Rudolph Valentino

Ken Russell chimed in with his strange and vastly underrated biopic VALENTINO in 1977 and 20 years later Joe D'Amato made RUDY, a similar but rather lame-brained take on the World's Greatest Lover.

Russell's casting of Rudolf Nureyev as Rudolph Valentino was controversial, frowned upon by the critics of the time, but an interesting way of studying ambiguous issues of masculinity, a favorite Russellian theme. I was privileged to see VALENTINO several times in 35mm, both in widescreen Panavision format and later in a conventional 1: 1.85 ratio, and its production values were outstanding.

D'Amato had decent enough values for porn, and an English-track (articulated in English but with variable post-synch however) original to boot. But his title figure is seriously miscast, using big-dicked Hakan Serbes as a broken-nosed version of Valentino. Russell and D'Amato cross paths in the kitsch department.

Crystal Breeze, one of porn's true beauties but having put on unbecoming weight here, appears in a non-sex role flirting with Rudy in the first scene after he has sex with a short-haired pixie. Dancing is clumsily staged and a hasty knife fight is very poorly directed by D'Amato.

Rudy's next waiting for a gardening job but turned away as none are available. The sign says "Unemployment Office", but it should have read Employment Office, a typical goof, as this is where guys are gathering to get hired, not register for government benefits (which of course hadn't been invented yet, this being the 1910s).

A nice guy Tim Grant hires him as gardener and lodger, but Rudy humps not only Grant's wife Gloria (styled as a Southern belle) but his beautiful young daughter Sally (Roxanne Hall, an anal sweetheart of many a D'Amato opus).

He's next hired as a gigolo-styled dancer, to "lead on" & "make them dream" regarding old ladies. He's paid in dollar bills, and another goof: they're modern Silver Certificates, not the good old currency of the early 20th Century.

Movie star Alice Lang (well-played by Kaitlyn Ashley in her post-breast-enlargement phase) is impressed with Rudy's dancing and asks him to audition for her new film. D'Amato uses very poorly matched doubles (their faces obscured) for Kaitlyn & Hakan's dance sequence here -incompetent.

Rudy gets the job and the movie's directed, only slightly confusingly by the porn actor named Valentino. The tall make-up lady Allison is Rudy's next conquest, and fans dig his appearance opposite Alice in the finished film FATAL TANGO.

He appears opposite her as the sheik in his breakthrough movie THE EAGLE OF THE SANDS, and D'Amato features some brief horseback riding on the beach, not a budget-buster, but nice stuff for porn. Kaitlyn is dressed in an ill-fitting suit which has the widest shoulder pads I've ever seen -this is the low point of kitsch here.

A brunette journalist arrives on location, and Alice is very jealous when she sees Rudy servicing her in his tent. At a hotel, Rudy and Valentino (the porn actor -see, it is confusing) have a foursome with two groupies which was the highlight of the movie for me. Their double penetration of the fabulously busty Heather Lee is worth the price of admission.

Guy Di Silva pops up as a rival producer, yielding some mixed combo action, but we're soon back with Hakan dominating the sex content for a Morgan the Pirate movie. Hilariously inept script has such clunky dialog as "What does she see? Not filthy, drunken filibusters, stinking of rum. But the charming smile of Morgan." I guess D'Amato and his idiotic scenarist "Robert Lyon" can't really figure out the meaning of a "filibuster"; Buster sounds like a guy.

After humping his new leading lady, tall Mitzi, Rudy is finally reunited with Alice by public demand, co-starring in a new movie. At long last they consummate their romance, with Kaitlyn going anal, definitely a happy ending for her fans. Our overworked Hakan has delivered nine ejaculations - anything for his art.

And that pretty much sums up Rudy -hardly the "real" film D'Amato should have made, but rather an excuse for maximum XXX content.

Rudy, the Valentino Story (1997)

** (out of 4)

Good production values are the highlight of this D'Amato porn flick that shows "Rudolph Valentino as a great lover. We see him being used by various women before one finally gets him into the movies and it leads to a predictable ending where they finally meet (in bed of course). These D'Amato porn titles have always been rather frustrating to me as I slowly make my way through them. One on hand, most of them feature pretty good cinematography as well as other hints of goodness but things are usually ruined by the porn. Some will be asking what I expect since this is a porn movie afterall but you can tell that the adult scenes is where the director loses interest. This is a pretty well made film that has a couple decent performances, some great camera work and even better production values. At some parts the sex scenes are so spread out that you actually forget you're watching a porn. With that said, when the sex scenes do show up it feels like a completely different film as the "effort", so to speak, is just out of the way in terms of direction.