DOOGAN'S WOMAN is a scheming no-goodnik (played by lovely Susan McBain), who spells trouble for our photographer hero. This very minor but entertaining opus has been reissued by VCX and also on Vol. 119 of Something Weird's Dragon Art Theatre series.
Opening is unusual, set in Spain with Spanish dialog, subtitled in the VCX edition but given silent inter-titles as translation in the SWV version. It's a sensual sex scene of shutterbug Ricky (played flatly by Tony Richards) serviced by a lovely senorita with lots of religious imagery and sensual classical guitar.
He's called back to L.A. by a fashion mag publisher Doogan anxious to have Rick do a high-class photo shoot. After servicing Doogan, Sue (as Annette, Doogan's assistant) teases Rick and then falsely tells Doogan he assaulted her, losing him his gig and getting him blackballed to boot.
Rick is reduced to shooting porn layouts, with a classic scene of Eric Edwards and Sharon Mitchell making love in a bathtub filled with spaghetti and marinara sauce. In this odd but effective sequence, director Richard Mailer achieves a commendable balance of humor and sexiness, which the rest of the film has trouble living up to.
Fortunately McBain is a delight, and with a stronger leading man cast this could have been a great one. As it is, it is good, functional porn, leading to Sue's comeuppance as Rick and Edwards get back at her in a d.p. "sandwich time" scene.
The liner notes on the SWV video box have the mindless shill extolling the film's production values, but this is a real cheapie -some people are very easily impressed. Ironically, these notes written for its VHS release were later shamelessly plagiarized for the DVD release by VCX!
The VCX runs four minutes longer than SWV, and my A/B comparison of the two prints showed trimming of several sex scenes, most notably the omission of many tight closeup sex shots (gynecological division) in SWV's version, as well as omission of some of the cross-cutting back to the initial sex in Spain scene. There's no logic to the differences in the prints, as for example the SWV has a longer version of the spaghetti scene -go figure.
