Sweet Cheeks

Not all is golden in porn's Golden Age. "Sweet Cheeks", a 1980 film release that IMDb mis-classifies as "1982" based on its foreign bookings, is watchable but a poorly-acted non-starter.

Becky Smith as Regina is established via a doctor's voice-over, as a lady with only 3 months to live, and we see her dreams illustrated in an hour-plus yawner of filler, mainly shot MOS.

We see her masturbating, inter-cut with a money shot by John Holmes, and next visit a recording studio where a band is playing a tribute to her. What follows is similar to a loop carrier, as snippets of scenes unfold pointlessly, merely to inject XXX content. Whether on a yacht with Mike Ranger, visiting a Figure 8 racetrack, a threesome covered in black auto grease, dune-buggying in the desert, sky-diving, or on the receiving end of a fantasy leather-clad lady's strap-on dildo, Savage is attractive but lost in pointlessness.

I suspect the influence of Fellini, who in both soft-core and hard-core porn eras had an unacknowledged impact on loose film structure, is at work here, but director Joseph Robertson, at one time an associate of Ed Wood's, is not up to the task of presenting his footage in a cogent fashion.

A romantic outdoor bubble bath with Randy West is merely silly, as she applies nail polish to him and he dresses up in a maid's outfit. Perhaps the Ed Wood influence was at work here. She puts a collar on him and rides West like a pony, typical bondage lite role-playing.

The expected soap operatics do not occur, and bringing Holmes back into the action from time to time doesn't help either. This was a theatrical release but I'm sure fans were either bored or bewildered by it.