Screwball, anything-goes porn comedy
Kemal Horulu's THE SEXUALIST is more akin to those mainstream Hollywood nutso movies like SKIDOO and HIERONYMUS MERKIN than typical porn, and will appeal mainly to people who are open-minded about what is funny. I found it silly, and cheating in the XXX department.
In fact, though she's buried near the bottom of the cast list (and not due to alpha order), Tina Russell is really the porn star of the movie, delivering actual hardcore footage in tandem with her hubby Jason. She doesn't get any lines or character to play, just the film's true raison d'etre -it's porn after all.
Star is of course Jennifer Welles, just before she decided to go "all the way" and handle XXX scenes herself. In SEXUALIST she is a lesbian actress, tired of toiling in director Dale T. Fuller's pretentious porn movies, and just about to be shoved aside, ALL ABOUT EVE-style, by newcomer Shana O'Neal, fresh in Manhattan from the Long Island.
Welles, of course, befriends O'Neal and gets her a break into show biz, only to be superseded by her. Plenty of entertainment industry clichés are mocked here, but Horulu is more interested in slapstick and outright farce than real comedy.
Chief pratfaller is Jon Oppenheim as the Godfather, Fuller's backer who is obviously a Mafia type, in fact oddly similar to Burt Young, who at this stage of his career was already making waves in movies, after his inauspicious start in the drive-in horror staple from NYC pornographer Leonard Kirtman, CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. Goofiest scene has Oppenheim literally taking it in the ass (softcore, thank God) from a horny ape who prefers his derrière to Welles' impressive frontage.
Besides this comical bestiality angle, Horulu spoofs drag queens, in a segment explicitly aimed at Warhol's stable of trannie Superstars, and mocks the popular mixed combo sex fetish. In that area he missteps terribly, having Welles spout out & out racist epithets as she criticizes her black leading man who can't get it up on camera with: "You spades are..." and the like. Even taken as a period piece from the early '70s, I had a lot of trouble finding the humor in that garbage.
Perhaps the greatest failing of SEXUALIST is the film's own identity crisis. Not only is it softcore with just the briefest dollop of Tina Russell hardcore added, much of the film plays listlessly as a white coater. With the narrator solemnly intoning astrological mumbo jumbo, we are treated to various performers, including the Russells, demonstrating the ideal sexual positions ascribed to various signs of the zodiac. Total crap.
Main comedy content revolves around Fuller's idiotic attempt to create art out of porn content. His silly pronouncements and even dumber stagings are too true to be funny -even now many fakirs like Gaspar Noe are perpetrating the same nonsense on unwary filmgoers, and getting away with it.
In fact, though she's buried near the bottom of the cast list (and not due to alpha order), Tina Russell is really the porn star of the movie, delivering actual hardcore footage in tandem with her hubby Jason. She doesn't get any lines or character to play, just the film's true raison d'etre -it's porn after all.
Star is of course Jennifer Welles, just before she decided to go "all the way" and handle XXX scenes herself. In SEXUALIST she is a lesbian actress, tired of toiling in director Dale T. Fuller's pretentious porn movies, and just about to be shoved aside, ALL ABOUT EVE-style, by newcomer Shana O'Neal, fresh in Manhattan from the Long Island.
Welles, of course, befriends O'Neal and gets her a break into show biz, only to be superseded by her. Plenty of entertainment industry clichés are mocked here, but Horulu is more interested in slapstick and outright farce than real comedy.
Chief pratfaller is Jon Oppenheim as the Godfather, Fuller's backer who is obviously a Mafia type, in fact oddly similar to Burt Young, who at this stage of his career was already making waves in movies, after his inauspicious start in the drive-in horror staple from NYC pornographer Leonard Kirtman, CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. Goofiest scene has Oppenheim literally taking it in the ass (softcore, thank God) from a horny ape who prefers his derrière to Welles' impressive frontage.
Besides this comical bestiality angle, Horulu spoofs drag queens, in a segment explicitly aimed at Warhol's stable of trannie Superstars, and mocks the popular mixed combo sex fetish. In that area he missteps terribly, having Welles spout out & out racist epithets as she criticizes her black leading man who can't get it up on camera with: "You spades are..." and the like. Even taken as a period piece from the early '70s, I had a lot of trouble finding the humor in that garbage.
Perhaps the greatest failing of SEXUALIST is the film's own identity crisis. Not only is it softcore with just the briefest dollop of Tina Russell hardcore added, much of the film plays listlessly as a white coater. With the narrator solemnly intoning astrological mumbo jumbo, we are treated to various performers, including the Russells, demonstrating the ideal sexual positions ascribed to various signs of the zodiac. Total crap.
Main comedy content revolves around Fuller's idiotic attempt to create art out of porn content. His silly pronouncements and even dumber stagings are too true to be funny -even now many fakirs like Gaspar Noe are perpetrating the same nonsense on unwary filmgoers, and getting away with it.
- lor_
- 21 feb 2011