Man & Wife: An Educational Film for Married Adults

MAN & WIFE occupies a very trivial film history footnote as the well-timed first XXX film to score at the nation's theaters. It's a thoroughly insulting, ineptly made fake documentary, merely proving once again the importance of timing.

Hack director Matt Cimber put very little effort into the shooting, which looks like a maybe $3000 production (not the $86,000 estimated cost stored unreliably in IMDb). Obviously it turned a handsome profit, exploiting a porn-starved public.

Exploitation is the key word; no longer considered derogatory by young fans who now revere "sexploitation", "nunsploitation", "blaxploitation" and the like, it actually refers to defrauding the fans. The old-style hucksters had their Birth of a Baby and other forbidden fruit to peddle on a roadshow basis; Cimber promises explicit sex under the guise of an educational marriage manual.

Over the course of an incredibly tedious 65 minutes running time, one gets about 1/2 a minute of hardcore sex footage: a closeup of a girl riding a guy, his merely semi-erect cock having trouble maintaining penetration with her gyrations. That's it, brother.

Opening ten minutes is a very crudely shot scene of the post-synched host droning on with plenty of impenetrable technical jargon about the importance of varying positions to keep a marriage fresh. He trots out diagrams of the male & female anatomy, and then it's on to two couples demonstrating sexual positions ad infinitum.

They're filmed on a cheap bed set, with harpsichord music introing each of 11 segments like "Face to Face, Woman Supine" or "Rear Entry, Woman Prone". Sex footage is silent and sleep inducing, as the couple simulate coitus with grinding motions, as mechanical as any softcore filler. Voice-over narration keeps stressing marriage (they were evidently afraid of censorship) and gives the usual description of depth of penetration. That is, if we weren't watching dry humping, often revealed by telltale closeups where the guy's cock is clearly tucked away, no where near its destination.

The 1/2 minute of real-deal porn features a busty blonde who keeps her face hidden by her bangs (in need of a Vidal Sassoon trim), evidently trying to protect her identity. Her mate briefly shows his quite long Johnson, but it's flaccid, again destroying the illusion of real intercourse going on.

First couple features a beautiful brunette, who simulates enjoyment during sex, vaguely resembling Suzanne Fields (it isn't her, however). Similarly, her mate is a familiar looking performer, most closely resembling to my eye Buddy Boone, star of the SAM DOBBS porn series.

IMDb lists three phony European names for the cast, evidently cribbed from some foreign release of the picture. As is usual with a white-coater, there are no credits displayed on screen.

With split-beaver closeups and the attractive femmes, I suppose MAN & WIFE delivered a modicum of entertainment as the only game in town for porn way back when stag films shown at frat houses or Elks Lodges were all that was available. But it's an intentional cheat, and another sorry legacy from the career of a charlatan.