American Stag

Film will be opening April 1 at the Orlando Film festival. The comedy short "Who Makes Movies?" by Christopher Luccy starring Tom Konkle will screen prior to the premier. the film has apparently had a few snags getting a premiere but, finally gets its due.

The short film, Who Makes Movies? scheduled to screen just prior is largely improvised by Konkle as Randy Palmer is a perfect fit for American Stag as an opener. The short is done in the style of the comedy of Ricky Gervaise and Christopher Guest as a portrait of one man's dealings with the pirating of and working in the adult entertainment industry. Some of the stars of American Stag are slated to appear at the opening of the film that weekend. That film is a feature length documentary that is comic and a serious study of one of the largest collection of stag films and the history of the genre.

This is quite an interesting look at the what were referred as stag films mostly made during what was considered The Golden Age of Hollywood. Of course, these silent, one-reelers, were made outside of the system of the time and before VHS, DVD, and the internet exploded. Interesting commentary from the likes of Tommy Chong and Adam Carolla as well as others. While there's some sex scenes, whenever a woman is about to get a man's penis out, the film cuts to avoid an NC-17 as I found out in the commentary track. One of the clips is of a notorious cartoon called Eveready Hardon in Buried Treasure which I reviewed on this site several years ago. Supposedly there are clips of Joan Crawford, Barbra Streisand, and Marilyn Monroe in these films but the commentary track contradicts that. Anyway, on that note, I recommend American Stag.

Writer-Director, Benjamin Meade presented this movie at the Kansas Internation Film Festival on Sep 20, 2006 in Kansas City. He had a Q&A afterward.

This movie really isn't an explicit or hardcore exploration of stag films but actually a very interesting movie tracking the history of the stag films. While lots of 1 minute or so clips of the stag films were shown nothing explicit. There were several film historians who covered when stag film first appeared, who filmed them and how they were distributed. There were a couple of guys that actually drove around showing the films to stag parties back in the 30s and 40s. Several of their stories were absolutely wild (like how to avoid the law during the parties).

The celebrity guests such as Tommy Chong and Adam Carolla talked about their first experience watching the films which was pretty cool.

All in all not sleazy at all. While lots of clips were shown nothing explicit. The films of actually stag parties (with the beer drinking, smoking and the little super-8 projector grinding away) were great.

Good film off the beaten track. Find it and rent it.

In bygone days, there were those who swore they read PLAYBOY magazine "only for the articles." This documentary feature would appear to have been made entirely for, and by, those people.

Imagine, if you will, the worst possible movie-going experience: watching really bad old porno movies just for the plots. Then make it even more excruciating by presenting only ancient "stag" films, badly photographed in black-and-white, silent, and so deteriorated that one must surmise rather than see most of what's going on.

And then, just to crown the absurdity with insult, carefully expurgate all the actual sex from these movies. And try to make a documentary with the remainder.

Learned pundits (like, um, Adam Carolla) talk about the first "stag" films they saw, or about the Role of Women In Early Porn, but really there's little to say about these sad fragments. We see a couple riding in a '20s jalopy, and then they get out. CUT! A woman goes to the doctor's office (I think), steps inside and begins to undress. CUT! So we are left with a film ABOUT old sex films, comprised OF old sex films, with all the actual sex removed. It's a bizarre and surreal concept, but unfortunately not one entertaining enough to sustain even a documentary as brief as this one.

In today's world of universally available, explicit sex films, filmed in Super Widescreen Hi-Def Million-Color GynoScope with Gooshy Noises In Six-Channel Sound, it might well have been interesting to look back at the era before PLAYBOY, PLAYGIRL and widely available sex education, to see firsthand what was considered erotic. Certainly these quaint and ancient archives are the last place one would need to go to look for any sort of erotic stimulation, and, unfortunately, this film is also the last place one should go to look for any vestige of either entertainment or enlightenment.