The Filth Shop

I caught this as the "short" feature at the end of Something Weird's "Career Bed/Sex by Advertisement" DVD and all I can say is wow. This looks like somebody's home movie and at least twice you can spot the cameraman's finger or a crew member's arm in the frame. "Susan Sex" narrates as "Lola Lust" a demon from hell who visits wicked Earth Hell to corrupt the soul of "Osmo" (?!), a bearded guy with dirty pants who hangs out in a porno book store. Lola Lust encourages our hero to fantasize about "beautiful dancing girls", but we mostly see incredibly incompetent sex scenes that Lola breathlessly narrates ("this is hell where people bathe each other!" being the most incomprehensible line I've ever heard in a movie). If this wasn't enough, Satan himself shows up to comment on the most retarded looking orgy imaginable. Characters are called "Liz Tails" and "Uncle Weatherby". There's some gay humping and the actors look pretty bored throughout. Satan sounds like an accountant, and Lola gets more and more wigged out until she starts moaning about "getting the president" and neither one seems sure when the movie will end. The narration at times doesn't match what's on screen (Lola Lust describes a dancing girl when all we see is a guy with his underwear on humping the hatchet-faced blonde from some of Michael Findlay's films), and my guess is director "Looney Bear" was pretty much the last stop in the NYC sex film scene. Some of the girls in this show up in a ton of other NYC sex movies (especially Findlay's) and "Looney" seems to have had some kind of relationship with Jack Bravman, who produced a number of Michael Findlay's more obscure/lost films. At an edited 27 minutes, this is about 15 minutes too long, and the full feature-length would probably cause you to lapse into a coma before the halfway point. Cool title music though.

This film blew my mind. You would think that a film with such a lewd titles as "The Filth Shop" would be awful, cheap exploitation for lovers of bad cinema, BUT ITS NOT! This film has a totally engrossing plot with some of the best character development I've ever seen. The acting is really top notch, in a league with the great John Travolta. Big Bertha turns in the performance of her career. I just can't express to you, the fan of fine cinema who has visited this page, the excellence of this film. It moves so quickly let leaves you with so much to think about and discuss with friends. Please, please rent this film! You'll be glad you did.