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Released by: Alpha Blue Archives
Released on: 2006
Director: Peter Balakoff
Cast: Ann Webster, William Margold, Hillary Scott, Peter Balakofff, Gena Lee
Year: 1976/1977
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Cult 70s Porno Director: Peter Balakoff - Movie Review:
Peter Balakofff has kind of an interesting pre-pornography history. Before he started making adult movies he was an actor and had shown in in small roles on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Boris Karloff's Thriller, Combat!, and even on Wonder Woman! To make matters more interesting, according to the packaging for this release the Belgian born artiste, who often worked under the alias of Ted Roter (or often as Peter Balachoff), was a psychiatrist before he started acting.
For whatever reason - be it money, fame, fortune, or the opportunity to lay hot women - pornography called to Balakofff and by the time the porno chic movement had spread from New York to the west coast, Balakofff had started making smut films in and around Los Angeles. Alpha Blue Archives, being the purveyors of fine filth that they are, have managed to round up a fine pair of his XXX offerings and combined them for an entertaining double feature DVD.
Hollywood She Wolves:
The first film on this disc, shot in 1976 and distributed by Belladonna Films, takes a cold hard look at the "depraved world of casting agents and porno producers and the talent they use for their own ends!" The poster art for the film proudly proclaims that it's "Rated X Y & Z" and that it was filmed in "Sexorama Color!" The screenplay for this one is credited to Pierre Le Poof!
The story follows Jane (Ann Webster), a pretty young girl who heads to Hollywood where she hopes to make it big as an actress. After she finds out that it's not as easy as she first hoped (we see her leave the MGM building) she starts to take work where she can find it, working in bit parts and small theater productions, and when that no longer pays the bills, she opts to make a living as a casting director after working her way up from the mail room. We learn all this through the opening narration, as we see her getting laid by some known guy while some fuzzy sounding electric guitar plays out overtop of it all.
After she's been laid and given head she hits the shower, masturbates, and heads out to work after fending off her ambitious neighbor who thinks he has what it takes to make it in the movies. Her office is small (look for the Prison Babies poster on the wall) but she manages to get some clients to show up. Her first, Mr. Patterson, shows up for some work and has to prove himself by laying her (while the cute little secretary diddles herself, watching through the crack in the door). After a hard days' work she heads home and her boyfriend bones her before they take a bath together, and then it's back to work for more casting work. This time up a cute blonde shows up, but Jane's not picky and she swings both ways so of course, they get it on as well in a pretty steamy girl on girl scene.
Later that night she heads out on the town (look for the Roxy Theater), has sex, then goes back to work and has sex with her secretary. Eventually she finds herself on the set of a porno film where a man is being whipped by a dominatrix, where Bill Margold shows up in a tie dye shirt and smoking a pipe. Everyone attends a pretty swinging party which turns into an orgy. From there it gets a little more complicated as the soap operatics come into play but it's nothing some quality swinging and orgy going can't fix. Jane bones Margold, has some more lesbo sex, plays some naked Ping-Pong and has a three way to finish it all off (the movie just ends here and a brief bit of closing narration is lost). Look for Hillary Scott in here as well.
Paul, Lisa & Caroline (the title screen says Forbidden):
The second part of this double feature is Peter Balakofff's XXX 1977 parody of a 1969 film called Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice , and it too was also distributed by Los Angeles based Belladonna Films.
A dark sex scene in a dimly lit room starts this one off before we see some cool footage of the famous Pussycat Theater and a few other LA porno houses. Then we meet a director named Paul (Balakofff himself, credited in the closing credits as Tovia Borodyn!) and his lady-friend Caroline (Gena Lee) - they're going to go get married but Paul's past and randy ways (he's boning Lisa) start to cause some problems. Lots of hokey dialogue and venomous lines like 'you son of a bitch I hate you' and 'you're still a despicable character with a foreign accent... Fuck you!' keep things interesting and highly amusing. Paul doesn't want to tell his wife that he's a pervert but if he keeps up his ways she's going to find out anyway because he's also fucking his writer friend on the side as well as any other girl who makes herself available to him.
The plot is disjointed and completely melodramatic but there's enough sex set to classical music that tries in vein to be sophisticated and some very cool vintage footage of some recognizable and rather notorious Southern California porno history landmarks and strip clubs that despite the fact that the story is, well, stupid, the movie is thoroughly entertaining none the less.
The sex scenes are overly dark in a few spots making it tough to get a handle on some of the action but there's enough kink to keep things fun. Bill Margold shows up here as well, and has sex with two girls at the same time in a high speed fuck scene that is sort of reminiscent of the fast forward boning from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange!
As the film progresses, everyone more or less does everyone else, and there's a great house party that turns into a swinging party in which all the cast members more or less hook up. At the pool out back some of the girls strip down to the sounds of some strange psychedelic music while inside it's all lesbian sex and three way fun. Inevitably Paul gets busted and after his plan to bring his wife into the swinging lifestyle he so loves backfires on him, he has to figure out what to do with his marriage and whether he really should be married to Caroline or not in the first place. Caroline's got something else up her sleeve though, and she's not the victim she likes to pretend she is.
It's more or less a XXX rated version of Days Of Our Lives and the dialogue is so completely ham-fisted and contrived that it adds a strange element of surrealism by way of high school theatrics to the movie that is endlessly amusing and unintentionally hilarious in so many ways. The ending comes out of the blue but it works really well and even somehow manages to throw a moralistic message into the movie that completely stands at odds with all of the sweaty bumping and grinding that makes up the bulk of the movie. Ann Webster, Hillary Scott, Dian Miller and 'Jacques Girard' all show up in here as well.
Cult 70s Porno Director: Peter Balakoff - DVD Review:
The whole ball of wax is presented fullframe, as most readers probably expected. While it's hard to say for sure if they were shot this way or not, we can make a reasonable assumption based on how things look that fullframe is the intended aspect ratio for both of the film on this disc. Compositions on both films seem to be okay, and they've been taken from what appear to be reasonably good sources. The images are scratched and beaten up but watchable.
Hollywood She Wolves is taken from a VHS source but it's a very nice one and then only thing that really gives it away are some slight tracking lines on the bottom of the picture. Considering how hard this film has been to come by, the quality on the DVD is surprisingly good and there's a fair bit of detail present in the picture despite its age and the conditions of the source material.
Paul, Lisa & Caroline doesn't look as good as the first film does. While the image is fairly clear and not too beaten up, it's also a bit on the dark side. Adjusting your brightness levels helps this a bit, but it's still not as robust looking as one could hope for. Regardless, it's watchable and not much worse than your average vintage porn DVD release, truth be told.
For the two features on the disc, it's mono all the way. While the quality isn't mind blowing, everything is audible but be prepared to turn the volume up a bit as the levels are lower than normal. The funky score and wonderfully inept dialogue comes through just fine, however and while this isn't a remarkable set of mixes, they get the job done well enough.
Extras on this release are limited to a handful of trailers for Hollywood She Wolves (it's in rough shape but the narration makes it so worthwhile - Hollywood... The dream factory!), All The Devil's Angels (titled as The Psychiatrist, in which Balakoff, ironically, plays a psychiatrist and with great aplomb in a movie that features many of the same cast members as the two movies on this DVD), Little Girls Lost (starring Veronica Hart, Gena Lee, John Leslie, Eric Edwards, Bill Margold and introducing Tiger, directed by 'Pierre Balakoff) and Prison Babies (a fantastically trashy looking XXX WIP film which also stars Balakoff and Hillary Scott), as well as a promo reel for Alpha Blue Archives.
Each of the two films is split up into chapters but there is no chapter menu for either feature.
Cult 70s Porno Director: Peter Balakoff - The Final Word:
A pair of decent vintage smut films gets a solid double feature release from Alpha Blue Archives. Some interesting cast members and a couple of solid sex scenes make these better than your average XXX potboiler/soap opera of the era, and the unintentional comedy provided by some of the more dated aspects of the productions adds to all the fun.
