Dirty Susan (1977)
7/10
Desperately Seeking Susan
9 January 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Following the exact same opening shot and narration by private eye Dan McCord (Roger Caine) lifted from FIRE IN FRANCESCA, we find Dan yet again between the sheets with a hot holdover from the night before. Here it's a girl named Susan and she's played by the thoroughly appealing Georgette Sanders, a youthful looking brunette who found herself forever cast as jail bait types in Jim Buckley's original DEBBIE DOES DALLAS and Ron Sullivan's landmark BABYLON PINK. She gives him the ride of his life and then disappears without a trace. This proves to be her regular MO as McCord is called upon yet again by the film's director Shaun Costello playing Bob Gilroy who desperately wants to find Susan as well. Turns out the girl singlehandedly breathed new life into Bob's tired old marriage to Marge (ravishing redhead Kasey Rodgers, also in Gerard Damiano's underrated FOR RICHER, FOR POORER) by getting them all to have sex with the wife's brother Bruce (Ashley Moore). It's probably best not to ask…

As clueless as his clients, Dan takes a tip from old informant Shorty (!) Jacobs that somehow leads him to Ellen Blackwell (Erica Havens, who performed the double hummer with Georgina Spelvin on Marc Stevens in Damiano's original DEVIL IN MISS JONES) who discovered Sapphic solace through Susan's intervention. Costello rather appropriately lifts a track from Francis Lai's bestselling BILITIS score for this particular occasion. As a writer, he seems to have run out of ideas at this point though as he has Ellen suggest that perhaps Susan is some sort of sexual do-gooder who comes to them in their hour of need and whom they can only be with once. Huh ? Apparently, this sorry explanation pretty much satisfies the other characters however as they convene in the Gilroy apartment for a typical '70s orgy with an out of the blue character called Cynthia (Marcia Minor, an appropriately minor adult starlet - also known as "Michele Lake" - who played a rare lead in Shaun Costello's extremely odd VENTURE INTO THE BIZARRE) stepping in for absent wife Marge.

There is very little that really makes sense in this movie, but that's actually part of the fun to be had with this guerrilla style frolic. McCord gets from point A to B with even less attention to logic as usual, Caine sometimes visibly stifling spontaneous laughter as he interrogates witnesses in his usual ham-fisted manner which consists mainly of stepping on other people's lines and constantly rehashing the story so far to the characters who have just told him this ! The actor was of course better known for his comedy turns in Chuck Vincent films like BAD PENNY and JACK 'N' JILL.

The film manages to stay afloat however through this very ramshackle good nature springing from its awareness of its own silliness, some nicely shot establishing scenes and sex that ranges from simmering to sizzling. The apartment four-way with Georgette, Kasey, Ashley and Shaun stands out as the Susan character entices the wife and her brother to admit their mutual childhood attraction and then to act on it as she mirrors their actions with the husband.
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