Casey-52

This oddity feels like two movies smashed into one, an unfinished softcore film with Kim Pope, Linda Southern, and Larry Hunter, shot circa 1970, and hardcore scenes or loops shot with Cindy West years later. On-screen narrator C. Davis Smith (who might have even shot some of this or at least edited it for the mystery producer) binds it all together somehow as a "case study" of two women suffering from nymphomania. None of it is satisfying and is, of course, made worse by the added contemporary score from After Hours Cinema. I'd love to know what the Pope footage was shot for, as there are some intriguing moments of her standing on NYC streets with a giant paper flower before she's picked up by Hunter, responding to her ad in an underground newspaper.

You have to really love Billy Lane to get through this, as he's the only male cast member and appears in every scene (sometimes offering no money shot because, well, 7 money shots in one day isn't exactly a reasonable request). Thankfully, I do like Billy quite a bit, and consider him quite the unsung stud from early 1970s LA adult film. He's introduced as your average Joe married man, with Orita de Chadwick as his wife offering him a very special breakfast to start the day. The two discuss his "new truck", and we soon learn he's essentially a door-to-door male prostitute, driving around town in a tricked-out van, complete with a wood-paneled bedroom in the back (obviously a set in a studio). The sameness of location can be wearying, but Billy's up to the task, delivering solidly in almost every scene, though it also becomes clear that he's getting tired in a few of them. Annette Michael is a dominant older woman client who refuses to let him orgasm (letting Billy off the hook for another money shot) and Nancy Martin is a romantic client who likes being showered with verbal affection during sex. Another unidentified actress is memorable as an overbearing verbal dynamo into anal sex.

Nothing in the film actually ties in to its title inspiration, FIVE EASY PIECES (1970), which is fine. There are some good musical choices during the sex scenes and a few intriguing technical moments (several crane shots and slow-motion). Altogether might've been worthy of some historical interest, but it just falls short, feeling too repetitive to make that much of an impression.

Producer Daniel Cady and cinematographer/director Henning Schellerup, collaborators on the popular LITTLE GIRLS BLUE series, tackle another coming-of-age story with mediocre results. Woefully miscast somnambulist Melanie Scott is the titular character, a sports nut who begins to explore her budding sexuality with the guys she plays football with. Tom Byron, looking as young and twinkish as I've ever seen him, and Steve Douglas, a switch hitter who was in Toby Ross' THE LAST SURFER and THE PRIVATE PLEASURES OF JOHN C. HOLMES the same year he did this film, are the boys in question. Marc Wallice is Scott's brother, who finds romance with the appropriately named "Mrs. Robinson", an older woman played with expected finesse by Kay Parker.

The whole movie is stolen by the marvelous Laurien Wilde, who graduated from this to a killer role in ALEXANDRA before perishing at a too-young age in a car accident just as her star was taking off. If Cady & Co. Had cast Wilde in the title role instead, this would have made for a much better film, though we also wouldn't have been gifted the opportunity to see Wilde in action in the first two sex scenes as we do here. She vanishes from the film after her van encounter with Klaus Multia, and the movie suffers greatly for it. Karen Summer appears in a very early role (with backdoor queen Rose Marie) in a visually stylish lesbian dream sequence, and she would also have been a more than capable leading lady. She would soon prove herself with the films she made with Kirdy Stevens (TABOO IV, PLAYING WITH FIRE, THE ANIMAL IN ME).

In summary: not worth your time, even for Wilde.