Cheating American Style

This takeoff on "Love -American Style" has director Paul Thomas delivering a low-low budget sitcom that's strictly unfunny. It contrasts badly with the decent (to big) budget Vivid features he's best known for making years later.

Rickety structure has groom to be Jerry Butler in a park, fazed by his best man telling him that the lovely bride (April West) had sex with him on an elevator (we get to see that later in a flashback). Jerry wanders around aimlessly in the park, suddenly befriended by a bum played by director Paul Thomas.

The bum regales him with tales of cheating, trying to cheer Jerry up, so we watch boring but brief sex vignettes, simulating the nonsense of the TV sitcom. Ultimately the bum convinces Jerry to ignore April's cheating and marry her anyway. Confusing matters, the supporting actors play multiple roles.

I watched a watered-down (softcore angles, no money shots) version created for cable-tv use that ran about 10 minutes shorter than the XXX version. Either way, the tons of dialogue and static "home movie" stagings are very poor, sort of a 1988 version of the one-day wonder porn made about 20 years earlier. It's so cheap looking one assumes that a nearly1:1 shooting ratio was employed, with crummy sets (especially for sex on a ridiculously fake-looking subway car).