Sex Freaks

John Lamb, whose MERMAIDS OF TIBURON has been a favorite film of mine forever, showed his peers how it's done with SEX FREAKS, an encyclopedic documentary of sexuality. Unlike the numerous and generally boring white coaters made (and which grossed big bucks due to their novelty value) at the outset of the '70s, this latecomer in the cycle is fast-paced and consistently entertaining.

Theme is "we are all sex freaks", typical of the simple-minded "everything is everything" approach we recall from the Flower Power era. Lamb catalogs all sorts of sexual behavior from masturbation to gerontophilia (his term, not mine), cleverly recycling old footage to pad the running time. But it is worthwhile vault material, including several segments from the Suzanne Fields b&d classic "Niccole" plus Lamb's trademark underwater photography from his film "Zodiac Rapist".

Probably the oddest segment is Rick/Jim Cassidy starring in an explicit homosexual trailer from the 1972 film "A Deep Compassion", which gives a window to the romantic/violent gay porn, for straight fans. Other segments include the travelogue material (a la Nick Millard's films of this period) in Germany and even a bullfight in Spain.

But it is the explicit sex that counts here, including a lengthy segment involving a busty beauty who appears to be from India, tormented by obscene phone caller Victor Alexander.

Photography, editing and other credits are pro all the way in this XXX winner. It's accompanied on its DVD edition by a terrific short film Lamb made in 3-D in 1977 called "Experiments in Love" (latterly added to IMDb) which has two spectacularly well-built and beautiful pin-up models in a sci-fi setting demonstrating how to properly film gimmicks in 3-D, and serviced softcore style by Mike Ranger early in his career.

I'm sure the makers of "Sex Freaks" desperately wanted to believe themselves that they were working on an educational documentary, but it's abundantly clear that the only real intention of M.C. Von Hellen was to show explicit and gratuitous pornography in whatever format or context. The film supposedly enlightens us about all possible sort of deviant and nonstandard sexual preferences going from harmless and individual (masturbation, doll-fetishes, ...) over to playful with consent (sex tourism, role plays, sex in public places, group orgies, ...) towards obscene and downright harmful to others (voyeurism, S/M, rape, ...). But whatever the taboo subject or fetish is, it always comes down to the close-up depiction of male and female genitalia, fellatio and penetration. I don't mind, of course, but it's really funny how the stern male voiceover tries to sound wise and explanatory while it's basically just a series of dirty movie clips. Well, I'm not too ashamed to admit that I regularly watch pornography - alone as well as together with my wife - and I always find it a relief to find "real" men and women in the films of the seventies and eighties. With that, I specifically refer to girls with natural curves and breasts in normal proportions, opposed to the fake plastic and fully shaven women that reign the adult industry nowadays.

Too bad, however, that the "documentary" somewhat feeds the loathsome so-called rape-fantasies and doesn't make a harsher statement against degenerating behavior towards women. "Girls dressed in skimpy outfits are begging for it" and "Go along with the assailant and give him what he wants" are not exactly the correct messages to pass on to a largely male-orientated audience.