Like the equally prolific porn star Rene Bond, Uschi Digard left her fans a legacy of many, many films, highly variable in quality. MARRIAGE American STYLE is one of the cheesiest, preserved on video by two competing companies since Uschi's mammaries will satisfy her die-hard fans, regardless of how crummy the setting. I had just such an experience recently watching RESERVOIR CATS, an insulting desecration of one of her earliest movies (1968's THE KILL by Gary Graver), still in print to show off her money-makers.
IMDb classifies this as a short film, but I'm sure it ran feature length once upon a time. Both prints used for video reissue are low quality, and evidently truncated. I'm reviewing the Something Weird DVD-R here.
Digard plays Miss Grunt, consoling her friend Candy Clit (beautiful Donna Young) who complains about her husband Alvin (nondescript Ron Darby). The lesbian action consoling goes on way too long, but first person camera shots (and distortion) of both leading ladies is highly stimulating sex cinema.
With lap dissolves, Candy dreams about hubby and we get desultory sex scenes with him as well. Saving grace is the languorous approach Donna takes to simulating passion -she is definitely a turn-on. And Uschi, swinging her tits and using them to rub or smother her prey, is a force of nature.
Interrupting this action, and actively sabotaging it, is a series of cutaways to Norman Fields, made up like Groucho Marx, doing an embarrassing obscene phone call burlesque routine while perusing a copy of Playboy Magazine. His patter, addressed to a 5-year-old girl on the other end of the line, is unfunny and tasteless, typical of what porn-makers insist on calling "comedy". Give me a morbid, downbeat porn film anytime: I would argue for the Damiano of MISS JONES and MISS AGGIE against the silliness of his DEEP THROAT and MEATBALL anytime.
Seeking a divorce, Candy unwisely visits Groucho's brothers, who are made up more like two versions of Chico, rather than Chico & Harpo (or Gummo or Zeppo for that matter). The boys', plus Groucho, attempt to get into the sex action is very clumsily staged anti-entertainment, sort of putting Candy into bondage, but without that genre's thrills. It is directed so primitively that the Marx Bros.' own stilted-but-high-quality 1929 talkie THE COCOANUTS seems fluid and cinematic by comparison.
This garbage ultimately results in a reconciliation for Candy and Alvin, as if anyone cared. "THE END" drops down on screen at the finale attached to a duck, just like the Secret Word would appear in Groucho's "You Bet Your Life" TV series.
So the anonymous hacks who made MARRIAGE have a fondness for the Marx Bros. They should have kept it to themselves.