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The Avon Dynasty: Joe Davian (Alpha Blue Archives) DVD Review

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    Ian Jane
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  • The Avon Dynasty: Joe Davian (Alpha Blue Archives) DVD Review



    Released by: Alpha Blue Archives
    Released on: 2004
    Director: Joe Davian
    Cast: Sharon Mitchell, Annie Sprinkle, George Payne, Ron Jeremy, Marlene Willoughby, Dave Ruby, Velvet Summers, Nicole Ruby, C. J. Laing
    Year: 1976-1981
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Avon Dynasty: Joe Davian - Movie Review:

    The third entry in Alpha Blue Archives Avon Dynasty boxed sets featuring the rough and tumble hardcore films that played the inner city cinemas of New York during the seventies and eighties focuses on the enigmatic Joe Davian. Rumored to have had spent time in a Nazi prison camp during the Second World War (and supposedly having the tattoo to prove it) according to an article in Metasex by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, Davian's forte fit the Avon image perfectly with his penchant for rough and nasty sex films that fit right into the 42nd St. landscape. Not a whole lot of biographical information seems to be out there on Joe Davian, so rather than waste time with speculation, let's dive right into the filthy films he's left us with (he may or may not be dead, no one seems to know for sure).

    This boxed set contains all of the films that Davian is credited with having directed, and a few other related features are thrown in for kicks.

    DISC ONE:

    APPOINTMENT WITH AGONY (1976):

    Vanessa Del Rio stars in this film that follows the exploits of a family and a hitchhiker kidnapped by sadists that plays a little like a XXX version of Last House On The Left with a few sexy twists thrown in to spice things up and make it palatable to the rain coat crowd that would have likely ventured out into the theater to see this one play. There is some rather 'David Hess' sounding folk music on the soundtrack and a guy with an unruly afro playing guitar and hamming it up in a manner that could have very well been influenced by Wes Craven's 1972 shocker.

    A good portion of the film is sex footage and a sizeable portion of that sex footage is simulated rape (hey, it fits in with the story at least) so to call this one sleazy would be an understatement, however, pretty much everything in this set is sleazy and if you thought otherwise after looking at the cover art for this one you should probably get your eyes checked.

    BLOW SOME MY WAY (1977):

    Annie Sprinkle and Mark Stevens show up in this one which plays more like a comedy than the rougher first film on the disc. Annie is the spokesmodel for the BJ cigarette company who use the title of the film as their slogan.

    When protestors show up, the company decides it would be in their best interest to explain just what they mean by blow, and Annie gets to do her thing. Some great footage of NYC starts the film off right and every once in a while the film will cut back to some interesting 'time capsule' location photography but the real reason to watch this one is for the sex.

    Annie Sprinkle gives a fun performance in the one film that is pretty much completely free of any really degrading material or sexual violence. There are a lot of goofy puns, fun 'play on word' type humor, and borderline slapstick in this one which makes it stand out from the rest of the films in the set.

    DOMINATION BLUE (1977):

    Starring Sharon Mitchell, Vanessa Del Rio and Holly Bush, this is Joe Davian's take on the infamous women in prison genre made famous by the likes of Roger Corman and Jess Franco in films like 99 Women and The Big Bird Cage. The opening credits in this one are scribbled on the prison wall.

    There's not much to the story that we haven't seen in countless other women in prison films - a new warden (John Buch) has come on board and is focusing in on four specific female inmates. He allows the head guard, Holly Bush, to mistreat and abuse the girls as she sees fit and in fact, he gets off on her punishment tactics. Eventually our four heroines have had enough, and they decide to make a break for it.

    In addition to plenty of guards using the women as their sexual play toys, the women also have a tendency to screw themselves and one another. Watch for a woman masturbating with a fork and another one with a Barbie doll. Sharon Mitchell gets raped and then smacked around, left to fester on the floor of the men's room near the urinal with come all over her pelvis. We later see her shooting heroin and then masturbating. A man with a bushy beard fucks a blow up doll and when the female guard walks in on him, she decides to use a cat o' nine tails and a riding crop on his ass. A guard pisses on one of the inmates in the last few minutes of the film, just for good measure.

    While obviously made quickly and cheaply, the direction isn't half bad and Davian, who I'm going to assume handled his own cinematography on this one, shows some artistic flair behind the camera, framing the sexual action within the cells by using the bars of the prison to give the film a very claustrophobic feel that works in its favor quite well.

    DISC TWO:

    GIRLS USA (1980):

    Look for Marlene Willoughby, Vanessa Del Rio, Samantha Fox, George Payne and the one and only Ron Jeremy in this film, a 'Cine Vogue' presentation. An FBI agent is killed in the line of duty and his girlfriend (Del Rio) is the only witness. She's kidnapped by the culprits so she can't identify them, as they're not only guilty of murder but they also run a prostitution ring with ties to very important politicians all over the world.

    Once they've got her, they beat her while tied to a wooden cross and rape her while she's sporting some nipple clamps (which is where the image used for the cover art on this set is from). Vanessa takes quite a beating in this one from her two captors and the BDSM in this film is a highlight of the set with its rather realistic look and feel and it's nasty breast torture tactics.

    The plot on this one isn't anything too original but it does keep the story moving along at a very quick pace and the sex scene with Ron Jeremy in the front seat of a car is goofy enough to be more than memorable.

    HOUSE OF DE SADE (1975):

    One of the older films in the set if the 1975 date is to be trusted features an early appearance from Vanessa Del Rio starring alongside David Williams. The story follows a group of swingers who unwittingly unleash the spirit of the true Marquis De Sade (played by some nutjob in a black bondage mask) during a séance. This, of course, leads to all manner of degrading and violent sex. Despite the hardcore sex throughout the film, Davian was making a horror film (or at least a cheap porno film with horror movie elements) this time out and you know it from the time the eerie music hits the screen during the opening credits and it's solidified when the action moves from various inner city apartments to a creepy, creaky old house.

    Vanessa gets lead around with a collar on, acting like a dog as she's slapped in the face by her partners cock and then later on she has a cucumber inserted into her pussy which is then peeled using a vegetable peeler while still inserted inside of her! Once it's peeled, it's sliced and fed to her. In a later scene she has her supple ass beaten with nunchucks as she screams 'oooo pain' while De Sade holds her down. She also finds herself getting nipple clamped again.

    The print for this one has a 'C. 1996 Alpha Blue Archives' bug on the bottom of the VHS sourced image throughout a good chunk of the running time.

    MANHATTAN MISTRESS (1979):

    Erica Boyer headlines this one (another Cine Vogue presentation), co-starring alongside George Payne, Dave Ruby, Jerry Butler and the Cannibal Holocaust man himself, R. Bolla. This one is a XXX take on southern hillbilly humor and doesn't contain anywhere near the amount of 'rough stuff' that most of the other films in this set do. Maybe he was trying to branch out a little, maybe he just couldn't come up with any good twisted set pieces. Who knows? Anyway, this one follows the sexual exploits that take place in and around a restaurant that's supposed to be out in the south somewhere but looks more like a rural area of Western New York State.

    Boyer gives a hot performance in a lesbian scene to start things off before we're introduced to a horny line cook who can't keep his hands off of the local waitresses at his restaurant ("you're the best worker that ever sucked up my creamy white skin", she says to him). Ron Jeremy shows up in this one too, and puts two fingers into a lady's snatch and then one up her ass before she asks him to hurt her good. He obliges and smacks her ass a bit, before banging her six ways til' Sunday.

    There's a big orgy scene in which one of the girls takes it anally, which segues into a three way out in the barn. Later, when Angel moves out of her small town to the city, we witness to lesbians in a shower playing with the hose in a scene that looks like it's going to come dangerously close to something out of Waterpower but for better or worse that doesn't quite happen.

    DISC THREE:

    FETISHES OF MONIQUE (1977):

    With a cast including Debbie Lee, Nicole Bernard, Danny Stevens, Martin Patton and David Christopher, this one follows a slinky sexy mad scientist and her goofy assistant who develop a love serum made out of his cum. He tends to enjoy experimenting on people and keeps a few locked up in his basement for when the mood strikes him.

    When the film begins she tests the serum on herself. She soon turns into an uncontrollable nympho who forces him to eat her out and then paddles his ass. With the serum a success, she goes public with it, talks to the press, and prescribes it to a few unwitting patients.

    As rough as this one really gets are the sex scenes in the basement prison, where a couple of the women get themselves buggered... until the last scene where it all hits the fan. The bizarre finale starts when a girl has a baster stuck inside of her and the assistant spurts the water out of it while it's inside of her. The same nunchucks from House Of De Sade show up in here as well, and the doctor uses them to slap around the baster girl a few times - she then gets her nipples clamped, which doesn't look comfortable. A girl has sex while menstruating and the camera doesn't shy away from the blood that's produced and it all goes rather insane before the end credits hit.

    PITFALLS OF BUNNY (1977):

    Marlene Willoughby and Bobby Astyr are in this one, which tells the tale of a woman named Bunny and her boy toy Joe. The lights go off in throughout the city as there's a blackout in NYC (though the lights don't go off in this apartment) and so they decide to stay inside and get it on by candle light (except again, the lights are on). After that they decide to get out of town where various sexual shenanigans occur.

    A girl sticks a vacuum cleaner attachment up her snatch (but doesn't go so far as to turn it on). Various people have sex on a wooden raft alongside a lake. A girl uses a giant pink phallus on herself while strung up outside in a hammock listening to banjo music playing on the soundtrack - some fisherman find her and rape her, tying her to a tree and forcing her to blow them.

    It looks like some of the same close up shots are used in two or three different scenes. It all ends up in a giant and very hairy orgy scene with double blowjobs aplenty and few anal intrusions along the way while some familiar folk music plays underneath it all. Once it's all done everyone BBQ's some steaks and drinks some Coca Cola and talks about the blackout they've been hearing about on the radio.

    PORNOCOPIA SEXUALIS (1977):

    The film with the best title in the set features appearances from Annie Sprinkle, Terri Hall and someone credited as Red Baron.

    Ras Kean plays an everyday Joe whose wife is the victim of a vicious kidnapping. He sets out into the underbelly of New York City to search for her. A very enthusiastic orgy gets things off to a start with some interracial lovin' and some anal poking and prodding and from there we hit the streets, where there's plenty of great inner city footage to pad out the running time and make the plot seem a lot more interesting than it really is. From here we see a white gal and a black gal put racism to an end by eating each other out, then it's back out into the city.

    More interracial sex, then back to the city again. The film follows a very obvious pattern and while the sex is plentiful it isn't all that erotic or even nasty enough to be interesting until the finale where there's a rough scene involving one of the scariest blowjobs I've ever seen on film in which the giver slaps her face with the recipients dong so aggressively that it begins to look quite painful.

    DISC FOUR:

    REVENGE AND PUNISHMENT (1976):

    Al Levitsky plays a United States senator Hal Jordon who kills a low rent girl he has a fling with after he gets her knocked up. Her sister, played by Tequila Cheung, heads out for revenge, and uses her feminine whiles to get to him before unleashing the full fury of her S&M power on him and makes his kinky behavior a news item. She talks to other girls who have had the same problem with Al and urges them to go take care of things at the doctor's office before he kills them off too - then she has lesbian sex with them.

    Listen carefully for some familiar Pink Floyd music playing overtop of the opening credits. Some great inner city footage captures the Port Authority building in all its 1976 glory and then segues into some Times Square footage to top it all off.

    Part porn film, part revenge movie, this fast and cheap production starts quickly and doesn't let up at all during its hour long running time. This one's got some boot licking and fairly heavy bondage in it, some whipping and hitting with riding crops, and no shortage of verbal abuse. There's also a pretty graphic gynecological examination scene that starts with the doctor trying to get a girl's pussy to talk to him through the stethoscope and finishes up with him using the back door. He creams on the glass table and the camera gets a freaky shot of her licking it off from underneath. There's also a weird sex scene that takes place in a photography dark room, complete with eerie red lighting. A later orgy scene features some double penetration action underneath a disco ball to the sounds of strange African tribal chanting.

    THE NIGHT OF SUBMISSION (1976):

    This one stars the holy trinity of seventies NYC porn girls, Annie Sprinkle, Vanessa Del Rio and C. J. Laing (of Sex Wish, credited here as Jessy Lang and only in it briefly) in this story of a New York City reporter who attempts to uncover a voodoo sex cult operating in the inner city. Cheryl White and Red Baron are in here too.

    Some crazed bongo playing starts this one off on a musical note, as the opening credits are shown against a fiery background. The narration that hits next explains the truth about voodoo and how it differs from what we're shown in horror films in that it's actually a mixture of complicated rituals and symbols. A demonic and sinister sex scene takes place next, which leads into a very seventies looking bar scene. From there, the party goers head back to someone's house where the drape the pool table in a purple clothe and start their evil ceremony (which soon turns into an orgy after some whipping and dildo play) as an intrepid reporter snaps pictures from outside.

    Later on a woman is affixed to a cross for a second ceremony which once again leads into an orgy where Vanessa Del Rio displays her admirable skills. It all ends back where it started, with the crucified woman who is lit on fire. Cut to the reporters again, only too happy to finally have the story that they were after.

    PREY OF A CALL GIRL (1975):

    Starring a lesser known cast (in what is possibly his first directorial feature), Joe Davian's early effort shows how a murder investigation can soon lead to sex! Valerie Dubois is listed twice in the opening credits for some reason, and Robert Bolla shows up in here as well. Other names in the credits include Suzanne Cheese, Sue Denim and Little Soft.

    When a man is shot down in cold blood on the shore of the river, a tough private eye is called in to figure out who did it and why. We're introduced to a few different guys and gals who may hold some clues that'll solve the case but most of them are too preoccupied having sex with one another to be of much use.

    A woman is held captive by a gang of men and has her nipples clamped (Davian seemed to be into nipple clamps for some reason as they show up a lot in this set) and then whipped with a cat o' nine tails before she's gang banged and DP'd. There's also some foot worship in this one as Bolla gets down and dirty with a lingerie clad dominatrix and her busty brown-haired friend. They bind his hand with a leather band and beat his pasty white ass with a big paddle.

    DISC FIVE:

    The three bonus films on this fifth DVD were not directed by Davian, but they're all NYC based smut from the same era and touch on some of the same sort of themes that his work played around with, so they fit in nicely.

    FURY IN ALICE (1976):

    Vanessa Del Rio shows up again in this one and John Leslie is in here too. Plot? Not much, a man is married to a slutty wife who screws around on him and the follow her from one rendezvous to another.

    No director is listed in the credits for this one (which consist of a title card and that's it). Vanessa Del Rio has sex with some fuzzy guy in the bathroom in the first scene, then Shaun Costello shows up wearing a golfer's glove and double teams a girl I think might be Jenny Baxter.

    Costello, Leslie and a third guy team up on a blonde who may or may not be Nina Rush for a group session on the living room couch. It all ends with a big giant orgy in a swanky living room where everyone gets it on with everyone else (there's a lot of ball licking in this scene for some reason).

    Light on plot and heavy on group sex, this one isn't the most remarkable film but it does have a decent cast and some funny dialogue. The entire thing takes place indoors and it looks like it was shot in day or two as no one's outfits really change much at all and there are only three or four locations (read: rooms) used for the entire thing. At under an hour in length, it moves along pretty quickly.

    LINDA CAN'T STOP (a.k.a. THE BIG THING 1973):

    There's a great cast in this one - Jamie Gillis, Mark Stevens, Andrea True and Tina Rusell.

    The film follows a group of people trying to quit smoking who decide to use group sex as a distraction to help them butt out for goof. A great lesbian scene with Tina Russell and a hot blonde number kicks things off which segues into a scene with that some blonde giving some dude a hummer.

    From here we see Gillis and Russell going at it on top of a white fur rug on the floor. A few more sex scenes finish off the film, including Tina Russell in a three way with two other guys that plays interspersed with Jamie Gillis taking on two fine looking ladies on a black and white striped couch with some funky stereo equipment in the background behind him.

    The quitting smoking deal is simply an excuse for the characters in the film to have sex with one another and while it does lend itself the opportunity for plenty of goofball dialogue, it isn't exactly a riveting storyline - not that I expected it to be either - but you don't really give a damn if they kick the habit or not. There are some nice cutaway shots of some yellow canaries in a bird cage at the side of the dining room table where the horribly scripted discussions take place. Not a classic, but a reasonably amusing film with a fun turn from Gillis.

    VOLUPTUOUS PREDATORS (1976):

    Suzanne McBain and Ashley Moore are in this last film, in which a married man hires a photographer to take pictures of his cheating wife. The catch? She's having an affair with two other women.

    Two girls (Suzanne McBain is one of them), one in a big yellow feather boa, are getting done by some dude (Steven Tucker?) in an NYC high rise. From here we see the photographer in action in the next sex scene as he captures the wife in action with another lady in a rather unremarkable lesbian session. This leads into the two gals taking on a dude and a cat o' nine tails comes into play here for some light BDSM fun. A later lesbian session brings a sex toy or two into play, and there's some fun inner city footage used throughout the movie that gives it a pretty gritty feel.

    A few more three ways round out the film but none of them are much more remarkable than the first couple in the film and the sex gets a little repetitive in this one. Everyone in this film, male and female alike, is really, really, really hairy.

    The IAFD credits the director on this one as Antonia De Rossi, but the credits consist only of a poorly made title card.

    The Avon Dynasty: Joe Davian - DVD Review:

    OK, let's be honest here - this set, like a lot of the more obscure vintage XXX titles that have hit DVD - should be graded with a few things in mind in terms of audio and video quality. The porno film industry of the seventies and before has a lot in common with the Hong Kong film industry in that these films were made fast and cheap and they weren't exactly stored in the National Film Archives for posterity once they were finished. Add to that the fact that many of them were chopped up for different reasons in different markets and that rights often changed hands very quickly and shadily and you can understand why a lot of these movies seem to exist only on poor quality VHS tapes anymore. Overall, for the most part the movies are watchable - no more, no less. They don't look great, some don't even look good, but they are what they are and you can't realistically expect pristine transfers on this type of material when even those involved in making the films have no idea where there are prints of these films to be found, let alone what happened to the original negatives for them.

    It's a shame that better care wasn't taken in protecting some of this material as it's unique in its perversity, but at least the DVDs won't ever look any worse (and you can't say that about VHS tapes). So yeah, this material is graded on a curve, an obvious curve at that. The material looks as rough as the sex inside the set does, but somehow it gives it that seedy, dirty quality and it's all the more endearing because of it.

    Worth noting is that in terms of visual quality, the fifteen films in the Joe Davian Collection do look slightly better than those represented in the Shaun Costello Collection and the 1980s Collection and seem to have come from better sources than the two other Avon Dynasty Collection sets did.

    The English language mono soundtracks are just as varied as the quality of the video is on these films. Again, depending on the source you could end up with a relatively clean sounding mix or a messy, hissy track that shows its VHS source origins. Overall, considering where these films came from source material wise and their low budget origins and oddball release history, they could sound worse. That's not to say that they couldn't sound better, because they obviously could but with a few exceptions here and there you're able to make out the dialogue and the sound effects and the music. Like with the video, I'm grading this one on a bit of a curve...

    Extra features that are included in this five disc set can be found on the fourth disc, where you'll be able to check out trailers for a few of the films in this set such as Revenge And Punishment (which features audible music but seems to be missing dome dialogue during the beginning and some of the narrated parts), Prey Of A Call Girl, The Fetishes Of Monique, Girls USA (which features a recognizable and very familiar looking SWV bug) and Night Of Submission.

    I've said it once, and I'll say it again (because I'm lazy and I like the cut and paste function) - I always get a kick of out XXX trailers as it's interesting to see how they were marketed back when the only venue for this type of material was theatrical play. Alpha Blue should seriously consider putting out a trailer compilation in the same way that Something Weird Video has done before, and in the vein of Cumming Soon (If ABA's paying attention, you guys might want to seriously consider something in that vein for one of your future releases).

    The Avon Dynasty: Joe Davian - The Final Word:

    Joe Davian's movies are pretty interesting, more so than most porno films of the era. A lot of them have little morality plays wrapped inside of them in much the same way that Andy Milligan's low budget films from around the same era did. Filled with some great vintage cast members and some oddball direction, sicko set pieces and great inner city NYC footage, The Avon Dynasty - Joe Davian Collection is worth follow up to the first two sets that have come out so far.



















































































































































































































































































































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