Gritty black & white visuals do something for this early Cosmos production. Title is misleading, since despite a credits shot at E. 69th St. & Madison Ave. in Manhattan the film takes place in Staten Island.
This moniker suggests those documentary style dramas of the '40s, like THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET, and there is an element of realism to the photography. But it's a sex film after all, set at a struggling-to-survive S.I. brothel.
A trio of women move into an old house to set up prostitution there, and 3 sailor boys are their first customers. The Warhol influence is apparent with improvised dialog, but mostly not confrontational enough to be dramatic.
Director Kemper Peacock, given a shot to make his own movie after editing many of Joe Sarno's films, delivers topless girls and plenty of bed groping, but there is no full frontal nudity despite the film having been made in 1969 when beaver shots were standard. There's plenty of talk about kinky stuff, including a big buildup to a naughty $1,000 special, supposedly offered for free. Unfortunately anything exotic is merely promised, but not shown.
Finale has 2 sailors make fun of their nerdy companion in a rather nasty put-down scene. It's not clear if the intention is to make the theater audience uncomfortable re: taunting. Ultimately the nerd Bill proves his mettle by humping the madam (Sylvia), and ends up giving her a diamond ring. This almost-romantic (but coolly directed) payoff nearly moves the porn into the category of a real film, but not quite.
Basically this hour of porn boils down to just two sequences: (1) Girls moving in; and (2) Sailors as customers. But that's a heck of a lot more entertainment than the incredibly boring full-color Cosmos movies released in the year that followed.
The color films were reissued by Something Weird as "softie" two-fer DVD-Rs, while 69TH STREET is buried as an extra (with "The Hookers") on one of the label's Image Entertainment special edition DVD two (or three)-fers.
