanian extraction, though fled his homeland to make pornography in Sweden and France. I assume that explains the film's current designation as Swedish, despite the entire cast and all locations appearing to be French. To make matters more confusing, "Feher" apparently means "white" in Hungarian, both explaining the director's credit, "Andrew Whyte," as well as the cinematographer, "A. Bianchi" - surely bound to foster Internet rumors this was lensed by the director of the BURIAL GROUND! Nope. This is Feher's folly all the way, and like the poor '80s audiences suckered into seeing this thing, we're just enduring it.