Carlos Tobalina apparently achieved his career dream with CHAMPAGNE ORGY, one part ego trip, mixed liberally with a deadly dull "real" orgy. Result is tortuous movie-going, or as Malcolm McDowell might have said to Kubrick: "get the toothpicks ready to keep my eyes wide open!".
Picture opens with Tobalina as producer in a set depicting a math class calling it a wrap on a fictitious movie titled "Charlie & Harry" starring prematurely grey actor "Joe Elliott". He invites the whole cast to a champagne party at a rented place; we've previously seen "highlights" of the orgy (including humping on the distinctively huge checkerboard black & white designed tile floor) as pre-credits tease.
Dorothy LeMay is a student in the few seconds ending the "Charlie & Harry" shoot, and she says she can't go to the party -exits this film entirely (the briefest of cameos) but through the power of false advertising retains star billing for the purpose of marketing CHAMPAGNE ORGY.
Basically 48 minutes of the 77-minute feature consist of the orgy, advertised as "wall-to-wall sex", "no rehearsals", "real sex". If it sounds like Carlos invented gonzo cinema as we know it in the 21st Century, perhaps he deserves the (dis)credit.
Thinnest of plot-lines concerns a girl who shows up to be waitress for the evening, comically asked the usual "take your clothes off" questions by producer Tobalina, who mistakes her for an aspiring "actress". For "acting" in this farrago, CT bills himself with his real name, but uses his alias "Troy Benny" as usual for directing credit. The girl gets the job, knocked down to $5 an hour, and spikes the champagne punch, apparently with an aphrodisiac. The subplot that she is a saboteur sent by one of Carlos's rival producers gets lost in the shuffle: although CT (the actor) protests against any sex at his party, he's actually pleased that an orgy erupts and gives the gal a bonus when it's all over.
The purported real "director" who works for CT (nonexistent since he in fact directs his own stuff) conspires with d.p. Fernando Fortes to set up cameras to document the orgy. Good thing, concludes CT later, because the shindig is costing him a bundle, and now he can recoup it by releasing the documentary movie of same - namely CHAMPAGNE ORGY.
This circular argument is indicative of the infra dig nature of this amateurish movie - merely another title on the assembly line to feed Tobalina's exhibition arm consisting of porn theaters. The actors, some of them relatively famous like Jon Martin, David Morris and Kitty Shane, ham it up. Cameraman Fortes horns in on the orgy at one point, making one wonder if the erstwhile "actor" (CT gave him the lead role in COME UNDER MY SPELL) forfeits his pay in cases where he's doled out free love as a perk like this ORGY feature. In any event the "hidden camera" gimmick is an excuse for poor, aloof photography relying mainly on master shots, and making the umpteen-ring circus of sex uninvolving.
At the end there's a sort of receiving line where CT in his garish '70s suit and floppy collar shirt shakes hands with all the survivors, most of them still unclothed, and accepts their congrats for throwing such a fine bash. One wonders if he would have dared pull such a "please thank me in person" stunt at his theaters greeting exiting customers who forked over the $5 (I'm guessing at the 1978 tariff) to see this mess.
