Orge pornografiche

When is a review not a review ? I'm not attempting to be cryptic here, but the thing is I didn't actually see this movie, or at least not all of it. But first allow me to paint a little mental picture for you. The place is the ABC theater on the Boulevard Adolphe Max in Brussels, the last remaining adult cinema in Belgium, still screening 35mm films instead of video or DVD. One Friday afternoon, yours truly settles down in one of the flea pit's creaky seats to enjoy a big screen double bill of hardcore pornography from days long gone. First up is Lawrence Talbot's glossy couples flick SILK, SATIN AND SEX from 1983.

Its supporting feature turns out to be most of this one, only its title card reads CHARLOTTE ET CLAUDIA and that's followed by the opening credits from Claude Pierson's LA FILLE A LA FOURRURE. The opening 20 minutes, which seem to originate from some anonymous French Cinévog release circa 1984 judging by the underground bar setting familiar from several of their other titles from this period, have a mature blonde "auditioning" new talent for her night club slash bordello with said new talent then being put to work in some rather artistically shot back room encounters.

Then all of a sudden, we're whisked off to the bedroom of Karine Gambier (the sultry maid from Francis Leroi's JE SUIS A PRENDRE) with our girl simultaneously servicing both her boyfriends. You can tell it's from a different movie as the photography improves greatly from this point onwards. Sound quality at the ABC being what it is and in the absence of subtitles, I cannot fill you in on the finer points of plot (if any) but with minimal dialog and nearly continuous sexual action I doubt missing out on a lot in that department. Cut to a blonde and brunette - Diane Dubois and Marie-Claude Viollet respectively, both in Francis Leroi's far superior LES PETITES FILLES - trying to engage in 69 in a hammock (a scene that has to be seen to be believed !) against a stunning natural backdrop. When the two women retreat indoors, stalwart Guy Royer (the unflappable butler from Claude Bernard-Aubert's SOUMISSION) drives up and joins them. A bit later Karine and her two studs also show up and take part in a long orgy scene until brief end credits roll, revealing this movie to have been made by José Bénazéraf, a one time counter-culture figure from the '60s (building a scandalous reputation on films like LE CRI DE LA CHAIR and JOE CALIGULA) who shot – but, unlike Francis Leroi, never fully embraced – mostly hardcore porn from the mid-'70s on. This early explicit effort, which I've managed to identify thanks to the IMDb and Egafd, shows a modicum of cinematic inspiration as well as a budding disregard for the genre's general lack of ambition, hence the very blunt title which literally translates as F*** ME EVERYWHERE ! A little note on the hybrid status of the version I was presented with that day. Back when adult films were still widely shown in French cinemas, there was a countrywide ban on any sort of publicity in newspapers and at the theaters other than the display of the movie's title. No mention of stars and director could be made and any sort of photo or drawing would've been illegal as well. That's the reason why French porno titles are always so vulgar and graphic as that was the only means by which to drag in the punters. Of course, this also enabled distributors to release one movie several times under a number of different titles with the more creative ones cutting together scenes from different older features into a "new" one, the audience not realizing they'd already seen the flick until they'd already paid for the ticket and the house lights had dimmed.

On a more idiosyncratic note, when I watched this wretched mess of a movie, the final reel was unspooled backwards and upside down ! Try to imagine a dirty movie house full of patrons stunned into silence, some of them with their pants around their ankles and desperately trying to sustain arousal, presented with such rather surreal spectacle. Memories are indeed made of this !