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From: "The Fool" <[email protected]>
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Reviewed by: The Film Probably the most interesting compilation of vintage porno movies to come to DVD since the beginning of the medium has to be Alpha Blue Archives' The Avon Dynasty - Shaun Costello Collection. Made up of sixteen feature films (the packaging states that there are fifteen but The Dark Side Of Danielle isn't mentioned, despite the fact that it is included in the set on the third DVD) from notorious 42nd St. XXX director Shaun Costello (a.k.a. Warren Evans, Russ Carlson, Amanda Barton, Oscar Tripe among others!), this set contains over sixteen hours of hard, rough, and nasty porno from the era when they knew how to do it right. Most of the films in the set were shot on location in the grim and gritty downtown hub of inner city New York before the strip was cleaned up and made family friendly. This was a time when anything flew, no matter how harsh, how degrading, or how violent the sexual content of the films got to be. Playing primarily in the Avon theaters on New York City, these films are just as shocking and just as nasty today as they were when they were made well over two decades ago. While time has not been kind to their condition, it hasn't really affected the impact that they have. They're still shocking, they're still dirty, and they're still wildly entertaining. Here's what goes down in this set... DISC ONE: THE FIRE IN FRANCESCA (1977) The first of the three Dan McCord (Roger Caine) private detective films in this set finds the private dick, clad in a cheap suit, checking out the happenings in relation to the mysterious death of a beautiful actress. He goes about interviewing the people who knew her before she was killed, and their confessions lead to sexy encounters in the form of a few flashback sex scenes. Director Costello also appears in the film as 'Troy Winston' and a young Vanessa Del Rio shares a scene with Jean Dalton and some guy I couldn't recognize who she adorns with a lovely blow job. This one feels like a Johnny Wadd knock off. It more or less follows the same formula but doesn't succeed as well. Not only does it lack the camp value that the Wadd films have in the form of the poorly executed action films, it doesn't have the same jazzy scores that Holmes' movies had either. Given that Roger Caine doesn't quite measure up to Big John in the trouser snake department either, nor does he have the same type of screen presence, and you're left with a fairly pedestrian and 'by the numbers' seventies porno that isn't as interesting as it could be. Overall, it's not bad - the sex scenes are decent, but it isn't a classic either. SLAVE OF PLEASURE (1978) The third film in the 'Dan McCord' films finds super-perv Jamie Gills playing a French (maybe... the accent comes and goes and when it's on, it's still really bad) slave trader named Henri who is operating a crime ring in New York City. Henri seems to have a knack for kidnapping sexy young housewives and moving them off to his clientele before anyone can nab him for it. When one of these housewives goes missing and her husband gets upset, he calls in Dan McCord to track Henri down and save his nubile young wife from certain doom. Things get complicated when it turns out that the husband was having an affair with his wife's best friend, Barbara (played by the always entertaining C. J. Laing), who is connected to Henri in that she's been supplying him with a pretty steady stream of beaver to snatch. The unwitting victims are, once sold, abused sexually in some grisly sex scenes (one of which involves some toe sucking... there's a lot of that in this set for some reason) as well as having insults hurled at them. The plot lends itself to some pretty rough stuff, especially towards the end Barbara is found out and she feels the rough touch of sexual retribution. She's bound and beaten and has her nipples subjected to some serious abuse in the form of some razor blade love. Look for Mr. R. Bolla of Cannibal Holocaust in one scene with an unidentified brunette. Herschel Savage, Ashley Moore and Gloria Todd also appear but C. J. Laing and Jamie Gillis are the real reasons to watch this one with the lights down low and a cold beer in hand. DIRTY SUZANNE (1979) Our intrepid investigator has a one night stand with Suzanne (Georgette Saunders of Debbie Does Dallas), who soon winds up missing. He's not the only one who misses her when she's gone though, as a man (played by director Shaun Costello) and wife team who had their sex live spiced up a bit thanks for the young lady's help are willing to pay good money to make sure that she comes back to them in one piece. This is the shortest of the three Dan McCain films and it's also the weakest. It follows the same formula as the first movie in the set in that it uses testimony given during the investigation scenes to lead into flashbacks and in turn into sex scenes. The kink and BDSM of Slave Of Pleasure is nowhere to be found in this one, and the scenes don't have a whole lot of heat to them either. It isn't super horrible - the girl who plays Suzanne is quite cute and there are a few golden moments of unintentional hilarity thanks to some really ham fisted tough guy dialogue, but overall it's a rather unremarkable film and the least interesting of the three on the first disc in the set. DISC TWO: BETRAYED TEENS (1975) When a very well endowed fourteen year old girl from a well to do New York family of socialites is kidnapped by a gang of sadistic bikers, things get ugly. As more and more details come out about how this all happened, it turns out that her own mother (sexy Marlene Willoughby who was the nurse in Water Power) was responsible for it all. There's not really much else to the plot here. The daughter ends up turning things around on dear old mom and dad by the time the film ends, and let's just say that it doesn't have a happy ending (look for Costello as the biker with the cat o' nine tails in the last scene). As far as the on screen carnage goes, again, there is some pretty heavy sadism in this one. Women are tied up, whipped, beaten, and raped. There's also some heavy incest going on as well and considering the fact that the kidnapped victim who is subjected to some of this is supposed to be underage, it's a bit of a taboo breaker I suppose. The plot moves along quite briskly, there's plenty of raunchy sex packed into its short sixty minute running time, and if you're into the weird, rough side of porn then this one ought to give you a couple of cheap thrills as it's quite well done and it does deliver the goods in the slap and spank departments. DAUGHTERS OF DISCIPLINE (1976) Here's another rough and tumble hour long session of physical and verbal abuse! In this sickie, the lovely C.J. Laing becomes initiated into a bizarre and sadistic sex cult. When a card arrives in her mailbox with a skull and crossbones on it, she knows that the cult has chosen her to be their human sacrifice. When she finds this out, she plays with herself a little bit and thinks back on how she got involved in this mess in the first place. Once the cult comes for her, they decide to come in her and on her as well and she's tied up and eventually an electric dildo is used on her. This one is rough, with its abundance of chains and restraining devices and a whole lot of whipping and slapping by strange man, naked except for the black masks covering their faces and concealing their identities. The final scene, the inevitable orgy that the entire film is building towards, is decadent and primal in its feel and its tone. The cult members fuck like animals and C. J.'s character knows what's coming up next for her, and she also knows that there's nothing that she can do about it. This one is pretty dark and about as depressing as any porno I've seen. Look for Sharon Mitchell in this one as well, she's got a small uncredited role in one of the sex scenes. GIRL SCOUT COOKIES (1976) A hooker looking for a way to increase the amount of tricks she can bring in during the working day decides to dress up in a Girl Scout uniform. This also comes in handy because the mayor has decided that prostitution will no longer be tolerated on the streets of New York City, and it serves as a disguise for her. The two girls get it on with a few clients and have a few interesting sexual escapades, including a chance encounter with the one and only Mr. John Leslie, who is supposed to be the mayor's right hand man and helping to clean up the streets but who can't resist dipping into any fine piece of tail that comes his way. Some hot lesbian scenes make this one pretty cool, and there's plenty of group action in here too if that's your bag. Plenty of sweaty close ups keep things hot and steamy in that weird way that only seventies porn can be hot and steamy and while this one was obviously made fast and cheap without a whole lot of care put into compositions or lighting, it's more lighthearted than some of the other films in this set and closer to traditional porno films than the heavier BDSM movies in this collection are (though there is one rough scene where a girl is bound and whipped, and once again the patented Shaun Costello toe sucking is present). Cat Steven's popular folk song Moonshadow can be heard playing overtop of one of the sex scenes, though it doesn't sound like Mr. Stevens handling the vocals on this version. DISC THREE: FORCED ENTRY (1971) Not to be confused with the 1975 film of the same name by Jim Sotos, in Forced Entry Harry Reems (star of Deep Throat and Sex Wish and credited on screen as Tim Holt, seen here in a rare sans moustache performance) plays a Vietnam Vet back in the land he fought so hard to protect in this 1971 sleaze fest. Soon after we meet him, slugging away at a gas station as a pump jockey, something deep inside of him snaps and takes to raping women at knife and or gun point. That's more or less the plot right there. What makes Forced Entry work are two things - the direction, which is very forward and very aggressive in its style, and Harry Reems' completely over the top performance. Most know Reems from his work with the late Ms. Lovelace in which he was humorous and more than a little bit goofy. Here, he's scary. The levels of profanity that he's able to hit while he sadistically raping and killing women is completely psychotic and you can almost believe for a few seconds that he's not faking it. All 'rednecked' out in a greasy three quarter length shirt and a trucker cap he works his way into women's homes, works his dick into their bodies, then works his knife into their throats. Costello's camera leers not only over the sex scenes but over the murder scenes as well, which, while low budget, are gruesome enough to be convincing in the context of the movie. If the on screen rape and sadism weren't enough, there are plenty of real life stock footage inserts from the Viet Nam war tossed into the movie to really give you a feel of what Reems' character must have gone through. While this doesn't even attempt to excuse what he's doing, it does give us some insight into his character and his ensuing insanity the spirals out of control in the last half of the film. SHE'S NO ANGEL (1977) Sharon Mitchell plays a thirteen year old girl(!) whose parents have her locked away in a mental hospital so that they can cheat her out of a sizeable inheritance. Shaun Costello has also got a role here too, as does Marlene Willoughby. There's some double vaginal penetration in this one as well as some other kinkier bits, like lesbianism, orgy scenes aplenty, and three ways. Sharon Mitchell is pretty hot in this one, giving a nice down and dirty performance. Again, it isn't as rough as a few of the other movies (though the double vaginal scene didn't really look all that comfortable for the actress in question but she takes it like the stretchy champ that she is) but it is reasonably well shot production. It's low on plot but it is competently made. She's No Angel cuts back and forth from the office to various flashbacks and recollections of sexual encounters and there's a pretty funny non-sex scene that takes place on a basketball court that really shows just how bad some of the fashions were in the decade of disco and dope, especially in regards to athletic wear. THE DARK SIDE OF DANIELLE (1976) Though this film isn't mentioned anywhere on the packaging, on any online retailers site, or on Alpha Blue's own site as being included in this set, low and behold here it is, making the grand total of movies in this collection a nice, even sixteen. While it only runs a brisk thirty-five minutes in length, the storyline still allows for quite a bit of raunch to be displayed on camera as a teenage girl with, as Dave Chapelle would say, 'great New York boobs!' explores her sexuality while reading the diary that her parents have kept which details their adventures into S&M. Marlene Willoughby stars in this one as well. As the girl reads off each encounter aloud in front of the camera, we're treated to re-enactments of each encounter. The film opens with Costello and Willoughby in a BDSM session and then to a three way in which Costello performs with a second man and a cute brunette. Eventually the girl herself gets it on - like mother, like daughter. SUMMER OF SUZANNE (1976) Suzanne is a fifteen year old schoolgirl who wants to lose her virginity to some lucky stud while her parents take off to New York for a quick getaway. Once she makes this decision she wastes no time getting it on in front of most of her class, kicking off the summer in style. This proves to her that she's a good lay and she figures why not share the love, which is exactly what she does with pretty much every guy that crosses her path, and even a girl or two as well (including her older sister). Not really rough, but there is definitely some interesting kink going on here. Suzanne gleefully takes it up the poop-shoot once or twice, bangs family members, and screws her teacher. There's also an orgy and a scene where she takes a dick in the ass while simultaneously taking on in her snatch too. The opening credits are kind of trippy, with Summer Of Suzanne flashing over some psychedelic neon lighting. Shaun Costello appears on camera in this one too, taking on two girls at the same time. The final orgy in the film is pretty funny, as it's got all the cast members fucking while a funny looking guy with a bit moustache and large tinted glasses sings to them all while strumming his acoustic guitar. It sets a really strange and pretty amusing tone for the film. DISC FOUR: WATERPOWER (1976) In the role he'll be remembered for long after he's dead and buried, Jamie Gills (star of Radley Metzger's The Opening Of Misty Beethoven and about a million other porno films) gives what has to be his most intense, or at least his most disturbing, performance of his long and varied adult film career. Though the credits on some prints were altered to give Deep Throat's Gerard Damiano props for directorial duties, this quickie-sickie has the look and feel of Costello's work all over it. Gillis plays a man who, after witnessing an enema based live sex show, becomes obsessed with 'cleaning out' women. He soon begins a rampage wherein he breaks into women's homes and rapes them and gives them enemas. That's pretty much it. The more he becomes obsessed with it, the rougher and tougher the sex scenes get and the version included in this set leaves very little to the imagination. Whereas in some version the movie cuts out of the shower when Gillis' character rapes two girls, here, when she proclaims 'Oh my God, there's shit everywhere' she isn't lying. There really is shit everywhere. In addition to Jamie Gillis the film also features Marlene Willoughby, C. J. Laing, Sharon Mitchell, Gloria Leonard, and infamous amputee porno starlet 'Long' Jeanne Silver (though she is wearing an appendage in her scene where she plays the unfortunate 'patient' named Pamela). While it follows the ideas of Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver fairly closely at times (and also goes so far as to borrow quite heavily from the soundtrack of the film, and also from Sisters), this is very much a unique animal in and of itself. While it is a fiercely relentless and quite depraved movie, it's got loads of sick seventies atmosphere to spare and you can almost feel the sweat and dirt of the inner city on your skin as it plays out. Gillis gets so into his role that at times he is very frightening, talking to himself at times and raping his way through the movie with all the subtlety of a train wreck. Financed by members of the infamous Gambino Crime Family of New York, Waterpower follows Gills on a one man enema rampage that was loosely based on the true story of a man named Michael Kenyon who forced enemas onto some unlucky college students at the University of Illinois over a ten year period stretching from 1965 until he graduated in 1969 as an accountant - go figure. He moved around the country working for the IRS and wherever he was stationed, enema bandit attacks would occur. When he returned to Illinois in 1974 he went on a bit of a spree and it was at this point that the cops finally nabbed him. Frank Zappa wrote a song about it entitled The Illinois Enema Bandit which can be found on the album Zappa In New York. According to the film's director, this movie was a big hit in Germany where it was released with the expulsion scenes intact under the alternate title of Schpritz. I'm not sure what that says about German porn fans, but for some reason I find that really amusing. The director has a cameo role as a police officer. The marketing material for this one makes it look a lot more erotic than it really is, but there's no denying that the film has oodles and oodles of fucked up entertainment value thanks to an utterly messed up concept, some excellent dialogue, and Gillis' through the roof performance! VENTURE INTO THE BIZARRE (1975) This entry obviously took its inspiration from the legendary work of Cynthia Plaster Caster, the famous rock groupie who made plaster casts of various rock stars' cocks beginning with Jimi Hendrix in February of 1968. In this version of the story, a two young ladies in New York's Greenwich Village are making molds of film stars appendages and then blackmailing them with the evidence and making some pretty serious scratch at this game. They coerce the guys into having sex for pay with some people that they know who are willing to shell out the big bucks for such things, and in return, they won't sell dildos to the general public based on the molds that have been made of their dongs. John Leslie (credited as John Lester) and Marlene Willoughby (who plays one of the girls) were the only two I recognized in this one. There's plenty of cool period footage of inner city New York and lots of sweaty, hairy seventies fuck footage too. There's a great, albeit brief, lesbian scene with Marlene and some brunette in which they use one of the molds that they've made on each other with some pretty successful results. Later on one of the girls sucks two dicks at the same time and there are a couple of three way scenes in here as well. Lots of goofy period music and a fun storyline with some effective humorous moments make this one a pretty solid entry even if it doesn't reach the levels of kink that other movies in this collection do. There is one rough scene though, where Marlene and her partner are tied up and whipped by a group of men. The shrieking and hollering in this scene is pretty intense, and once they're let out of their binds they are raped by the group. CHERRY HUSTLERS (1977) Vanessa Del Rio and Annie Sprinkle star opposite Shaun Costello in this film where he plays an investigator/pilot who is trying to track down Jennifer Jordan who is involved in running a slavery ring in the bowels of New York City. As he interrogates her in an airplane, her confessions are visualized in the form of some flashbacks which lead way to the sex scenes. Vanessa bones two dudes in a very swanky, pimped out pad complete with multicolored track lighting and plenty of exotic plants! There's a crazy group/orgy scene that takes place in a disco with some very appropriate dance music playing over top of all the action. Plenty of really bad dancing is on display in this scene, which is an unintentionally comedic highlight of the film. Things get a little freakier when Vanessa gets DP'd by a pair of guys. Later on there's some rope play and forced ass licking when some skinny guy takes on three chicks at once. A woman with a pentagram on her ass in a bondage club has her snatch fisted while she's whipped, and a guy plays guitar while she blows him. Spectators look on and make bids on the abducted men and women as this plays out. Later in an orgy scene there's some more toe sucking. DISC FIVE: TRAVAILS OF JUNE (1976) Sharon Mitchell has a sizeable role in this one. June, a victim of a kidnapping ring who was drugged and then gang raped recounts her story to a reporter. We witness her ordeals in flashback stories. She's forced to blow two guys at the same time after a sexy nurse (Mitchell) gets her warmed up a bit with some lickin' and some druggin'. Soon she takes some double penetration from her captors. In a later scene she shares a man with a blonde woman in a three way scene, and after that she blows a guy in a bathroom stall. There are some really sleazy, flea ridden New York City locations used very nicely in this film. It feels seedy and dirty just like the area in which it all takes place. Shaun Costello plays one of the abductors and has a few scenes in this movie as well. Aside from the double penetration and inferred rape, this one doesn't go too far and the sex all stays reasonably calm and collected. It's one of the safer films in the set. A TASTE OF BETTE (1978) Sharon Mitchell and Shaun Costello are in this one too. When a sadistic sex cult finds out that their fearless leader has been killed off, they have to find someone to take his place. The front runner is a young man who round up everyone in the cult, dopes them up, and subjects them to his every perverted whim. A really bizarre soundtrack makes this one tick, as well as a lot of blow job footage (some lucky guy gets head in the back of a cab, Costello gets it while talking on the phone). There's another double cock sucking session in this movie as well and a few group sex scenes including a pretty hot scene where a woman is eaten out by a man and a woman at the same time in a hot tub while Sharon Mitchell gives a blow job on the TV that is playing in the background. Some happy lounge music plays over top, adding an almost surrealist element to the scene. The sex never gets too rough but there is plenty of orgying, anal sex, lesbianism and double penetration in the movie. In one scene a man wears a leather cod piece, a mask, and some chains around his balls but that's about as close to BDSM as this one comes. TWO LIVES OF JENNIFER (1979) Shaun Costello, working under a pseudonym according to the credits, plays a novelist is shocked to find out that his sexy blonde wife has a secret second life with another husband and that she leads a rather kinky sex life with him. This has been going on for quite some time and when he finds out about he, he decides to look into things a little bit more. The more he uncovers about her secret sex life, the more inspiration comes to him and he begins to write down her escapes so that he can use them in his next story, which is sure to be a best seller! As he goes around digging up dirt on her he finds that she also has lesbian tendencies (which we thankfully see manifest in a nice scene where some moody stock music plays over top). The scene soon leads into a three way, followed later on by a scene involving a man and three women. At the fifty five minute mark, after the editor exclaims her disapproval of the story, the film cuts into a brief group scene where there's a few seconds of gay action. From there it cuts to a man talking about how he won't have that shit in his movies, then we see Jamie Gillis with a woman and a transsexual who gives him head. Gillis later returns the favor. It then cuts to a group sex scene on a ladder, then to a brief scene involving some heavy rope play, then it cuts abruptly back to the menu screen. Odd, to say the least. I'm going to assume it's not supposed to be there. Video 2.5/5 OK, I'll 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. Not all of the films in this set are tape to DVD transfers, but most of them are. Waterpower fares the worst of the lot. Taken from, judging by the subtitles at least, appears to be a Dutch VHS release, it's got burned in foreign language subs that are blurry and fuzzy and there are more than a few tape drop outs here and there. That being said, it's presented in a more complete form than the VHS dupes or DVD-Rs circulating in trade circles. While it might have been nice to see a composite made, that may not have been possible. A couple of the other movies in the set are just as bad, Slave Of Pleasure looking pretty rough, Daughters Of Discipline appearing equally poor. On the other hand, the rest of the movies are at least watchable. Nothing in this set is reference quality but Forced Entry looks okay considering that it too came from a VHS source, and Dirty Suzanne fares quite well with a pretty stable and clean image from start to finish with only some minor print damage cropping in from time to time. Venture Into The Bizarre looks decent enough as well, and The Two Lives Of Jennifer, while slightly off center, is taken from a film source even if it isn't one that was in the best of shape. 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). Audio 2.5/5 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 it's 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... Extras 2/5 The only extra features that are included in this five disc set are found on the second disc, where you'll be able to check out trailers for Summer Of Suzanne, Venture Into The Bizarre, She's No Angel, The Fire In Francesca, and Betrayed Teens. 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. It's also worth mentioning that the voice over that plays over each and every one of the menu screens is kind of a nice touch too. Overall 3.5/5 This isn't spank material, this is hardcore nasty filmmaking done with a careful eye and blatant disregard for social values. In short, it's classic smut. Some of these movies are nasty, most of these movies are very aggressive, and at times rather horrifying. That doesn't invalidate them as films though. This work at times transcends the simple rules and boundaries of basic pornography and while what we see isn't always erotic or pretty in the traditional sense, it's well made, it's interesting, and it's damn hard to stop watching. Alpha Blue Archives' The Avon Dynasty - Shaun Costello Collection isn't going to appeal to the masses but for those with a taste for sleaze cinema, it doesn't get a whole lot better than this despite the overall audio and video quality of the set being lacking. Not for the faint of heart, but recommended none the less. For more information on this set and other fine filthy films, check out the Alpha Blue Archives homepage. http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/Reviews/A-D/avon_dynasty_costello.html |