4 reviews
Interesting revenge opus by unsung talented pornographer
Mark Hunter directed one of the most interesting of early Adult films: "Brother/Sister", in its own way among the best XXX treatments of the incest theme, before self-censorship reduced us to the current thousands of "step-mother" or "step-sister" lame incest-baiting videos. This early effort often plays like a real movie, beginning with its well-directed montage of L.A. street scene (neon, just like a NYC Times Square movie) opening.
Problem is that either budget or lack of commitment doomed the overall film to its current fate, bundled in a 12-hour, 3-disk Vinegar Syndrome set that apes the Alternative Cinema packages of retro-porn pretending to nostalgically recreate the experience of going to storefront theaters in the early '70s. I only attended a few of these (preferring more professionally made and exhibited films, as a committed film buff/fantastic) including one "on the outskirts of town" while vacationing in South Florida where "dirty" entertainment was not permitted in city limits at the time, and these videos are far, far from the actual theatrical viewing experience.
Hunter gives us a brief but telling look at the "lower depths", a clichéd stratum of American society that lives in outlaw fashion, hand to mouth with sex and drugs representing one's entire world. This material was best treated in such ground-breaking films as Ulli Edel's oft-imitated "Christiane F.", a serious look at a young woman's downward spiral. More recently the genre has been run into the ground in an uncountable number of nihilistic "Urban" genre movies.
The familiar porn face of George Peters, looking mighty scruffy, is the nominal anti-hero Harry Keller, robbing a jail-bait girl of her purse containing just $21, and sort of raping her, as she hornily insists on being serviced then and there. Later claiming "the drugs made me do it" he beats her up nastily after the explicit sex ends in a money shot on her belly.
His best buddy John (Tony van der Velt), who is a terrible actor, the worst in an otherwise decent cast, informs him that the girl he roughed- up is a member of the notorious She Devils girl gang, so Harry decides to lay low, holing up with a prostitute Ruby (an unvarnished "straight off the streets" performance by plain looking Joan Boote). Unfortunately, John finks on him, and the She Devils are soon invading Ruby's apartment with dire consequences.
The very fake looking blood in violent scenes helps distance the film's nasty content from its main sex footage, but Hunter does deliver some powerful moments. Especially effective is the girls' revenge on not only Harry but John, treating them to a contest of sexual stamina, in which the boys lose and pay the ultimate penalty. The tall blonde leader of the gang (uncredited) does a good acting job and though nude at one point is not involved in any explicit sex act on screen.
But blondie's fellow gang members are superstars of early Adult Cinema, surprisingly popping up in such a minor feature. Jane Tsentsas is made up to look plain, without glamour at all, but her star quality shines through - no hint of an amateur player (like Boote) in this role. By a very odd coincidence she co-starred in two violent sex films named "The Big Snatch" in the same year (1971), the other one being soft-core and featuring Uschi Digard and Peggy Church.
Even more surprising is Mindy Wilson as the other girl. This divine young beauty, one of the most distinctive starlets in early porn, has yet to achieve any cult status, perhaps due to her limited number of movies compared to such prolific icons as Rene Bond and Suzanne Fields. But Mindy's work in Victorian porn classics like "Flossie" and "Memoirs of Fanny Hill" put her up there in the pantheon.
One oddity is our lead character named "Harry Keller", perhaps evidence that Hunter and his production partner/screenwriter "Robert Thomas" have a film buff bent. The mainstream director Harry Keller had a very interesting filmography, ranging from much TV work including Disney shows, to off-beat genre films "Step Down to Terror" and "The Unguarded Moment", latter a thriller starring fish out of water Esther Williams! I took this as an homage, given the obscurity (unfortunate) of Keller long after his career ended.
Problem is that either budget or lack of commitment doomed the overall film to its current fate, bundled in a 12-hour, 3-disk Vinegar Syndrome set that apes the Alternative Cinema packages of retro-porn pretending to nostalgically recreate the experience of going to storefront theaters in the early '70s. I only attended a few of these (preferring more professionally made and exhibited films, as a committed film buff/fantastic) including one "on the outskirts of town" while vacationing in South Florida where "dirty" entertainment was not permitted in city limits at the time, and these videos are far, far from the actual theatrical viewing experience.
Hunter gives us a brief but telling look at the "lower depths", a clichéd stratum of American society that lives in outlaw fashion, hand to mouth with sex and drugs representing one's entire world. This material was best treated in such ground-breaking films as Ulli Edel's oft-imitated "Christiane F.", a serious look at a young woman's downward spiral. More recently the genre has been run into the ground in an uncountable number of nihilistic "Urban" genre movies.
The familiar porn face of George Peters, looking mighty scruffy, is the nominal anti-hero Harry Keller, robbing a jail-bait girl of her purse containing just $21, and sort of raping her, as she hornily insists on being serviced then and there. Later claiming "the drugs made me do it" he beats her up nastily after the explicit sex ends in a money shot on her belly.
His best buddy John (Tony van der Velt), who is a terrible actor, the worst in an otherwise decent cast, informs him that the girl he roughed- up is a member of the notorious She Devils girl gang, so Harry decides to lay low, holing up with a prostitute Ruby (an unvarnished "straight off the streets" performance by plain looking Joan Boote). Unfortunately, John finks on him, and the She Devils are soon invading Ruby's apartment with dire consequences.
The very fake looking blood in violent scenes helps distance the film's nasty content from its main sex footage, but Hunter does deliver some powerful moments. Especially effective is the girls' revenge on not only Harry but John, treating them to a contest of sexual stamina, in which the boys lose and pay the ultimate penalty. The tall blonde leader of the gang (uncredited) does a good acting job and though nude at one point is not involved in any explicit sex act on screen.
But blondie's fellow gang members are superstars of early Adult Cinema, surprisingly popping up in such a minor feature. Jane Tsentsas is made up to look plain, without glamour at all, but her star quality shines through - no hint of an amateur player (like Boote) in this role. By a very odd coincidence she co-starred in two violent sex films named "The Big Snatch" in the same year (1971), the other one being soft-core and featuring Uschi Digard and Peggy Church.
Even more surprising is Mindy Wilson as the other girl. This divine young beauty, one of the most distinctive starlets in early porn, has yet to achieve any cult status, perhaps due to her limited number of movies compared to such prolific icons as Rene Bond and Suzanne Fields. But Mindy's work in Victorian porn classics like "Flossie" and "Memoirs of Fanny Hill" put her up there in the pantheon.
One oddity is our lead character named "Harry Keller", perhaps evidence that Hunter and his production partner/screenwriter "Robert Thomas" have a film buff bent. The mainstream director Harry Keller had a very interesting filmography, ranging from much TV work including Disney shows, to off-beat genre films "Step Down to Terror" and "The Unguarded Moment", latter a thriller starring fish out of water Esther Williams! I took this as an homage, given the obscurity (unfortunate) of Keller long after his career ended.
doesn't reach its potential
For some reason the director had actress Jane Tsentas appear in the film and barely used her. She appears as a leader of a girl gang, who rape two men. Jane watches as the other two gang members have sex with the captive men. What a waste of talent.
Other than that, the film is standard stuff from the early days of porn, although it goes get a bit tedious near the end.
The other cast members are mostly from the standard talent pool that was available at the time, although Mindy Wilson, who plays one of the female gang members, is usually worth watching. The young blonde who has sex with the lead character is cute, in a 1970 sort of way.
If only Jane Tsentas had more to do, I'd give the film a higher rating
Other than that, the film is standard stuff from the early days of porn, although it goes get a bit tedious near the end.
The other cast members are mostly from the standard talent pool that was available at the time, although Mindy Wilson, who plays one of the female gang members, is usually worth watching. The young blonde who has sex with the lead character is cute, in a 1970 sort of way.
If only Jane Tsentas had more to do, I'd give the film a higher rating
Useless
Not to be confused with the David Friedman-produced film of the same name (and year!), this BIG SNATCH, in contrast to its soft core counterpart, is another of the innumerable tedious storefront features that proliferated after hardcore broke in 1970.
The film begins with drug addict Harry Keller (whose name I remember because characters constantly repeat it in full) grabbing a young woman off the street and raping her in an alley (obviously a set, but at least artfully lit). Using the money he's stolen to procure his next fix, Harry collapses into a stupor until his friend awakens him, saying that the girl he raped belonged to a female gang that has been combing the streets looking for him. Playing things safe (or so he thinks), Harry goes to hide out at the apartment of his prostitute friend Ruby.
The visit to Ruby's paves the way for a gratuitous sex scene with one of her johns, a sequence I would say is there to pad to running time if the entire story didn't collapse almost immediately thereafter. Sending Harry Keller to the store to get some cigarettes (isn't he supposed to be in hiding?), Ruby is soon accosted by three members of the gang, who have managed to track Harry back to her place. Things fade out as she screams, denying the audience the minimal pleasure of a brief cross-over into roughie territory - the film is merely tedious, bait-and-switch hardcore all the way.
When Harry Keller returns, the women knock him down and toss him onto the bed along with the guy who snitched, whom they've had in tow this whole time. The second half of the movie, an interminable 30 minutes, finds the women "forcing" the men to have sex with them as retribution (yeah). A splash of cheesy, cheap-jack bloodletting brings things to a close, though it's too little, too late - certainly for any audience attracted by the prospect of seeing a couple low-lifes get what's coming to them from a trio of foxy amazons, which I can only presume constituted this film's target demographic.
Production values, aside from the aforementioned lighting, are uniformly poor. Many of the early scenes take place on stagy sets that almost achieve an air of surrealism, though the apartment-bound conclusion (the last 40 minutes of a 60-minute film) produces such profound disinterest that it eliminates any minor goodwill the film's opening might have engendered. Acting is abysmal across the board, and the above plot synopsis should be enough to illustrate the shallowness of the film's creative wellspring. While it's easy to mythologize the Golden Age of porn (particularly if you've seen very little of it) a lot of it was dime-store dross like this - as featherweight as Kleenex, and an equally disposable masturbatory aid.
The film begins with drug addict Harry Keller (whose name I remember because characters constantly repeat it in full) grabbing a young woman off the street and raping her in an alley (obviously a set, but at least artfully lit). Using the money he's stolen to procure his next fix, Harry collapses into a stupor until his friend awakens him, saying that the girl he raped belonged to a female gang that has been combing the streets looking for him. Playing things safe (or so he thinks), Harry goes to hide out at the apartment of his prostitute friend Ruby.
The visit to Ruby's paves the way for a gratuitous sex scene with one of her johns, a sequence I would say is there to pad to running time if the entire story didn't collapse almost immediately thereafter. Sending Harry Keller to the store to get some cigarettes (isn't he supposed to be in hiding?), Ruby is soon accosted by three members of the gang, who have managed to track Harry back to her place. Things fade out as she screams, denying the audience the minimal pleasure of a brief cross-over into roughie territory - the film is merely tedious, bait-and-switch hardcore all the way.
When Harry Keller returns, the women knock him down and toss him onto the bed along with the guy who snitched, whom they've had in tow this whole time. The second half of the movie, an interminable 30 minutes, finds the women "forcing" the men to have sex with them as retribution (yeah). A splash of cheesy, cheap-jack bloodletting brings things to a close, though it's too little, too late - certainly for any audience attracted by the prospect of seeing a couple low-lifes get what's coming to them from a trio of foxy amazons, which I can only presume constituted this film's target demographic.
Production values, aside from the aforementioned lighting, are uniformly poor. Many of the early scenes take place on stagy sets that almost achieve an air of surrealism, though the apartment-bound conclusion (the last 40 minutes of a 60-minute film) produces such profound disinterest that it eliminates any minor goodwill the film's opening might have engendered. Acting is abysmal across the board, and the above plot synopsis should be enough to illustrate the shallowness of the film's creative wellspring. While it's easy to mythologize the Golden Age of porn (particularly if you've seen very little of it) a lot of it was dime-store dross like this - as featherweight as Kleenex, and an equally disposable masturbatory aid.
Vintage early 70's grindhouse hardcore smut
- Woodyanders
- May 26, 2016
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