Mary Flegus, Mary Flegus

In the late 1970's and the 1980's porn makers made a spoof of every movie and every TV-series ever made. Even some musicals were spoofed! With only very few exceptions these spoofs really failed. Usually they just took the characters from the original and the characters had sex. The atmosphere, the storyline, the essence of the movie spoofed was absolutely gone. The first ten to twenty minutes were often surprising, but then one porn scene after the other made the spoofs incredibly boring. One of the best examples of this is "Alice in Wonderland", made in 1976 with Kristine deBell as Alice.

This is a comparable spoof. The makers took the TV-series "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and turned it into hardcore. Now the original TV-series is one of the best of all absurd series ever made in the USA. Louise Lasser is Mary Hartman and she happens to be stupid and intelligent at the same time. The series was not to everybody's taste, but like "Soap" it was a bit of genius.

This spoof is not as bad as most others. Mary Flegus is played by Victoria Corsaut, wearing a wig just like Louise Lasser's in the TV-series. Some of the conversations are quite absurd and rather like in the TV-series. Most however are not as absurd and amusing. A rather strange atmosphere is created, the makers succeeded there. However the hardcore does actually not fit in. Who wants to see Louise Lasser in bed? She has the erotic radiance of a radish. And so does Mary Flegus. The first sex scene is of a man pumping a woman. But she is not interested in his bonking at all. As a spoof this is OK, but who wants to watch this? Those who love the original series and serious movie lovers are offended by the sex and those who love porn are offended by the cold woman who is not even pretending to amuse herself while in the sack. And actually that is what's wrong with this movie: it is not appealing to anyone.

Still some jokes do work and Victoria Corsaut is not a bad Mary Hartman impersonator. That is why I rate this 5 out of 10. The version I saw was made in 1984 and distributed on VHS by Masterpiece Distributors. Well, it was far from a masterpiece. The quality of the pictures was poor and the sound was very poor indeed. But maybe a restored DVD-version is around nowadays.