P

Among the more disgusting films resurrected by Something Weird, duly issued on Vol. 38 of its Dragon Art Theatre series, simply titled P should have had a warning label, the way that rival distrib Alpha Blue Archives quarantines its movies about rape, bondage, fisting, etc. Unsuspecting general-purpose porn fans are bound to be grossed out, as I was.

One-letter-title films are an intriguing bunch; besides the classics M and Z, I was a big fan of the forgotten Twiggy thriller W. P however was trying to cash in on the literary popularity of Story of O, and fails miserably, even though released before the Just Jaeckin film adaptation.

Title card has the letter P surrounded by plus-sign type symbols and in small type reads "by Tom", the only clue to the anonymous cretin who directed it. It falls generically into the sadistic genre, currently popular in endless Tarantino-inspired torture/porn junkers, but is way out there in terms of yucky content. This film is not about sex (though sex is its mode) but rather about mistreatment.

Opening shot is a tight closeup of our red-headed heroine fingering herself and moaning obscenities. She and her grandma (soon lost in the non-storyline with zero continuity of course) are homeless and she's seeking the comfort of strangers to get by. Of course, all they want to do is abuse her and they do in strange ways intended to divert a decadent, jaded, "show me something 'different'" audience that pornmakers seemed to cater to back when, judging from the selling angles you see in so many coming attractions. I guess the same-old/same-old rut of porn settled in quickly during the '60s/early '70s and the challenge was to come up with (or at least promise) thrills that were "different", in order to bamboozle a Pavlovian conditioned viewership.

Suffice it to say that the heroine, like a Pauline or Gwendoline of old, is mistreated by an old creep and his black servant in various ways leading to an outlandishly gross climax, where the servant misuses Col. Sanders' fried chicken most unappetizingly at her expense, but eats it anyway, along with a hard-boiled egg for symmetry's sake. Playing "Chain of Fools" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" on the soundtrack at this point is meant to be vaguely demeaning and it is. The bedraggled actress looks around in literal embarrassment during this low-point sequence. "Is this any way to make a living?" she must have been thinking.

I don't correlate pornography with violence, but I do postulate that the makers of trash like this particular "film" were perhaps victims of abuse growing up, as a likely source for their antagonism towards women and "acting out" problems in adulthood. At least the Marquis de Sade had a revolution to worry about.